Yep. Xeni got it right on this. Wish I’d believed her then instead of likely supporting part of the problem.
The damage by Edward Snowden is still harming the United States
Did she elaborate on this damage? Or how getting citizenship ~9 years later mean she was right about him being as asset?
So wait - exposing the NSA programs spying on Americans and their collaboration with telecom companies was a bad thing?
Not saying both things can’t be true, but I’d like more proof.
Well, China too. Which frankly would be a nicer place to live than Russia. Xi would like to be a Putin, and certainly has pushed China farther into authoritarianism than it’s been in decades, but even so there are limits on what he can do and even with one-party rule he has rivals.
Not really. She did add this since:
https://twitter.com/xeni/status/1574863916680679424?t=fsAtpXJdhgLjUyHfHjeMBw&s=19
and
https://twitter.com/xeni/status/1574864427920158725?t=ZUZ9qNgG1iEYYrP_srwh8Q&s=19
There’s also some comments about misogyny, too.
She was also posting unfounded COVID lab leak bullshit with nothing more than tweets as evidence (criticism of which got me my only temp ban; which I deserved, but still stand by the criticism). She was soon after no longer a bOing bOing editor. Strange position to take while stanning Assange who is an actual dirtbag.
Yeah, I’m still waiting, too. I’m more than happy to burn my idols, but I’ve read a whole damn lot about Snowden and criticism either boils down to “he’s a traitor” (hard disagree; dude was methodical about protecting human and material intel assets) or “he’s a Russian asset” with zero evidence given.
It’s hard to track down a coherent explanation for any particular wacky thing Xeni says, but in the mean time one stumbles across several other wacky things she also said at other times
At some point one must conclude she’s not exactly a reliable source of information
I wouldn’t necessarily say that he was an asset before nine years ago, but like it or not, he became an asset the minute he stepped foot in Russia. I say this because his simple presence in Russia makes him an invaluable propaganda tool to Putin, and there is no way that Snowden does not realize this.
I do find it suspicious that, of all the places in the world, he would end up in Russia. It suggests that he either knew exactly what he was doing or was really, really stupid (and what the hell was he doing in Hong Kong before that? and what kind of route is that to take to South America from Southeast Asia?).
I applaud him for the leaks in any case, but his actions in the immediate aftermath and since then have given me pause about his motives. History is full of people doing the right thing for murky motives, after all.
He was there to meet Greenwald and Poitras to document the handoff. He then had to leave there via a non-extradition route to the only nation that offered him asylum, Ecuador. He wasn’t exactly booking it on Expedia.
Actually, iirc, there was an issue even getting him ticketed because his passport was suspended by the US and he couldn’t access any funds.
Yep, here’s a snapshot of the political back and forth that got him stuck in Moscow.
There seems to be a dearth of information here and a mountain of insinuation (that’s not directed at you, @Jesse13927 ). I am very cynical when it comes to peoples motivations for actions like this, but no one seems to be bringing the goods and it’s been 9 years.
Edited for clarity.
I am fully willing to accept the possibility that he was just really naive. But Hong Kong seems like a patently bad place for him to be and Russia even worse.
There are quite a few other non-extradition countries, after all. This list is from 2015, so I imagine that the same was more or less true around 2013. The United Arab Emirates seems like the logical place to go on the way to South America.
But my main point really is: no matter what he had in mind back then, he must surely know what he is now.
Any “normal” flight from Hong Kong to Ecuador would have stopped in Hawaii or North America
Or Dubai
The Bering Strait route is the shortest distance between Hong Kong and Quito
Dubai is on the other side of the world
So the answer is Moscow then?
ETA: For the record, I work in Japan and we have a factory in Brazil, and it is not unusual for people on business trips to fly through Dubai. Flights aren’t arranged simply by shortest distance.
Yeah, absolutely. He’s been pretty clear-eyed about his situation in interviews. I just think there’s a world of difference between being a useful pawn and a willing accomplice. I always assume the worst, but after all this time the only evidence of collusion anyone can muster is speculation.
I don’t think that he was colluding with the Russians prior to the leaks (the timing of the leaks did not seem engineered to maximize chaos in the US and I think that Russia would have preferred he not go to Hong Kong at all).
I do think that Snowden boarded planes to Hong Kong and then Moscow knowing full well that there was a very good chance that he would end up under the “protection” of either China or Russia and still made a conscious decision to do so. One does not just wind up in China and Russia in the midst of these things. He had other options, especially before Hong Kong.
I also do not think that he was entirely altruistic in making the leaks and hoped to get something out of it (fame or a book deal, something like that). He really played up the whole “I’m a genius superspy” thing in those first few months. That part never sat well with me. It was just the completely opposite of Chelsea Manning, who genuinely just seemed to want to get the truth out and then disappear from the public eye.
According to his telling, he was immediately public to ensure that it was clear that he acted alone and that no one in his chain of command was complicit or negligent. That’s why he detailed exactly how he extracted the info and why he chose The Guardian to handle dissemination. And he lost every penny his book made and was pretty aware of that before the fact. He mostly supported himself speaking for groups like EFF.
Chelsea Manning is a total badass, but she has also capitalized off of her notoriety. And you know what, I’ll gladly buy her book, too!
But whatever, everyone’s free to feel about him however they like, it’s the unfounded accusations that rub me the wrong way (again, not directed at you).
Edited for typo
To be honest, I am on the fence. Maybe Snowden just wasn’t the genius superspy he was made out to be and really did sloppily find his way into Russia.
I simply cannot simultaneously accept that he had only good intentions and that he was extremely clever. For me, it has to be one or the other. And both explanations are perfectly plausible. I know that he didn’t make money off of it, but I can’t shake the sense that he had hoped to initially. That or fame.
Or hell, maybe Greenwald was just playing him up, trying to make him into his next Assange Project. In which case, that’s still the “not quite a genius superspy” explanation. I can totally see that.
Hmm, good point. And Greenwald’s last decade has shown him to be a less than spectacular cultural figure.
Come to think of it, who was it who arranged those tickets?
