I was not even aware that site exists. Pretty fascinating stuff, thx for posting.
I'm surprised Poland let him pass if Snowden was really supposed to be on board. US-Polish relations are generally pretty good.
Russia->South America without clashing with the US seems like an interesting problem. If Italy,France,Spain,Portugal is blocked you pretty much have to take a giant detour, go through Africa or try flying out east of Russia (which immediately puts you close to the US). Probably have to go on a very southeast route right away...which basically means he might have been better off going Hong Kong->Ecuador if he could have negotiated that option sooner
Are they that good? I got an impression they were pretty good while Poland was still promised things like joining the visa waiver program. Now I think many people are quite annoyed at the outcome / delaying for years. The whole project of rocket interception sites is also bringing up some interesting questions lately.
Currently Polish government is so pro-USA that our Minister of Foreign Affairs preemptively declined asylum for Snowden using his Twitter [1][2]. It's funny, because instead of building better relations with our neighbors "we" are constantly trying to please the US. This trend continues despite being given nothing but empty promises for years. So yeah, our gov likes to think and say (loudly) that those relations are pretty good -- hard to say if it's because they want to keep their face or for whatever reason. I think that US also likes this arrangement a lot, because free service can't be bad [3].
I think you are seeing the "true" influence of government to government relations, rather than the general sentiment on the street or the empty rhetoric from officials. France made a big noise about the spying allegations but quickly blocked access to its airspace.
Personally, the action by France and Portugal this made this whole web of deceit even more unpalatable. Time for a few leaders to grow a pair.
Now we know what will happen to Snowden if he is granted asylum by a country that can only be reached by flight.
The flight permits will be rescinded, the plane forced to land and subjected to a search, and if Snowden is present I suspect he will be arrested and extradited to the USA on the basis that the asylum is invalid on the grounds that it was not granted in the destination country.
Russia really is his best chance.
Edit: Which makes me wonder, did Bolivia help spread this rumour (on behalf of Ecuador or Venezuela) to test what would happen
Forced how? I doubt anybody would be willing to shoot a civilian plane down to get Snowden, especially if the plane in question was also carrying a president or other high ranking people. So the pilot could relatively safely ignore any demands to land.
Fuel is a lot denser than cargo tends to be; I suspect this would be harder to do safely than you might expect. You'd need to make sure the balance is okay and stays okay throughout the flight (can't have it slosh around).
You could surely get Boeing to retrofit one of their planes like that, but I don't think it is something a 3rd party could slap together on short notice.
Could he take a more circuitous route, through Russian territory up to the Far East and then across the Pacific to some friendly South American country?
"9.27am BST Morales said he refused a request by the Spanish authorities to inspect his plane in Vienna and has not been granted permission to use Spanish airspace, according to Reuters."
They are not allowed to forcibly enter. But of course that does not stop bullying like this where they the "request" permission to enter while making it clear they won't allow him to fly through their airspace if he doesn't.
I would not put it past anyone in this circus (which the US is making) taunting the US by letting such a rumor slip in order to see what is what.
If that is true, and this was the American response, then is suggests we (the Americans) are more frazzled than we should be at this point. Whom ever is heading up the recovery effort in DC is making poor decisions at this point.
"Officials in Russia, which has made clear it wants Snowden to leave, say an embassy car would be considered foreign territory if a country picked him up."
The Extradition Treaties states that one of the many things you can be extradited for is "unlawful imprisonment".
Realizing that, I figure the world community at large could request to have say Bush and/or Obama extradited for the things going on in Guantanamo.
Of course they might object that these fellows enjoy diplomatic immunity and that it's completely ludicrous.
But if this incident has shown us anything I believe it's that US & Friends really don't care much about such minor details.
They don't seem to be handling this very intelligently, more like a bully than anything else.
It would be much easier to let Snowden get to a country in southamerica and then after some weeks press under the table to get him arrested. Now doing all this pressing all they get is Snowden in China or Russia's arms.
If you assume the goal of all this is to deter future leaks, I'd say they are doing a pretty good job. Snowden has so much uncertainty and risk in the next few weeks that I bet borderline whistle-blowers are rethinking their plan.
Arresting him quietly without the media gets them Snowden, but not the deterrent.
If anything, seeing how those guys got treated is why Snowden fled the country. I can imagine that future whistleblowers are going to seek asylum first, then blow the whistle.
Whistle-blowers may be releasing information because of strong ethical objections, not rational thoughts about their own well-being.
I think watching this unfold with obvious lies from governments has actually strengthened the ethics in releasing this information, and may reinforce others with similar information that leaking really is the morally right thing to do.
Also the next guy maybe will leak anonimously, if that's possible with all that Prism systems.
Maybe creating some downtime in the system while the leak is produced??
If Snowden gets asylum in Russia after a few days of stress and uncertainty he is well ahead of Manning who's been held in conditions tantamount to torture. And he knew that was a possibile outcome before blowing the whistle and it didn't deter him.
On the other hand, if he gets out of their grasp, potential future whistleblowers will have a recipe for how to handle the situation and the knowledge that they can get away... It's a big gamble.
In both cases they seem to be overplaying their hand. Dotcom has a very real chance of getting off largely because the way it was handled have included such blatant disregard for the law. E.g. without the revelations of illegal spying, and the massive overkill of the way his arrest was handled, it might have been a lot easier to gentle "suggest" things to a judge and make the whole thing go away. Instead they've ensured that it's really hard for the judges involved to not treat this seriously.
Same with Snowden - creating a diplomatic incident that now has pretty much every Latin American leader screaming bloody murder and have officials describing it as virtually a kidnapping, and complaining about colonialism, means European countries and others will quickly start seeing that there's a very high potential price to pay for bending to US demands in this, in a case where they likely have little sympathy to the US position in the first place given that pretty much all of them have faced revelations of US spying targeting them. If the US keeps pushing like that, they might just find that someone will snap and decide to tell them to go to hell.
It'll be interesting to see if they manage the balancing act of pushing just hard enough to keep everyone in line without pushing anyone too far.
> "Bolivia should cut all cocaine exports to the US, and push Colombia to do the same, within a week you would see all US politicians panicking and killing each others trying to check first into rehab"
Why are there no news reporters just "traveling" the same airport as Snowden, Reporting on the situation and taking new pics. I can't be that easy to hide in an airport, and it can't be that hard to wander around an international airport for awhile when waiting for a long layover... something about the reason we haven't had any of that kind of reporting smells pretty fishy to me... also, how many CIA agents do you think have "traveled" through that airport in the past few days, keeping tabs on things...?
It's sad to see that France and Portugal go this way. No one should support the government of the United Shit of America, especially when you know they are spying on you.
Question: Wouldn't it be super easy to check a private plane for how many passengers are on board? Just watching the passengers board with a thermographic camera should do the trick.
That tells a lot about all these European countries that are just puppets of the US government,especially France where I come from... Maybe we should stop the hypocrisy and let Washington govern us directly, we could save a lot of money this way.
Not so much puppets but they certainly don't want to encourage anyone within their intelligence apparatus to follow in Snowden's footsteps.
I really wish some country would have stepped up and taken him in. While I do not fully support his actions we are far to close to the results of what a one world government would be like. No place to run, no place to hide
That's funny, going from wanting to be the US' "51st state" to not even wanting to be a full EU member, which I think makes a lot more sense (to be one).
The anti EU people in the UK see the EU as socialist, liberal and left wing. The anti EU people in the UK are...... you guessed it... right wing. Fairly extreme right in UK terms, but probably still left wing by US standards. So, for them, the US is an aspiration further right.
IMHO, the EU makes total sense, even if there are many problems with it, and even the US government have urged the UK to get more in to Europe and stop antagonizing it. Partly I think the US likes having the UK as a gateway to Europe. I just wish we in the UK got more out of that deal than we do, like equality and fairness in our deals.
Right now, despite my criticism of the US, I'd prefer to be a 51st state, since we'd Brits would no longer have no rights over US excesses. We could sue "our" government, or what ever Americans do!!! Ah, nonsense of course, we need to get on in Europe better.
Most people fail to realize that the EU is above all a harmonizing regulatory and commerce framework, and the impact of that for trade is far higher than most people think, which is why most right-wing UK politicians talk to the talk on the EU but fail to walk the walk.
But why do you think you'd do any better than Americans right now? From what I can tell, it's even worse in UK with GCHQ and with all the cameras and whatnot, and people have "gotten used to it".
Do you mean if the UK was in the EU proper, we Brits doing better than Americans? If so, Im not really referring to the NSA thing, rather our social economic position in general.
As for spying, and what not, no. In many ways we are worse off, with less ability to do much about it. Yes, we in the UK have more CCTV than any other country on the planet. Yes we just "got used to it", apparently. No, we don't have a constitution to protect us, but even then it seems the US gov can still circumvent the constitution as and then it sees fit.
If you mean a choice between being in the EU proper and being a 51st state, then I think it ridiculous to even think about being a 51st state. If nothing else, geography and culture. Despite the shared language, we actually have less in common with Americans than the French, but confuse similarity with a shared language. The comment was intended to be flippant. The idea of American courts fills me with dread. I would genuinely, hand on heart, rather kill myself than face the US idea of justice. Which is one of the reasons I oppose our amusing one sided extradition treaty where the US only has to accuse, no evidence required. But if we want an American for trial, we have to provide evidence, and go through much more due process. We signed up in good faith for an equal deal, we ratified it, the US ignored it. Because we Brits are spineless suckups, we keep to our side of the deal, with out any complaint. This is why you might see me say things like our gov will happily betray its own people to the US.
Despite our problems, I'd rather have our problems, and EU problems, than US ones any day of the week. I would never ever want to be American or governed by Americans. Simply, US culture is not something I either understand or identify with once you get below the surface. No problem with America existing as it stands, and if that is how Americans want to be, then I completely support that, in the same was I support people who want to have, say, an Islamic government. Its their right to choose. Also, always remember our histories. We, US, UK, and that hypothetical Islamic country, all have different histories and reasons for being where we are. We are different. Equally valid, but different. And as the French say, vive la différence.
I really hope that answers your question. If I have missed you point entirely, after all that, then I'm going to cry under my desk!!!!
The odd thing about the claim that Snowden was aboard is that FAB1 took off from Vnukovo but Snowden is apparently in Sheremetyevo.
Here's a picture of plane turning round over Austria and then descending and landing in Vienna: http://i.imgur.com/cuUQkWV.jpg
UPDATE: News reports say that FAB1 is leaving VIE shortly and it is now appearing on FlightRadar24's live view.