Hong Kong enforces extradition laws more than other jurisdictions in Southeast Asia, Mr. Acton-Bond said. But Hong Kong did not follow Britain’s example after the Sept. 11 attacks of lowering the standard of legal evidence required before an extradition to the United States is approved. Hong Kong also has legal protections against politically motivated extradition cases, but they have seldom been invoked....
Mr. Snowden, a 29-year-old computer technician, has said that he had access to lists of all American agents overseas and other information, but that he did not take all of the data....Snowden said that he was careful about choosing what to release and that he chose not to hurt any particular individuals:
"I carefully evaluated every single document I disclosed to ensure that each was legitimately in the public interest... There are all sorts of documents that would have made a big impact that I didn't turn over, because harming people isn't my goal. Transparency is."But in revealing that he has more and could hurt American agents, he is building up his bargaining position.
Back to the first-linked article (in the NYT):
While Mr. Snowden — or possibly his personal computer — might be a valuable prize for China’s intelligence agencies, experts were skeptical that China would risk harming relations with the United States by exercising its legal authority to block an extradition request from the Justice Department.So Snowden's choice of Hong Kong was — at least implicitly — pressuring the U.S. not to seek extradition, because once China puts its hands on him, they have their hands on that laptop, with all those names or whatever it was that he took when he "did not take all of the data."
“I don’t think he’s a big enough fish that Beijing would try to intervene to affect the decision of the Hong Kong authorities one way or the other,” said Willy Lam, a specialist in Chinese government decision-making at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.He's not a big enough fish? How big can a fish get?!
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41 comments:
It does make you wonder if he will be... uhm... debriefed by Chinese Intelligence at some point.
Looks like the Gray Lady is a day late and a dollar short (surprise!).
Our little bird checked out of his hotel earlier.
Supposedly, some spooks were overheard joking about him being "disappered".
This all just so... Man From UNCLE.
Maybe he is counting on the DOJ to just say, "Forget it, Eric. It's Chinatown."
Meanwhile, Noam Chomsky and Pat Buchanan are planning a joint press conference denouncing this administration's overreach.
So the Progressives have to kill a snitch. Well, at least they're used to it.
The war against Americans continues being prepared and run out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
The list of their suddenly released "scandals" is actually their display of power over us. Who would dare to oppose The Great Obama now?
Who issued the "stand down" order in Benghazi?
What was the President doing all night?
What was the content of the Obama-Clinton conversation?
"Looks like the Gray Lady is a day late and a dollar short (surprise!). Our little bird checked out of his hotel earlier."
Looks like you didn't read the article.
Well it's good thing Obummer has a few thousand drones at his disposal. A golden opportunity to kill an American overseas. Our Nobel Peace prize winning prez just needs to wait until Snowden lands in the wrong country. I suspect the ChiComs would take a dim view of drone putting a crater on their soil.
Snuff him and retrieve the laptop.
"Mr. Snowden, a 29-year-old computer technician, has said that he had access to lists of all American agents overseas"
I'm skeptical of this -- it would really be scandalous if all of our agents' identities were available to any one computer technician.
Ann Althouse said...
Looks like the Gray Lady is a day late and a dollar short (surprise!). Our little bird checked out of his hotel earlier.
Looks like you didn't read the article.
Skimmed it, but they're talking like the Reds are just going to hand him over and he's going to wait there while we come get him.
If he's on the move, extradition may be yesterday's news.
Snowden can credibly play the part of an idealistic young man. Perhaps what you see is what you get, and his motives are flawless. Even granting him all that, who's to say that his goals are any nobler than those of the NSA director and that he is the best evaluator of noble ideas.....I see nothing wrong with someone like Rand Paul running on a platform vowing to dismantle the NSA programs and, then, doing so after he's elected. I see quite a lot wrong with delegating that power to any young man in NSA's employ who feels that his ideals are nobler than those of his boss.
Remember when Monica Lewinsky with her Alice blue dress decided to play chess with the President and his team. It didn't end well for her and Clinton continues to rack up speaking fees and honors......I don't think that this will end well for Snowden. He's just smart enough to think that he's smart enough to pull this off.
They work so hard to compartmentalize the information......or at least they did. I'm also surprised they didn't have a set of eyes on him.
How does this one guy have such a breadth of information?
I saw Henry Kissinger interviewed over the weekend. At 90, he is still entirely there, active and involved. He's had a great and enviable life and is still working it.
William said...
Remember when Monica Lewinsky with her Alice blue dress decided to play chess with the President and his team. It didn't end well for her and Clinton continues to rack up speaking fees and honors.
Actually, I don't.
People were so disgusted with what he did, they were glad to see him go in '01 and it took the Bushes to rehabilitate him (sort of). Willie gets the big bucks because of all the over-the-hill Lefty women that want to rub up against him and all the bobos who want somebody to front their cause.
Monica, OTOH, pursued an academic career and has gained some respect the field of social psychology.
Sorun said...
"Mr. Snowden, a 29-year-old computer technician, has said that he had access to lists of all American agents overseas"
I'm skeptical of this -- it would really be scandalous if all of our agents' identities were available to any one computer technician.
6/10/13, 10:33 AM
Manning.
In the first video, It strikes me how it is three layers, solid rock in the middle that stays put perfectly and the water moves in the background and the human blob moves around in the foreground. That is all.
Oh, and something about assigning names and surviving.
"How big can a fish get?" At least 41.5 feet and 47,000 pounds, maybe more: see Wikipedia s.v. 'whale shark'. Oh wait, was that a rhetorical question?
So the hero who decides to disclose the details of our anti-terror surveillance program seeks refuge in a police state.
Idealists are so precious.
Drudge links to article about the AQ bomb maker who has mastered the art of making bombs that can fit into rectal cavities. So far they have been more effective in killing the bomber than in killing the target. But the technology is new and will, perhaps, improve with time. If the technology can be perfected air travel will be a thing of the past.....,.I hope NSA uses all their black arts to kill this bomb maker before he perfects this bomb. I think it's reasonable to fear government overreach in these security programs, but, if you're playing the probabilities, it is far more reasonable to fear AQ operatives than NSA bureaucrats.
Sounds like TSA is going into proctology as well as radiology.
Some people get away with it. Alger Hiss served only a brief prison term. At the end of his life, he got paid speaking fees and standing ovations at Harvard. Hiss was fortunate enough to have been prosecuted by Nixon. No man prosecuted by Nixon could possibly be guilty. Snowden could possibly have gotten away with this in the Bush administration, but his antagonist is now Obama. I read a comment in the WP that Obama is a great constitutional lawyer and that, if the program passes muster with Obama, it's ok with him. The writer wasn't being ironic. Remember the New Deal had a program of interning citizens that passed muster with the liberals. This NSA program is nothing compared to that. The liberals will, for the most part, not have more sympathy for Snowden than they do for Obama.
He's not a big enough fish? How big can a fish get?!
Ther's always a bigger fish!
Back in 1976, a Soviet pilot defected to Japan in a Mig-25 Foxbat. It gave us the first opportunity to examine the plane. You can't be too careful when it comes to smugglers. When we were done with it, it was returned to the Soviet Union in pieces.
China might follow that playbook with regards to Snowden. They'll extradict (what's left of) him after he has been "investigated". His laptop will be either "lost" or at least have its hard drive imaged.
Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?
Catch-22
Good one, rh.
The Rule of Law is the issue.
Obama laughs!
At this point the Chinese have everything Snowden brought with him.
William said ...
I see quite a lot wrong with delegating that power to any young man in NSA's employ ...
Technically, Snowden was not in NSA employment. He worked for a contractor as an IT tech from what I've read. He would, however, have had NSA Identification and access to whatever the contract specified for his role.
It is possible that NSA. like most of DOD, fell victim to Office of Management & Budget [OMB] Circular A-76 which stipulates "commercial activites studies" be performed for all potentially "non-governmental" operations.
IT operations and ITE deployment was long ago determined to be "non-governmental", under Circular A-76 stipulations, when studied and applied, and management of same contracted out. PFC Manning is a result of how well [not] contractors manage data.
Given Snowden's qualifications, and short on-the-job period, I'm thinking he is another example of lax oversight and over expansive "Roles & Permissions" that I've cited before....if he really does have significant information and not just ideas and concepts.
He claims to have worked for the CIA. He could know extremely damaging things about overseas assets, although that is not super-duper likely. And he could be making it all up.
For all we know, the whole NSA domestic surveillance leak thingy was a desperate attempt to protect himself after the FBI tagged him for some much more conventional espionage.
Unfortunately, no one who knows anything worthwhile is speaking, and everyone speaking knows nothing of importance.
I agree with cubanbob.
Consider this, Manning was able to download 700,000 or so classified documents from SIPRnet and pass them on to someone else because the U.S. Government was not following best security practices that are published by ... the U.S Government.
Setting aside the fact that "need to know" has been has been defined so broadly that it is essentially dead, the fact remains that simple precautions to prevent Manning or anyone else from transferring classified documents to unauthorized individuals were not followed.
Measures not taken include:
1) Disable the use of mobile media on computers used to access data. Simply removing the DVD/CD burner from PC's and disabling flash drive ports would accomplish this.
2) Use of an automated intrusion detection system or, assuming it has one, SIPRnet's auditing feature (keep track of who is accessing what files) would have alerted supervisors to the fact that Manning's activities were suspicious.
Given these facts, why should we have any faith that the United States Government is capable of preventing the disclosure of other classified information?
And if this is so, then the governments accumulation of data on its citizens should disturb you even if you feel that it is needed to prevent terrorism because eventually, it will be disclosed to someone.
"I saw Henry Kissinger interviewed over the weekend. At 90, he is still entirely there, active and involved. He's had a great and enviable life and is still working it."
For a despicable war criminal.
Is there anybody besides Josef Stalin who isn't a despicable war criminal?
Take your time answering.
Seeing that the greatest threat to our liberty is our own nanny-state gummint, I fully support Snowden.
There's a shock.
edutcher said...
Is there anybody besides Josef Stalin who isn't a despicable war criminal?
Take your time answering.
6/10/13, 1:22 PM
________________________________
Fidel?
leslyn said...
He's not that big a fish.
... He's after a book/movie deal; ...
I agree. I said that on another thread, as well.
LarsPorsena said...
Fidel?
I was giving the needle to Cook.
According to him all American Presidents are war criminals.
Actually, according to him, all Americans are war criminals.
leslyn said...
He's not that big a fish. His information is out. He's barely a minnow.
Analyzing his own statements, he is arrogant, a flaming dramatist, and a liar. There is no internal consistency or logic in his statements about himself at all--exscept drama.
leslyn fears for her Messiah.
And well she should because it matters not Snowden's place in the food chain, it matters that the methods used by the Choom Gang to spy on Americans is such a gross violation of their rights.
IOW--no credibility.
That might be true if the WaPo story wasn't derived from its own work.
leslyn said...
I didn't go into detail about Snowden's lack of credibility, but it's all in his unverified and dramatic statements about his personal history. They are contradicted by more mundane facts. Statement analysis shows internal inconsistency. His actions also contradict his words.
No, you just don't want to believe him.
Most of his info will check out, certainly his Booz Allen days and his Army background will come out in a day or so.
If you don't want to buy his motives, that's a subjective judgment.
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