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back to article Ecuador: Snowden is Russia's problem

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden looks increasingly stranded in Russia, with Ecuador's president reportedly saying that the country is not considering an asylum request from him. President Rafael Correa has told The Guardian that Snowden is Russia's responsibility, and he would need to reach Ecuadorian territory for the …

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          1. Tom 13
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            Re: Americans still don't get to elect their presidents directly

            Speed was part of the reason, but not the only one. The US Constitution has always been directed at protecting as large a portion of the minorities as possible and as recognized by the cultural norms of the time. One of the great compromises in passing the constitution was adopting the exact method of Presidential election. If done strictly by popular vote it would have given too much power to the large states. If done as one vote per state (the EU model) it gave the small states too much power. Instead it was combined into an electoral college where each state had a fixed number of votes plus a number of votes based on the size of its population. Usually this means if you win the popular vote you will win the general election, but if you trample too much on the small states you will get a President who did not win the popular vote.

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        2. David Cantrell
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          Stop

          Re: Equador, the pillar of freedom

          The UK is a genuine democracy. As is the US. If you're thinking of an Athenian-style democracy where everyone (well, all the people who matter anyway, which is far less democratic than the UK or US) gets to vote on everything, then the closest that exists is Switzerland.

          You are also incorrect in thinking that republics are automatically different from democracies. Some are democracies (Ireland, Germany, the US, Switzerland), some aren't (China, Belarus, Syria), and democratic republics can be anything from mostly benevolent (Finland) to kinda evil (Israel, Iran) or accidentally evil as a result of corruption (South Africa, Russia).

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      2. Anonymous Coward
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        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Equador, the pillar of freedom

        I'm not sure if you're really missing my point, or deliberately trying to deflect it - the issue of legality is purely an excuse - and a petty one too. I'm absolutely convinced, had the bloke been a Russian, and holed up in some EU airport, or US airport, having just run from his Moscow masters, there'd be absolutely no problem with granting him asylum in a matter of hours in any of those "democracies", or "true democracies". Even if there would have been legal reasons to send him back, or at least, have it looked at, from a legal standpoint. Unless, obviously, we'd want to use him as a bargaining chip against Russia or China, and all necessary rules and laws would be broken again, as and when needed.

        But now all those champions of democracy feign indignation at the disclosure that their "ally" spies on them, and they scramble for some desperate excuses not to shelter the bloke who exposed it. I know they don't give a shit about morality, etc. But I wish they were a bit less... ridiculous, trying to pretend how they're oh so awfully sorry, but some God-imposed small print make it, alas, utterly impossible, to provide a home for this unfortunate person. I want to hear them say, politely, and in public: "Fuck you, Snowden, if you're so naive to think that we really care about those values we say we care about. You're too much hassle, Snowden. In fact, you'd do everybody a great favour, if you shot yourself in the head now, ideally in full view of the cameras, so there's no silly talk of "falling off the staircase". And if some bloggers blame some Russian remote control gun / melting bullet combination, or something - even better. Then we get back to the normal wheeling and dealing, and the public gets to see a couple of movies in a year or two".

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        1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
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          Re: Equador, the pillar of freedom

          I'm not sure if you're really missing my point, or deliberately trying to deflect it - the issue of legality is purely an excuse - and a petty one too. I'm absolutely convinced, had the bloke been a Russian, and holed up in some EU airport, or US airport, having just run from his Moscow masters, there'd be absolutely no problem with granting him asylum in a matter of hours in any of those "democracies", or "true democracies".

          Anonymouse,

          Britain has given several Russian citizens political asylum. It's a government that persecutes legitimate and peaceful opposition leaders and journalists. We would struggle to extradite anyone to Russia, even if we wanted to, because they also don't have a free-and-fair judiciary. 98% of people charged with a crime in Russia are convicted. Apparently you have to bribe the police before you're brought back to the police station. Once the process of filling in the charge sheet is begun, you're almost certain to be found guilty.

          Thus paperwork is a problem. If we had a Russian citizen here we wanted to send back, the rule of law probably wouldn't allow it. You'd have to resort to illegal actions, such as rendition. And look how much trouble that caused.

          So I'm neither missing, nor deliberately deflecting your point. Our governments should be, and mostly are, governed by the rule of law. If they give shelter to someone, and they have an extradition treaty with the US, they would have to justify that action in court. Now they could probably get out of it, by citing political factors and therefore block extradition. But that depends on their own political set-up.

          However, they probably don't want to deliberately abuse their own legal due-process. But they probably do want to get cheap publicity. And as much as they don't like being spied on, they also know their own governments legitimately employ spies, and probably don't want to encourage a world where all spies can blab, then run somewhere safe and protected.

          Also, it's not totally clear to me that Snowden does deserve sympathy and protection. Well he does deserve sympathy, because he's in a godawful mess, and you'd have to have a heart of stone not to feel sorry for him. But he's got a perfectly valid reason to claim whistle-blower status if the NSA really were running a big program to spy on US citizens. But revealing the NSA spying on foreign diplomats, which is their fucking job - is pretty close to treason. If he didn't approve of spying, why did he get a job working for the world's largest signals intelligence gathering organisation (even if by proxy)?

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          1. Anonymous Coward
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            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Equador, the pillar of freedom

            "If he didn't approve of spying, why did he get a job working for the world's largest signals intelligence gathering organisation (even if by proxy)?"

            perhaps, because he was so naive - or misinformed - that he actually believed that the NSA's job (and their proxies') is to protect the USA against those nasty terrorists who blow up US soldiers in Afghanistan and innocent Americans in Boston, rather than to spy on the whole world - at the same time pumping out the propaganda that "we're holy, we're righteous, but those nasty regimes of North Korea and Iran, and, wink-wink, Russia, and, obviously, the Chinese..."

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            1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
              Reply Icon

              Re: Equador, the pillar of freedom

              They're spies. They spy. The clue is in the name. You would have an argument if all he'd revealed had been PRISM and spying on US citizens. That's clearly a scandal that needs attention. However he's also revealed stuff about spying on foreigners. Well that's what the NSA is for!

              Of course if they really are supposed to be helping to spot extremists like the guys in Boston, then they are supposed to be spying on Americans as well. But I'm pretty sure they're not, and that job is down to the FBI.

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      3. David Cantrell
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        Stop

        Re: Equador, the pillar of freedom

        "He knowingly broke the law therefore he's not being persecuted" is silly. Try telling that to, for example, a Saudi who decides to change her religion.

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      4. Tom 13
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        Re: valid case for asylum.

        I'll be honest, I'd like to see him brought back, tried, then properly shot.

        But setting that aside for the moment, let's look tactically at the question. He doesn't necessarily need asylum per se. What he needs is to stay alive, and a place from which to do so. This should actually be fairly easy to achieve. As I noted in my opening statement, I want him shot. Being shot is the standard outcome for his type of treason. Therefore all he really needs is to be in a country that won't extradite if there's a chance he'd face the death penalty. Regardless of how much I hate the lying SOB in charge of our country, one thing I can count on is him not backing down if he's been personally offended, and on this one he's decided he was personally offended. So he'll never take the death penalty off the table to get the extradition. So once Snowden is in a non-death penalty country it is a stalemate. And those states are generally willing to issue asylum for cases that would otherwise be legitimate criminal cases. If he can't find one, that tells you there are other issues in play. Probably that regardless of how much flack we're catching for spying on world+dog at the moment, the truth is world+dog is doing it too or at least benefiting from what we've done. And if he stays on the loose that inconvenient truth might just leak too.

        Is this an amoral bastage analysis? Yes it is. So is the world. Deal with it.

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  2. mad_dr

    Ecuador:

    "Not our stone, not our shoe"

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  3. James O'Shea

    Let's see

    The Chinese don't want him, the Russians won't even let him leave the airport, the Ecuadorians won't let him get within a few thousand miles of them... I know. Time to call Little Kim and see how life is in the glorious People's Democratic Republic of Korea. Or maybe to beg the Hawaiian Kenyan to allow entry into a nice Federal pen for the rest of his life. Frankly, breaking rocks in Leavenworth, Kansas, sounds a lot better than hanging out with Little Kim, but maybe that's just my opinion.

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  4. hammarbtyp
    FAIL

    Time to come home...

    The irony is if the situation was reversed i.e a Russian was in a US airport with Russia's espionage secrets then he would be suffering a large dose of polonium poisoning by now.

    I actually have very little sympathy with Snowden. He is trying to make out like he is some sort of hero of freedom, but actually he is a low level technician who is seriously out of his depth in the murky world of international politics. He basically confirming what every else already knew, that everyone listens to everyone else.

    The Russians will use him to their political advantage then chuck him in the garbage when their was nothing else to gain.

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  5. Simon Rockman

    Remember the Americans are not ostensibly after Assange

    It's supposed to be the Swedes who want him.

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  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    After all his barking, Correa backs down and leaves Snowden hanging in the breeze.

    Welcome to the Layer Cake, son.

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  7. 123465789

    why?

    There is one thing I don't quite understand. You would think that after the Assange-story someone who is about to blow a whistle on something like this, should know that he needs asylum, that you can only apply for asylum in the country where you physically are (or at least in an embassy) - and that the two most likely countries to provide asylum are Iceland and Ecuador. So why not book a nice holiday to one of these very beautiful countries, make sure that you are there - and THEN go public?

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    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Re: why?

      it all looks obvious now, and from a safe distance of our armchairs. However, consider the following:

      1. it might have been not too wise to make prior inquiries about political asylum, by whichever means you might want to inquire, as such probing might raise some red flags and bring you into a focus of attention.

      2. you might think, based on the generally acquired information, that Hong Kong, which is also a reasonably innocent tourist destination for someone based in the Hawaii, is a place where political asylum would be a "safe bet" for applying for political asylum.

      3. you might have felt, rightly or wrongly, that your time's running out, and then, booking a "holiday" in Iceland, let alone, Ecuador, might raise those red flags, and you might not make it even through the first airport.

      4. any other reasons, etc.

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      1. Tom 13
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        Re: why?

        Yes actually making the inquiries would have been as foolish as what he did. But there are ways to plan that sort of thing.

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    2. zooooooom
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      Re: why?

      I don't think he originally intended to disclose his identity - then realised just how quickly they would work it out anyway.

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  8. Anonymous Brave Guy
    FAIL

    He should have sorted his escape plans out and executed them BEFORE blowing the whistle.

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  9. Jelliphiish

    he didn't think it through..

    If he knew this was going to happen.. and I'd have thought given his background, he should have.. Why didn't he get himself to Ecuador or somewhere useful Before he started this game? no travel problems if he's already in somewhere he can request asylum from IUIC?

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  10. graeme leggett Silver badge

    multiple applications

    are there 15 (or more, the Beeb had a figure of 21) countries which really respect independence of thought or are some of these "enemy of my enemy" types?

    and do you lose points in the application process if you've also applied to more than one country?

    perhaps there should be a UCAS* for asylum seekers "I'm sorry, Mr X, America wouldn't take you but we got you a place somewhere else. Here's your Albanian passport.

    (*Universities and Colleges Admissions Service - the British system for managing placement in higher education)

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  11. Rol

    It has worked before....

    1...Snowden is visited by voluptuous women to help console him in these dark days.

    2...Woman pulls out of her expensive shoulder bag, wig, cosmetics and suitable padding.

    3... Snowden totters off.

    4...Woman is found bound and gagged.

    5.. Snowden, now wearing a priests outfit, collected from left luggage heads for some obscure Russian port.

    6...Snowden now travelling as farther O'Leary boards the next ship out of there.

    7.. Makes his way to Pakistan and lives in a house near the national security base, where he will go unnoticed for years.

    8.. After several more revelations, America finally apologises for its scurrilous actions and grants amnesty to all the good citizens of the US who helped keep her on the straight and narrow.

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  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    UK should give him asylum

    We can swap that foreign spy William Hague, for him.

    We get rid of Hague, who we know has been spying on us for a foreign power, and we gain a bloke that informed us about the double agents in our government.

    Deal?

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  13. 23de3d3e34
    FAIL

    why Moscow and not Ecuador?

    What I don't understand is: if he managed to get the safe passage document (all be it with a "mistake" from Assange's mates at the embassy) Why didn't he fly straight to Ecuador instead of going to Russia? Then he would have easily been able to apply for asylum and he most definitely not have been refused since he has a bigger case than Assange anyway.

    Our president would have had no choice but to grant the asylum, however now he has a clever excuse to pull out of this mess. In a way its' probably the more sensible thing to do as he doesn't want to piss the US even more, they are a big bully and we are very small, shame no other country is willing to stand up to them, at least we have.

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    1. Tom 13
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      Re: Why didn't he fly straight to Ecuador

      Really? This bit puzzles you? It doesn't me. (Keep in mind as I stated above, I'm one of the people who'd like to see him shot.)

      Tell me, exactly how much national airspace is there between Hong Kong and Ecuador? Now, how much national airspace is there between Hong Kong and where he is?

      Simple answers: an awful lot and very little respectively. Forcing a plane down from international airspace is quite a bit more tolerable than forcing one down when you have to violate national airspace. So once he was discovered, moving through national airspace is better. The difficulty is national airspace that is also safe for your intended purposes.

      The real question is why Hong Kong instead of a South American country in the first place. He probably could have safely landed in say Peru, then used land transit to Ecuador, then released his info bomb. At which point he's already safely in the country, can ask for asylum, and it is relatively painless to punch the bear in the nose.

      If I could put that kind of plan together in two minutes here on El Reg, why didn't he? He's got a hell of a lot more on the line than I do.

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