Post: #151

Countries seem to be lining up to help Snowden. Three latin american countries are now helping him: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_...story.html

Obama (and USA) gets no respect.

Post: #152

He should've chosen Venezuela over Ecuador. Way better girls.

What sucks is that whatever country he chooses he'll be stuck there. Anytime he crosses the border he has to research the extradition laws of his destination and make sure he has no connecting flights in a country that is friendly with the US. That really sucks. Hope he likes Ecuador.

Post: #153

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/06...aks-gmail/

Quote:The Justice Department used a secret search warrant to obtain the entire contents of a Gmail account used by a former WikiLeaks volunteer in Iceland, according to court records released to the volunteer this week.
The search warrant was issued under seal on October 14, 2011 by the Alexandria, Virginia federal judge overseeing the WikiLeaks grand jury investigation there. The warrant ordered Google to turn over “the contents of all e-mails associated with the account, including stored or preserved copies of e-mails sent to and from the account, draft e-mails, deleted e-mails [...] the source and destination addresses associated with each e-mail, the date and time at which each e-mail was sent, and the size and length of each e-mail.” The warrant also ordered Google not to disclose the search to anyone.

Disgusting.

Post: #154

I wonder how far the US would go in trying to apprehend Snowden. I wonder if they would/could do something like send fighter jets to ground the flight from Moscow to Havana that Snowden is reportedly likely to board tomorrow. The fact that he will be traveling with foreign diplomats is likely going to prevent that scenario from unfolding, but I can't say I'd be surprised. We're talking about the self-anointed world police after all.

Post: #155

The thing I find most surprising about this thing from US media is that their headlines are all about where Edward Snowden, who has "leaked top-secrets details about U.S. espionage programs", is currently running. They are not putting the torch to their statesmen who went along with this, and asking the kind of questions that should cause resignations.

These are just the kind of revelations that should light a fire under the press.

Post: #156

Ecuador, what a shitty place to be stuck. Only one step better than jail, at least if your in Guayaquil.

Post: #157

(06-23-2013 04:57 PM)Hencredible Casanova Wrote:  I wonder how far the US would go in trying to apprehend Snowden. I wonder if they would/could do something like send fighter jets to ground the flight from Moscow to Havana that Snowden is reportedly likely to board tomorrow. The fact that he will be traveling with foreign diplomats is likely going to prevent that scenario from unfolding, but I can't say I'd be surprised. We're talking about the self-anointed world police after all.

History has shown that seemingly minor events have been the spark for something larger.

Post: #158

IMO, this guy is smarter than that. He is not going to board any plane tomorrow or in the next few weeks/months, if not years. He's going to stay put in Russia where he knows he will be safe, unlike all the other destinations mentioned. IMO, this is only a ploy to distract and fend off Brutus (the US gubmint aka the world's biggest terrorists).

Getting on a plane to anywhere, with or without other diplomats is akin to suicide as the plane would more than likely be shot down with the official version being some kind of mechanical or unfortunate weather conditions that caused it to crash.

Post: #159

Post: #160

His passport has been revoked by the govt:

Quote:As is routine and consistent with US regulations, persons with felony arrest warrants are subject to having their passport revoked. Such a revocation does not affect citizenship status. Persons wanted on felony charges, such as Mr. Snowden, should not be allowed to proceed in any further international travel, other than is necessary to return him to the United States. Because of the Privacy Act, we cannot comment on Mr. Snowden's passport specifically.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2013/ju...CMP=twt_gu

Post: #161

(06-23-2013 04:57 PM)Hencredible Casanova Wrote:  I wonder how far the US would go in trying to apprehend Snowden. I wonder if they would/could do something like send fighter jets to ground the flight from Moscow to Havana that Snowden is reportedly likely to board tomorrow. The fact that he will be traveling with foreign diplomats is likely going to prevent that scenario from unfolding, but I can't say I'd be surprised. We're talking about the self-anointed world police after all.

I highly doubt it. We're not talking about Bin Laden here. In the grand scheme of things he's just not all that important. He leaked some info that pretty much everyone that's paying attention knew anyway. He's not important to the point that they're going to go shooting down planes or anything to stop him.

Post: #162

I'm loving how the Democrats are talking in circles trying to justify why their policies aren't like Bush's.

I wonder when the people who voted for Obama will realize they've been pump and dumped?

Post: #163

(06-23-2013 04:36 PM)speakeasy Wrote:  He should've chosen Venezuela over Ecuador. Way better girls.

What sucks is that whatever country he chooses he'll be stuck there. Anytime he crosses the border he has to research the extradition laws of his destination and make sure he has no connecting flights in a country that is friendly with the US. That really sucks. Hope he likes Ecuador.

I think he can visit countries that don't have extradition treaties with the USA or that have weak extradition treaties with the USA: Venezuela, Cuba, Russia, Mainland China, Nicaragua, Iran, etc.

The main problem is he will never be able to visit his family or friends in the USA ever again.

Post: #164

I guess when you live in the United States or plan to for a long time. This kind of stuff can get somebody quite outraged. But really can you honestly say this is any worse then the other stuff that's been going on? Americans are already bent over and taking it in the ass, if they get a slap on the rear what does it matter now if you're getting it balls deep?

Post: #165

(06-23-2013 07:06 PM)The Texas Prophet Wrote:  The main problem is he will never be able to visit his family or friends in the USA ever again.

That's brutal. The more I think about it, I don't think it was worth it for him to do this. Not on principal, but because he will live the rest of his life as a fugitive, never able to set foot in his own home town, yet the very people he was trying to help are more concerned about what Kim and Kanye are naming their baby. An ugly irony. I truly feel bad for Snowden. He shouldn't have done it because frankly, few people give a damn anyway.

Post: #166

(06-23-2013 07:11 PM)speakeasy Wrote:  

(06-23-2013 07:06 PM)The Texas Prophet Wrote:  The main problem is he will never be able to visit his family or friends in the USA ever again.

That's brutal. The more I think about it, I don't think it was worth it for him to do this. Not on principal, but because he will live the rest of his life as a fugitive, never able to set foot in his own home town, yet the very people he was trying to help are more concerned about what Kim and Kanye are naming their baby. An ugly irony. I truly feel bad for Snowden. He shouldn't have done it because frankly, few people give a damn anyway.

It was a massive waste of his time and efforts. Who in their right mind would take such a risk to alert people who emphasize Mcgriddles, Facebook and Dancing with the Stars as their way of life. He could have just gotten the hint that the US has been going down the tube for a long time and bailed himself out leaving the country for good. He's just another an attention whore. Well glad he got all that attention he wanted. Dumb fuck.

Post: #167

(06-23-2013 07:33 PM)Hammer Wrote:  

(06-23-2013 07:11 PM)speakeasy Wrote:  

(06-23-2013 07:06 PM)The Texas Prophet Wrote:  The main problem is he will never be able to visit his family or friends in the USA ever again.

That's brutal. The more I think about it, I don't think it was worth it for him to do this. Not on principal, but because he will live the rest of his life as a fugitive, never able to set foot in his own home town, yet the very people he was trying to help are more concerned about what Kim and Kanye are naming their baby. An ugly irony. I truly feel bad for Snowden. He shouldn't have done it because frankly, few people give a damn anyway.

It was a massive waste of his time and efforts. Who in their right mind would take such a risk to alert people who emphasize Mcgriddles, Facebook and Dancing with the Stars as their way of life. He could have just gotten the hint that the US has been going down the tube for a long time and bailed himself out leaving the country for good. He's just another an attention whore. Well glad he got all that attention he wanted. Dumb fuck.

Either that, he was a sap who still believed in the superiority of America.

Post: #168

(06-23-2013 05:17 PM)Vacancier Permanent Wrote:  ................ the plane would more than likely be shot down with the official version being some kind of mechanical or unfortunate weather conditions that caused it to crash.

That would have more blowback, by far, for Obama than benefit.

Post: #169

[quote='calidude' pid='475554' dateline='1371970570']
Snowden leak reveals US hacked Chinese cell companies, accessed millions of sms

Snowden is a very smart man and he's two steps ahead of the US. Whether he obtained these specific documents by accident or deliberately, the timing is definitely intentional. In wake of a possible extradition these documents will only increase tensions between the US and China thus giving a chance for snowden to make his next move.

[quote] US government has been hacking Chinese mobile operator networks to intercept millions of text messages, as well as the operator of region’s fibre optic cable network, South China Morning Post writes citing Edward Snowden.

[/quote]

i retract my hope he might come back and get a light sentence. He's never coming back now that he revealed our spying on China. OF COURSE we're spying on China, they're trying to hack in to everything we've got.

He shouldn't have ratted on overseas operations, now he's allying himself with our presumed future enemies.

Exposing their spying on Americans in America was reasonable, most people don't really want that.

Post: #170

(06-23-2013 07:11 PM)speakeasy Wrote:  

(06-23-2013 07:06 PM)The Texas Prophet Wrote:  The main problem is he will never be able to visit his family or friends in the USA ever again.

That's brutal. The more I think about it, I don't think it was worth it for him to do this. Not on principal, but because he will live the rest of his life as a fugitive, never able to set foot in his own home town, yet the very people he was trying to help are more concerned about what Kim and Kanye are naming their baby. An ugly irony. I truly feel bad for Snowden. He shouldn't have done it because frankly, few people give a damn anyway.

It is brutal. Especially, when you look at the percentage of people who think he is a traitor. It surprises me how they can overlook what he is saying like that.

I have no sympathy for the common person any longer.

Post: #171

(06-23-2013 07:11 PM)Hammer Wrote:  I guess when you live in the United States or plan to for a long time. This kind of stuff can get somebody quite outraged. But really can you honestly say this is any worse then the other stuff that's been going on? Americans are already bent over and taking it in the ass, if they get a slap on the rear what does it matter now if you're getting it balls deep?

Post: #172

Five rules to make it as an asylum seeker

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/20...lum_seeker

Quote:As he journeys west from Hong Kong toward asylum in Ecuador, Cuba, or possibly Venezuela, NSA leaker Edward Snowden should keep in mind that dodging American justice isn't just a matter of hopping a few flights through sympathetic countries. It's an extremely long game. Once the initial public-relations buzz wears off, regimes can tire of harboring high-profile fugitives who end up causing more trouble than they're worth. If Snowden wishes to reach a ripe old age in Quito or Guayaquil, he might want to take some cues about staying one step ahead of the law from the fugitives of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Here are five rules from that chaotic era, when terrorists, radicals, and slightly bonkers hijackers regularly hopped across borders in search of asylum.

1. Clearly define your political motive. Extradition treaties typically include exceptions for crimes of a "political character." In theory, these clauses are meant to protect political dissidents from being sent back home to face prosecution for acts such as organizing protests or penning anti-government tracts. But governments have wide latitude to define these crimes as they see fit: In 1974, for example, the French declined to arrest the four Basque assassins of Spanish prime minister Luis Carrero Blanco, stating that extradition would be an impossibility because the crime was "so obviously political."

Snowden didn't do anything that extreme, of course, but the U.S. government will obviously contend that his actions were more criminal than political and therefore worthy of extradition. In his interview with The Guardian earlier this month, Snowden did a good job of heading off that line of argument by emphasizing his dedication to the public interest. His proxies should now reiterate that sentiment as much as possible, so that no future Ecuadorian president is ever tempted to see things from the American point of view.

2. Stay quiet. Snowden has already discussed his motivation for leaking the details of the NSA spy programs, but from now on he should leave that campaign to his surrogates. History has shown that big-mouthed fugitives run the risk of rubbing their hosts the wrong way. The classic example from the Vietnam Era was Eldridge Cleaver, the minister of information of the Black Panther Party. On the run from an attempted-murder charge in California in 1968, Cleaver escaped to Cuba, where he was initially welcomed with open arms by Fidel Castro's regime. But Cleaver ruined things fairly quickly by speaking candidly to reporters, particularly about the harsh treatment being accorded several imprisoned American hijackers. The irate Cubans forced Cleaver to move to Algeria, where the Soul on Ice author eventually wore out his welcome by publicly calling for dictatorial president Houari Boumedienne to give him the $1 million brought over by a group of American hijackers. Boumedienne had Cleaver's headquarters raided in revenge.

Snowden doesn't appear to be quite the loose cannon that Cleaver was, but he should still be aware that his odds of accidentally upsetting his hosts greatly increase every time he opens his mouth on the record.

3. Find allies on the ground. Though his Algerian sojourn ended in disaster, Cleaver actually lasted over three years in the North African country -- a pretty impressive run, given his penchant for ruining things with his self-described "fat mouth." One of the keys to his success was the way he gained the support of other welcome guests in Algiers -- notably the North Korean diplomatic corps and representatives of the Vietcong, the latter of whom gave him a villa they owned in the tony El Biar neighborhood. These allies helped Cleaver liaise with the Algerian authorities. (Cleaver returned the favor to both: He broadcast virulently anti-American messages to American G.I.'s in Vietnam, urging them to frag their commanding officers, and he wrote the foreword to the English-language translation of Kim il-Sung's Juche.)

Snowden's libertarian politics don't dovetail naturally with the leftism espoused by Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa (nor perhaps his government's assault on free speech), but he still should find some sympathetic souls on Quito's cocktail-party circuit. He'll need to tap those contacts in order to handle some very pragmatic issues, like figuring out a long-term housing situation and, more importantly, how to ensure his personal security in a nation with a high crime rate.

4. Make money. Staying on the lam is always more expensive than one might anticipate, especially when a mammoth entity like the United States of America is doing all it can to shut down your potential sources of income. The root cause of the Black Panthers' demise in Algeria was poverty -- the United States froze Cleavers royalties from Soul on Ice in accordance with the Trading with the Enemy Act, thereby forcing him to look to hijackers for a cash influx. (Washington claimed that Cleaver had forfeited his American citizenship by visiting North Vietnam and North Korea in 1970.) Snowden will have plenty of expenses while in Ecuador, both legal and personal, and the Correa regime probably won't want to pick up the tab for all eternity. Crowdsourced donations sound like a fine way to keep things going, but the WikiLeaks experience is not encouraging; last year, the organization attracted just $68,000 in handouts, barely enough to keep its servers running. Sure, Snowden could always settle for a run-of-the-mill IT job with some Quito firm to make ends meet. But who can honestly see that happening?

But there are always ways to route money to those in need. Snowden's wealthiest and most avid supporters should start thinking now about ways they can slip cash into his pockets without attracting the ire of the American government. Bitcoins could sure come in handy here.

5. Do something fulfilling. Boredom and loneliness can be vexing foes, particularly for an intelligent 29-year-old keen to leave his mark on history. Plenty of the folks who hijacked planes to Cuba in the late 1960s and early 1970s can attest to this dilemma: many of the ones who settled down into normal lives in Havana, sometimes complete with spouses and children, eventually decided to return to the United States often because they had tired of their drab proletarian existences. Can you really picture Snowden being content with a nine-to-five gig in Ecuador? He obviously has a grander future in mind for himself.

Perhaps Snowden should follow the lead of a few notorious American fugitives who found some measure of contentment by transforming themselves into do-gooders. An excellent example of this path are Melvin and Jean McNair, a couple who helped hijack Delta Airlines Flight 841 to Algiers in July 1972; they now operate an orphanage in Caen, France. And the Black Panther Pete O'Neal, another veteran of Algiers who fled a federal gun charge, wound up running a shelter for homeless children in Tanzania.

So what selfless occupation could Snowden take up in order to create meaning in his life? How about teaching free programming classes in a barrio periférico.

Post: #173

Y'know....

I keep reading all of these "the government is invading our privacy" stuff. There are times where rules need to be bended to the good of the nation. Face it, the U.S.A. still has a lot to lose if the guard is dropped. If the technology is not to the point where we cannot ignore monitoring our own people....so be it....we just have to bend the rules and monitor our own.

Of course, I have a horse in this race. I AM a NSA contractor, and my income does fluctuate between $175-$200K/year.

P.S.: I need to keep renting out those Presidential Suites in the Dominican Republic for my Dominican temporary "novias"

Post: #174

(06-23-2013 11:41 PM)UrbanNerd Wrote:  Y'know....

I keep reading all of these "the government is invading our privacy" stuff. There are times where rules need to be bended to the good of the nation. Face it, the U.S.A. still has a lot to lose if the guard is dropped. If the technology is not to the point where we cannot ignore monitoring our own people....so be it....we just have to bend the rules and monitor our own.

Of course, I have a horse in this race. I AM a NSA contractor, and my income does fluctuate between $175-$200K/year.

P.S.: I need to keep renting out those Presidential Suites in the Dominican Republic for my Dominican temporary "novias"

If you're really an NSA contractor, why are posting here? can't they trace all the shit you say?

Post: #175

(06-23-2013 07:47 PM)worldwidetraveler Wrote:  

(06-23-2013 07:11 PM)speakeasy Wrote:  

(06-23-2013 07:06 PM)The Texas Prophet Wrote:  The main problem is he will never be able to visit his family or friends in the USA ever again.

That's brutal. The more I think about it, I don't think it was worth it for him to do this. Not on principal, but because he will live the rest of his life as a fugitive, never able to set foot in his own home town, yet the very people he was trying to help are more concerned about what Kim and Kanye are naming their baby. An ugly irony. I truly feel bad for Snowden. He shouldn't have done it because frankly, few people give a damn anyway.

It is brutal. Especially, when you look at the percentage of people who think he is a traitor. It surprises me how they can overlook what he is saying like that.

I have no sympathy for the common person any longer.

Exposing the spying is not the reason why people think he is a traitor.

People think he is a traitor because he gave China and Russia whatever information he had about our spying operations on them. If he hadn't, both countries probably would have sent him back to the US without hesitation.

China is hacking the shit out of everyone else, so what the government is doing is absolutely necessary.