Obama’s crackdown views leaks as aiding enemies of U.S.

[Sava]

Feel free to go tell Snowden, Manning and Assange how hyperbolic that is.

You prove my point. If the boogeyman known as the "police state" amounts to the government pursuing a few high profile cases in which classified information was leaked... well... yeah that's hyperbole.

Because we aren't all going to die. We aren't all getting locked up. Not even an oppressed ethnic minority is getting oppressed or persecuted. Our freedoms aren't being taken away or surrendered.

So yeah. Thanks for proving my point.

[DaShi]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/26/world/snowden.html?hpw&pagewanted=print

Putin Rules Out Extradition for Snowden in Russia Airport
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN and PETER BAKER
MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia offered the first direct confirmation on Tuesday that Edward J. Snowden, the fugitive former American national security contractor, was in an international transit area at a Moscow airport, and he appeared to rule out American requests for his extradition to the United States.

Speaking at a news conference while on an official visit to Finland, Mr. Putin offered no new information on where Mr. Snowden might be headed from the transit area of Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow. But he said Mr. Snowden had broken no Russian laws and that Russian security officials had not made contact with him.

“The Russian special services are not engaged with him and will not be engaged,” Mr. Putin said, according to the government-financed Russia Today news site.

“On the territory of the Russian Federation, Mr. Snowden, thank God, did not commit any crime,” Mr. Putin said in an Interfax news agency account of his remarks. “As for the issue of the possibility of extradition,” Mr. Putin said, according to Interfax, “we can only send back some foreign nationals to the countries with which we have the relevant international agreements on extradition. With the United States we have no such agreement.”

Mr. Putin spoke hours after the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, chastised the United States for its demands regarding Mr. Snowden, whose successful effort, so far, to elude his American pursuers has captivated global attention, showed the limits of American power and strained American relations with Russia and China.

Mr. Snowden has been charged with violating American espionage laws by revealing secret information on intelligence-gathering. He and his allies describe him as whistle-blower whose revelations have exposed the United States government’s invasion of privacy around the world.

Mr. Lavrov said Mr. Snowden had not crossed the Russian border, which appeared to be a technical way of saying he was in an international passenger transit area. But Mr. Putin was far more direct.

American officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry, lashed out with unusual force on Monday against China for allowing Mr. Snowden to leave Hong Kong, against Russia for reportedly permitting him safe transit and against Ecuador for declaring that it is actively considering Mr. Snowden’s request for political asylum. The Americans have demanded that he be seized and repatriated.

“He didn’t cross the Russian border, and we consider the attempts we are seeing to accuse the Russian side of violating United States law as completely ungrounded and unacceptable, or nearly a conspiracy accompanied by threats against us,” Mr. Lavrov said, speaking to reporters here after a meeting with the Algerian foreign minister. He added, “There are no legal grounds for this kind of behavior from American officials toward us.”

Later in the day Mr. Kerry, speaking to reporters while visiting Saudi Arabia, sought to tone down the angry exchange of words with his Russian counterpart, with whom he has sought to cultivate a good relationship. “We are not looking for a confrontation,” Mr. Kerry said.

The comments by Mr. Putin and Mr. Lavrov were the first by top Russian officials about Mr. Snowden since Mr. Snowden’s reported arrival at Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow on Sunday. Employees of Aeroflot, the Russian airline, said Mr. Snowden had been booked on an afternoon flight Monday to Havana, but he did not board and the aircraft left without him.

Ecuador confirmed that it had received an asylum request and had provided documents allowing Mr. Snowden to travel there. Mr. Snowden’s American passport has been canceled.

Russian officials on Monday said that they had no information about Mr. Snowden, which seemed unlikely at the time given that the Russian police took the unusual step of standing on the tarmac surrounding the plane that reportedly was supposed to take him to Cuba. Russian authorities also cordoned off the gate and had threatened to take telephones from journalists preparing to board the flight.

The sharp tone of comments by Mr. Kerry and other American officials was surprising, in part because there was no reason to believe that they could force Russia to cooperate and because it is highly unlikely that, if the roles were reversed, the United States would readily repatriate a Russian fugitive security official reportedly carrying computers filled with government secrets.

The United States and Russia, fierce rivals on intelligence matters dating to the cold war, have long shown an ability to maintain their broader bilateral relationship in the face of occasional disputes over espionage incidents, including the arrest last month in Moscow of an American Embassy employee accused of working as an operative for the Central Intelligence Agency. But Mr. Lavrov’s pointed remarks indicated that the diplomatic contretemps was taking a nasty turn.

On Monday, the United States accused Russia of ignoring the law in allowing Mr. Snowden to travel through the Moscow airport and sharply criticized Russia, China and Ecuador over their records on Internet freedom.

Mr. Lavrov said on Tuesday, “We have no connection with Mr. Snowden, nor with his relation toward the American justice system, nor with his movement around the world. He chose his own route and we, like most of those here, found out about this from the press.”

The anti-secrecy organization, WikiLeaks, which says it has helped Mr. Snowden evade the American authorities, has said that he is safe and healthy but has declined to pinpoint his whereabouts. The White House has said it believes that Mr. Snowden is still in Moscow.

American officials also openly mocked China and Russia on Monday as states that repress free speech and transparency and therefore are hardly apt refuges for someone fighting government secrecy in the United States.

“I wonder if Mr. Snowden chose China and Russia as assistants in his flight from justice because they’re such powerful bastions of Internet freedom,” Mr. Kerry said sarcastically during a stop in New Delhi.

President Obama’s press secretary, Jay Carney, said Mr. Snowden’s chosen destinations indicated “his true motive throughout has been to injure the national security of the United States.”

The strong words went beyond typical diplomatic language and underscored the growing ramifications of the case for the United States. The Obama administration’s inability, at least for now, to influence China, Russia and countries in Latin America that may accept Mr. Snowden for asylum, like Ecuador, brought home the limits of American power around the world.

Ecuador’s foreign minister, Ricardo Patiño, criticized the United States on Monday for its pursuit of Mr. Snowden. “The one who is denounced pursues the denouncer,” Mr. Patiño said at a news conference in Hanoi, Vietnam, a stop on a previously scheduled diplomatic visit to Asia. “The man who tries to provide light and transparency to issues that affect everyone is pursued by those who should be giving explanations about the denunciations that have been presented.”

Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa, wrote on his Twitter account, “We will analyze very responsibly the Snowden case and with absolute sovereignty will make the decision we consider the most appropriate.” The United States remains Ecuador’s leading trading partner, but Washington’s influence in Quito has been slight since Mr. Correa became president in 2007. He has repeatedly flouted and tweaked the United States, by, for example, stopping American antidrug flights out of a military base in Manta, and expelling the American ambassador in 2011 after WikiLeaks cables suggested she felt Mr. Correa had tolerated police corruption.

A range of American officials, including the deputy secretary of state and the F.B.I. director, spent Monday reaching out to their Russian counterparts seeking cooperation, without any apparent result. Mr. Snowden, who spent Sunday night in the transit zone of Sheremetyevo Airport, did not board the flight for Havana and he made no public appearance or statement.

American intelligence officials remained deeply concerned that Mr. Snowden could make public more documents disclosing details of the National Security Agency’s collection system or that his documents could be obtained by foreign intelligence services, with or without his cooperation.

Technical experts have been carrying out a forensic analysis of the trail he left in N.S.A. computer systems, trying to determine what he had access to as a systems administrator for Booz Allen Hamilton, a United States government contractor, and what he may have downloaded, officials said.

The South China Morning Post reported Monday night on its Web site that in an interview, Mr. Snowden said he had specifically sought the job at Booz Allen so he could collect information about the N.S.A.'s secret surveillance programs to release to news outlets.

Glenn Greenwald, a columnist for The Guardian, has said Mr. Snowden gave him thousands of documents, only a tiny fraction of which were published. Many may be of limited public interest, but they could be of great value to a foreign intelligence service, which could get a more complete idea of the security agency’s technical abilities and how to evade its net, officials said.

David M. Herszenhorn reported from Moscow, and Peter Baker from Washington. Reporting was contributed by Ellen Barry and Andrew Roth from Moscow; Scott Shane, Steven Lee Myers and Charlie Savage from Washington; Michael R. Gordon from Jidda, Saudi Arabia; Rick Gladstone from New York; William Neuman from Quito, Ecuador; and Victoria Burnett from Havana.

Ugh, what a miserable situation the State Department has created. Kerry's remarks sound like something that would come out of China when a country hosts the Dalai Lama. And, of course, Putin isn't going to extradite him. Certainly not under an espionage charge. That would raise flags against any future defectors Russia might actually want to keep. Embarrassing.

[Colon™]

I always thought Assange was an *******, but it's important to separate the act from the actor.

That's the thing. There were a few cases where Wikileaks exposed actual cover-ups, but Assange undid it all with diplomatic cables pornography. I've yet to see a case in which it benefited civil liberties or has to potential to do so.

[Sava]

Ugh, what a miserable situation the State Department has created. Kerry's remarks sound like something that would come out of China when a country hosts the Dalai Lama. And, of course, Putin isn't going to extradite him. Certainly not under an espionage charge. That would raise flags against any future defectors Russia might actually want to keep. Embarrassing.

Don't try to put this in any kind of rational perspective.

We live in a police state. I need to go do my hourly check in with my Neighborhood Patriotism Officer.

[DaShi]

I can't wait for the Police State Department weigh in.

[Sava]

I can't wait for the Police State Department weigh in.

I was watching video from the Stanley Cup celebration. The crowd was drunken and doing all sorts of stupid crap with the barricades and whatnot.

Police made one arrest.

You want police state? Youtube some of the footage from the Turkey protests. And even that is tame by police state standards.

I swear to God. Anti-government hysteria is understandable coming from the tea party retards. But the euro/canadacoms? You people are supposed to have more sense than Americans. Your media outlets are supposed to be less fear-mongering bull****ters than the CNN/FOX/MSNBC's.

The fact that I'm on the rational side of this issue should also be worrisome. Maybe you guys are on something... or need to be on something. Who knows?

[The Mad Monk]

I don't know your age PLATO (I'm too lazy to look) but I think you have a few decades behind you....

Do you think you are more free or less free today than you were 30 years ago? Completely subjective of course but there are plenty of geezers here to sample from...

More free, but mainly due to the spread of the WWW, and not any deliberate government action. I'd go as far as to say it is in spite of government efforts.

[Sava]

More free, but mainly due to the spread of the WWW, and not any deliberate government action. I'd go as far as to say it is in spite of government efforts.

Like what government efforts? Name one.

Even on guns you are wrong.

Corporations are people. I can buy a rifle capable of taking down and airliner. You can walk down the street smoking weed in an increasing number of American cities and states. Laws against blowjobs and buttsex are almost all gone. Gays are almost considered people.

Seems like the trend has been towards more freedom, despite the rhetoric from anti-government idiots.

[The Mad Monk]

Everything involving recreational drugs. You should relate to that.

[kentonio]

You prove my point. If the boogeyman known as the "police state" amounts to the government pursuing a few high profile cases in which classified information was leaked... well... yeah that's hyperbole.

No, the police state amounts to a vast government surveillance operation that potentially affects every person who has used a telephone or the internet in the last decade or so. This it is worth recalling was put in place by the same US government who kidnapped citizens from around the world, often on appallingly bad intelligence, tortured them and locked them in an offshore secret prison without charge for a decade, often over the protests of their native (and US allied) countries.

Of course we have a new US government now. One which continues the same spying operations, continues to pursue whistleblowers at all levels and which continues to hold innocent people in an offshore prison.

Because we aren't all going to die. We aren't all getting locked up. Not even an oppressed ethnic minority is getting oppressed or persecuted. Our freedoms aren't being taken away or surrendered.

Of course you aren't going to die or be locked up, why would a government want to lock up or kill a majority of its citizens, especially when that same majority are more than happy to surrender their liberty freely anyway? Your freedoms aren't being taken away? So a right of privacy is not a component of freedom these days?

So yeah. Thanks for proving my point.

If your point is that you're a crying little girl who's so afraid of terrorists that you're happy to give away your privacy, then no problem glad to help prove your point.

[kentonio]

I swear to God. Anti-government hysteria is understandable coming from the tea party retards. But the euro/canadacoms? You people are supposed to have more sense than Americans. Your media outlets are supposed to be less fear-mongering bull****ters than the CNN/FOX/MSNBC's.

The fact that I'm on the rational side of this issue should also be worrisome. Maybe you guys are on something... or need to be on something. Who knows?

Were you high for like the entire last 10 years?

[Sava]

If your point is that you're a crying little girl who's so afraid of terrorists that you're happy to give away your privacy, then no problem glad to help prove your point.

What privacy? Whoever provides internet connectivity is going to be able to know, for the most part, what I'm using it for... doesn't matter if it's the government, corporations, or some hippie occupy group offering free wifi in their kum ba ya bongo drum circle.

It's just a fact about the technology. Go live with the Amish if you don't like it. Otherwise, get over it.

And I could give half a **** about terrorists. Toaster fires kill more americans per year.

I'm also not such a little whiny ***** who is scared of some phantom boogeyman government.

[kentonio]

What privacy? Whoever provides internet connectivity is going to be able to know, for the most part, what I'm using it for... doesn't matter if it's the government, corporations, or some hippie occupy group offering free wifi in their kum ba ya bongo drum circle.

Data which companies are required by data protection laws to keep extremely tight controls on and not just use however they like!

It's just a fact about the technology. Go live with the Amish if you don't like it. Otherwise, get over it.

No, it isn't just a fact about technology. It's only a fact about technology if people like you continue in the myth that data can never be secure so we may as well let anyone do what they like with it. You sound like a defeatist who never bothers locking the doors when he goes out, because 'Meh, people will just rob the place anyway'.

And I could give half a **** about terrorists. Toaster fires kill more americans per year.

So you're not even scared of terrorists, you just want to hand the government a ****load more intrusive powers jus

I'm also not such a little whiny ***** who is scared of some phantom boogeyman government.

It's not a phantom when it's openly standing in front of you, doing all the stuff you keep claiming is a conspiracy. You sound like the cop from South Park.

[kentonio]

DP

[Felch]

Overzealous law enforcement isn't all that new. Back in 1985 the Philadelphia police literally BOMBED a house which resulted in a fire destroying an entire block. Bat**** insane.

http://philly.curbed.com/archives/20...bed-itself.php

Wilson Goode was a **** awful mayor, but his administration was hardly an example of a police state. Frank Rizzo was much more of a police state mayor.