Image 01 Image 03

Edward Snowden Leaves Airport After Russia Grants Temporary Asylum

Edward Snowden Leaves Airport After Russia Grants Temporary Asylum

NSA leaker Edward Snowden has left Sheremetyevo Airport after receiving his paperwork today approving temporary asylum in Russia.

From the NY Times:

After a month holed up in the transit zone of Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow, Edward J. Snowden, the former intelligence contractor wanted by the United States for leaking details of surveillance programs, has received temporary refugee status in Russia and left the airport, his lawyer said Thursday.

The movement from the airport’s international transit zone was a significant change in Mr. Snowden’s status for the first time since he left the United States and began leaking details of the National Security Agency’s surveillance.

The refugee status in Russia was the first formal support from another government for Mr. Snowden, 30, and seems likely to elicit strong objections from the United States.

The temporary refugee status allows Mr. Snowden to move freely within the country and is valid for one year, Anatoly Kucherena, a Russian lawyer assisting Mr. Snowden with the asylum request, said in a telephone interview.

Kucherena, who also sits on the public council of the Federal Security Service (FSB), told state broadcaster Russia 24, “I have just seen him off. He has left for a secure location.” He described Snowden as “the most wanted man on the planet” and said he “needed time to adapt to Russian realities,” according to the Washington Post.

President Vladimir Putin previously said the NSA leaker is not welcome in Russia unless he ceased his work “aimed at harming our American partners.”

But Snowden already passed off documents and information to various news outlets before ever arriving in Russia, and new reports continue to surface.

Just yesterday, The Guardian released a fresh dump from that trove, revealing the existence of a program called XKeyscore.  That report alleges that XKeyscore “allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals.”

The Washington Post also reported that arrangements are being made for Snowden’s father Lon to visit his son in Russia.

The lawyer said arrangements are being made for Snowden’s father to visit him in Russia, the Associated Press reported. In an interview with The Washington Post on Tuesday, Lon Snowden said he was eager to speak with his son but had refused an FBI offer to fly him to Moscow while his son was trapped at the airport, because U.S. authorities could not guarantee that the two would be able to meet.

“If he comes back to the United States, he is going to be treated horribly,” Lon Snowden said. “He is going to be thrown into a hole. He is not going to be allowed to speak.”

In a letter to Russia’s Minister of Justice last week, Attorney General Eric Holder said that Edward Snowden would not face the death penalty or be tortured if he returned to the United States.  He also tried to offer assurances that rather than a military court, Snowden would be tried in a civilian court with the full protection of US law.

But Lon Snowden told CNN’s Anderson Cooper the other night on his AC360 program that he has no faith in Eric Holder and does not believe his son would receive a fair trial in the United States.

“We’ve attempted to work with the Justice Department and both the people investigating this, and I just do not believe that that collaboration, that the good faith exists anymore.  So I’m very very disappointed and we’ve attempted to get assurances that Ed would receive a fair trial. I have absolutely no faith in Eric Holder, the Attorney General of the United States. None.”

Through his attorney Bruce Fein, Lon Snowden also sent a letter to President Obama, urging him to “dismiss the outstanding criminal complaint against Edward, and to support legislation to remedy the NSA surveillance abuses he revealed.”

DONATE

Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.

Comments

I am sure Snowden had a busy month. As did the Russians. He had to be emersed, daily, in Russian language lessons. And, he’s also getting “zlotkeys” or “rubles.” Or whatever you call Russian money. Which’s he’s been learning to recognize and use.

Plus, he’s made a few friends. Besides the woman who has been his spokesman.

The time limit on the asylum is just Putin again playing with the fools from Holden on down. And, even including Interpol, too!

Separate from what Snowden has brought forward to show you just how bad the spying is against citizens in the USA, he has also been transferring his skills into the Russian language. Where will he end up? I wouldn’t be surprised if he ended up in a top Russian university. Either inside, or outside, Moscow. But he has real data mining talents. What makes you think Russia would keep him away from computers?

And, in a year from now he can write about what it’s like to live inside Russia. (During the Soviet period it was considered a House of Horrors.)

Yes, Russia has great mathematicians and scientists. However, they were not allowed to leave Russia. And, for example, when Richard Feynman was invited to lecture in Kiev, he refused to go because Russian scientists were kept in lock down. Not even allowed, sometimes, to meet with the Americans. He also got other physicists to refuse these invitations.

Look how the tables have turned!

It’s not just Obama, alone. Dubya did this country terrible harms. He used 9/11 to grant the saud’s even greater access! Never forced them to pay one penny for their deceitful ways, which includes taking over Islam. All the mosques that once had “mom and pop” imams, became recruitment centers for terrorists.

And, today, when you look at europe, you see them mired in economic troubles. With worse troubles exported from germany to greece. And, where ireland was turned into a basket case. Where what thrives is antisemitism.

How will Russia protect Snowden? Oh, I think they will.

The saddest part of all the snooping in the USA is that the “work” gets turned over to the Snowden’s, and the Manning’s. Where once you would have felt they were actually the lowest men on the totem pole. But they’re the ones who see it all.

You know the Russians are building for themselves an impenetrable fortress. Those, like Snowden, who can aid in doing that, will do very, very well.

Why do people think Snowden was sitting for a month at an airline terminal just twiddling his thumbs?

One less young adult to fund Obamacare.

Carol Herman | August 1, 2013 at 1:59 pm

Back when the telephone got invented, nobody thought their conversations were ever private. First, you were connected through party lines. Plus, if you had one than more phones in your home, your wife, or you maid, could lift up another receiver and listen in … Even if your wife said nothing about what she heard you saying to your mistress.

In offices, too, it wasn’t unusual for a boss to signal his secretary to “listen in.” Sometimes, if you didn’t make notes, you’d find an inventive and dishonest personality saying they heard the opposite of what you said.

Also, if you got harassing or threatening phone calls, the phone company (AT&T) told you to “keep them on the phone long enough for us to trace the call.” This could take 40-minutes.

Even the computer story gets a head start in science. (Dr. Feynman, in 1973, was invited to share in this new field of “artificial intelligence.” And, at Xerox engineers were talking to each other. But management saw no use for this technology.

IBM and Xerox where making large markups on the products they sold. (So they laughed at computer technology. Watson, head of IBM, said “no one’s ever gonna want a computer at home.) No, siree. Desk models had no future.

So, now the 1980’s begins. You can build your own computer from a kit. And, kids at home really took to this! My son, for instance, was six, when he was “programming in basic.” Because he, and his friends, were captivated by computer games. And, thought nothing of “making their own.”

MIT did NOT have computer courses! Instead, the fun fell to kids. Oh, and “hacking” … began it’s life as someone knowing how to blow a whistle into a pay phone … to get connected anywhere in the world for free.

Data Mining doesn’t even become a Ph.D subject until the late 1990’s! So, first, it’s the kids who explore the universe of potential. Then? Mathematicians applied their methods to the (boring) study of data; looking for trends.

You bet, accurate studies of data is a boon to industry! Long before it even became “of interest” to advanced engineering and math.

Now, how many people love having GPS in their cars?

And, why wouldn’t the cops want to get aided by technology as they set about finding crooks?

Back in the 1940’s when spies (and landladies) wanted to read your personal mail; they’d take the letter over to a kettle of boiling water. And, they’d let the glue “melt away” so they could read your private mail.

You mean only the bad guys get to use technology?

Today, if you want to send private messages, your best bet is still the old fashioned carrier pigeons. (Where a tab on a pigeon in Instanbul got the Turks all upset, because they thought the bird was a Mossad spy. As the band said the bird was tagged in Tel Aviv.)

If nothing else, some of this stuff is real worthy of a good laugh.

Carol Herman | August 1, 2013 at 3:11 pm

Computers have actually been around since the 1960’s. But in the beginning it was necessary to “in-put” statistical information by “hand.” The machines ran on the green and white lined computer paper … with the rip-off sides. (Which was the mechanical way paper was fed into the computer.)

And, yes. MIT did have this in their lab. Plus, at Xerox, their engineers was “talking to each other” via machines. But management failed to see if it would ever be adaptable to home use.

Once the original Atari hit the market, geeks bought kits. And, played. Turning the world on its head, most strides were made by kids playing around. And, not so much by scientists.

I’d even bet, today, the kids are very sympathetic to Snowden. And, much less respectful of government.

If in judging this the “powers that be” thought they could do anything they wanted to do … Why not suspect that there’s not an unintended consquence, where our Feds are seen as the bad guys?

Snowden has every reason fearing returning to the USA.

For Russia, however, this is one heck of a publicity bonanza.

What does Putin want? He wants Russia to look better than it did when Stalin was handed Berlin as a prize.

With the most recently revealed documents, it turns out everything Snowden says has been the truth. Its has been Obama and his accomplices have participated in the greatest criminal conspiracy in the HISTORY of the republic. Now there is no doubt that what they were doing was completely illegal, invasive and abusive. Hell look what happened today

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/08/government-knocking-doors-because-google-searches/67864/#.UfqCSAXy7zQ.facebook

Some guy googles backpacks and pressure cookers and a swat team arrives at the door. this is extremely dangerous. THis is too much power for the government to have. They simply cannot handle the responsibility.

Yay -he gets to take a shower and wash his clothes.