Does that include Russian military transporters not that I think it would come to that.

Not sure the US would tempt fate again as they did with Iran Air Flight 655 which killed all 290 on board including 66 children.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655

would you stay on board?

Like Pierce Brosnan's character in The Thomas Crown Affair. Or box him up with air and water.
I thought Obama said he would not scramble fighter jets - although that leaves other kinds of aircraft or other countries' jets, I suppose.
That flight from Russia to Cuba was not intercepted, and a lot of people thought Snowden was on that one.

The President of Bolivia was forced to land in direct violation of the Vienna Conventions. Nuff Said.

that will surely get him to South America......case closed!

Really?

More and more of that these days.

as for Mubarak's condemnation, it was pretty widely assumed at the time that he was in on the US plans and condemned it publicly for local consumption; Mr. Snowden should worry that the US and Putin have a similar arrangement.

and face the charges in court so I don't feel sorry for his problems, they are all self created.

international standards and will not be tortured as Manning was I would agree that he should return. But that won't happen. And he would face a kangaroo court.

be treated according to international standards, like the ironclad Code of Ethics he followed, guess what the answer he provided, he violated the guarantee. International standards, he broke the laws of the US, not international laws. Kangaroo court, like the court he when he was the judge in determining the need to reveal information he was not supposed to do in the ironclad guarantee. I can see why he is paranoid, he has broken the rules and he is thinking everyone breaks the rules, no, not everyone, just some like himself.

that does not give the government leave to violate his human rights. And as far as international standards go, are you implying that we as a nation are not obliged to follow international standards against torture and abuse of prisoners? Now you are getting into Dick Cheney neocon territory. I am disappointed to see the day that something like that would be openly advocated at DU.

openly advocated on DU. You want to point out violations of the government, look at the violations of Snowden. Saying the government or others may have violations does not excuse the violations of Snowden and I doubt an attorney would use this as a defense in court.

This has been pointed out many times at DU but perhaps missed it.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/12/bradley-manning-cruel-inhuman-treatment-un

http://www.newser.com/story/107624/bradley-manning-is-being-tortured.html

And I am not advocating crime. What I am saying is that Snowden should not return to the USA if there is a chance that he might be tortured like Manning was. And he probably would be because his case is even more notorious than the Manning case was. Since they tortured Manning what will stop them from torturing Snowden? That seems like a reasonable enough stance to me.

And the very real possibility that according to international law the USA will mistreat Snowden is one of the main reasons given for why three socialist democracies in Latin America have granted him political asylum.

released by Snowden? Snowden would not be in this position if he was true to his word. He apparently did not give a damn about the damage he may have caused and therefore I am not sure I am compassionate for him in any treatment he might receive. WTH was he thinking? Oh, Poor Me, Help Me, I don't care about others, it is all about me. He should be ashamed of himself and any who has this sympathy for him because he has been inconsiderate of everyone else. Shame on him.

state.

Of course I don't think it would be OK if anyone is tortured. That's my whole point. What do you think of the UN's conclusion that Bradley manning was tortured by our own authorities? Is that alright with you or not? And if you don't care if Snowden gets similar treatment, and apparently you don't then you are no better than war criminals like Cheney or Rumsfeld. I don't mean to make this personal but I have a big problem with people who seem to think that torture is acceptable.

His life might be in jeopardy, no I don't buy this cry. As long as he remains on the lam he will get less consideration from me. I am not sure he is worth the return to the US, leave him on the lam. As long as many want to paint him as important but don't expect a lot more to follow. You can not excuse his actions by pointing out other problems, it might make you feel better but it does not lessen his crimes. Judge Snowden, he is a thief, has stated facts which are not true, he has lost credibility and this he did without my help or encouragement.

make is that he cannot be expected from a moral standpoint to return to this country knowing what he will probably face. And I pointed out Bradley Manning's treatment as an example of what will probably happen to him. But be that as it may, it's not really about Snowden anyway. Shoot the messenger of you want to but it's about the surveillance state that he has helped to expose, not about him.

follow this whole situation would have been avoided. If you want to praise the person who I heard talking about this in 2005 then it would be George Bush. But in fact there was warrantless information collection and wiretapping occurring of which Obama spoke about on the campaign trail. This has stopped. Snowden may have had information about the incarceration of Manning which seems to be his reference point to an excuse not to return to the US which makes his stealing of files, giving the information to a foreign media source and fleeing the US even more premeditated. His charges is about Snowden, it is his to face, it was his choices.

The number of times that FISA courts have turned down requests can be counted on your hand. It's a sham intended to fool the American people into thinking that their rights are not being violated when in fact they are.

Snowden is a hero because he stole files from the NSA, rubberstamped his outing of information which was known by many citizens of the US, it is this scam in which they are trying to convince the American people their rights has been violated when in fact the violations was made by Snowden and charges has been brought against Snowden and now he is crying "I am afraid for my life", he might fool some of the people but his game does not fool me. As occurred last Friday in courts you may not like the rules but they are the rules non the less.

surveillance of our private lives, not Snowden or Greenwald. And are you saying that just because it's a rule that we have to accept it? That's nonsense. With that attitude the 1% will have all of the rest of us by the collar forever. The point is that we need to change those rules and Snowden helped make us aware of some of those rules that need to be changed.

your privacy any more than the communications companies who collect it to begin with and has a right to do so because when their services are being used the company has a need for billing purposes, etc. What the companies does is pass on to the NSA the same type of information you will see on your bill as to your call details, who you called or received a call from, what time happened and when the call ended. That information has happened for years.

Please tell us the "right way" you would have done it.

in 2005. This is a Snowden and puppet masters scandal. I would have been listening in the past, understand what I am hearing and most of all, honor my word given as a condition of employment and the right thing would be to keep my mouth shut about any operation occurring in my employment and I would not have stolen files.

"he should have known data collection was happening, and is public knowledge, but he should not have exposed it, because it was secret".

No one should be expected to "keep their mouth shut" about wrongdoing. Period.

and happy to be staying there with the $$ in his pocket from spilling various beans, promises of more to follow. He's under their control and as long as he has wifi and safety he's okay with that.

Putin could give him necessary documents or access to transport, if that doesn't happen he's all in.

every single every single one of us should honor with a grateful heart.:


Crazy traitor leaker got Congress to notice vast surveillance state By Alex Pareene

Pols from both parties are all of a sudden demanding more transparency and pushing reforms. Thanks, leaks!


(Credit: Reuters/Bobby Yip)

There is a guy, a famous guy, who lives now in a Russian airport or something, no one is really sure, but everyone in the media (and lots of people not in the media) cannot stop fighting and arguing about this guy. Some people say he is a jerk and crazy and bad and others say he is a hero and super cool. Either way, mean jerk or cool hero, this guy that everyone won’t shut up about is actually responsible for the first major public displays of Congressional opposition to the unchecked surveillance state in 35 years or so.

Congress has always had a handful of privacy advocates and true civil libertarians. But for many years in political Washington it has been considered foolish and perhaps a bit treasonous to suggest that our intelligence agencies are even slightly overzealous in their collection of all information possible about everything on the globe. That is still the general consensus, but as McClatchy’s Washington Bureau wrote on Friday, there are suddenly a bunch of members of Congress who actually want to rein in the NSA.

The last time a significant number of Washington politicians favored additional restrictions on intelligence-gathering and surveillance powers was in the immediate aftermath of the Church Committee reports, in the mid-1970s. Since then, Congress has practically abandoned its oversight power over the intelligence communities, and it’s only gotten worse since 9/11. Fighting terrorism trumped privacy every time Congress was asked to expand government spying powers. For much of the last dozen years, civil libertarians weren’t just ignored by the political establishment, they were vilified. When Democrats took full control of Congress, they still rubber-stamped Bush’s surveillance programs.

So what happened, exactly? Well, the American people learned a bunch of scary sounding stuff about how much data the NSA is collecting, on everyone. They learned this because of illegal leaks of classified information, to reporters, from the guy everyone is fighting about. Everyone can keep fighting about the guy, I guess, but no one can now say that the guy’s leaks were entirely gratuitous. Because before the leaks, people who were alarmed at what the intelligence agencies could be up to were ignored and politicians who had pretty good notions of what they could be up to (or who could’ve learned what they were up to if they cared to) weren’t concerned.

http://www.salon.com/2013/07/22/crazy_traitor_leaker_got_congress_to_notice_vast_surveillance_state/?source=newsletter

to leave the Ecuadoran Embassy and go to Sweden for "legal proceedings".

He'd be vacuumed up by a drone and shanghaied by the US before he got out the embassy gate, get locked up and left to rot in a prison cell.