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Seeing as how the US has an extradition treaty with Denmark (and most/all? of Europe) I'm having a hard time understanding why this is being described as a "ren

Seeing as how the US has an extradition treaty with Denmark (and most/all? of Europe) I'm having a hard time understanding why this is being described as a "rendition operation". I think a lot of what Snowden did was good and just, but I don't see the US government attempting to arrest him abroad as being nefarious. I don't think it's a serious expectation to hold to demand that the government not try to arrest him. That's why whistleblowing is brave. Whistleblowing protections that extend to what Snowden did would effectively convert the entire classification system to a set of recommendations as opposed to laws (a wholly different demand which I think is patently childish as a demand). I'm all for a pardon or some kind of reduced charges due to the motivations and the subject matter of the disclosed material, but can someone explain to me the justification of being outraged over enforcing laws in accordance with US law, treaties, and host country laws? They're not even using controversial legal mechanisms like the PATRIOT Act or FISC. EDIT: I've left my initial post in tact (I'm bad and I should feel bad) but I'd like to amend my confusion about the use of the term rendition in case anyone else shares it. After years of hearing "extraordinary rendition" shortened to "rendition" I've basically overwritten the latter with the former. Rendition is actually just the legal transfer of a suspect from one jurisdiction to the next, still outside of a legal linguistic context I find the use of the term to imply the later and I take it as trying to bait outrage.

ryanlol 11y ago
Generally there's this thing called "due process", if they were just planning on putting Snowden on a CIA plane I really can't see how that's supposed to be okay.
- BWStearns 11y ago
  Fair point, but it doesn't really say the manner in which they planned to put him on a plane, so I would give benefit of the doubt to using the extradition agreements in such a high profile case. It's not like the death penalty would be sought (I think the last execution under the Espionage Act was the Rosenbergs) so they'd have no problem meeting the requirements of the extradition treaty. Edit: >> Why would you give that particular benefit of the doubt? If it's a) legal, b) gets the job done, why on earth would you make an unforced error when you know everyone on the planet would be watching how you handled this? I'm not relying on the better angels of men here, I'm relying on self interest, path of least resistance, and government laziness. Each on their own has rarely failed me and never all three at once.
  - js8 11y ago
    And was there an extradition agreement (I mean the actual specific paperwork or court decision for Snowden's case, not just the abstract international agreement)? Shouldn't the U.S. get that in order before they send an actual plane? I am not U.S. taxpayer, but it's at least a waste of money otherwise..
    - ryanlol 11y ago
      yes
    - rbanffy 11y ago
      Unless they did something else and used Snowden as a distraction.
      - js8 11y ago
        It's also possible that UK police really wanted to do something else at Ecuadorian embassy, and Assange was just an useful cover. I don't think secret services feel the need to justify their operations in this manner. On the other hand, people who pay for it..
  - BWStearns 11y ago
    @js8: http://www.mcnabbassociates.com/Denmark%20International%20Extradition%20Treaty%20with%20the%20United%20States.pdf http://www.mcnabbassociates.com/Denmark%20International%20Ex... If my explicit reference to it was not enough to convince you then you can go read it.
  - ryanlol 11y ago
    There's a very good chance the DK<->US extradition treaty could block the extradition of Edward Snowden. >Extradition shall not be granted in any of the following circumstances: >6. In respect of a military offense.
    - BWStearns 11y ago
      It's a civilian criminal offense. The fact that he was a defense contractor doesn't make it a military offense. That would have to be a charge under the UCMJ. @ryanlol: I very much hope that laws and treaties are never interpreted via "common sense". Tech is not the only field with a technical argot, and it is good that specific words have specific meanings. If laws were enforced by "common sense" then every time you had an interaction with a contract or government agency would be subject to the whims of whatever moron happened to have power over you that day. Even though that is sadly frequent in practice, it shouldn't be, it isn't law that it be so, and I feel much better that we at least aspire to better.
- rhino369 11y ago
  Due process in regard to which laws. I presumably would be a violation of Danish law, but under American law it isn't. It's more of an insult to Denmark than anything else. Which is why it's not typically done. But if the CIA just dragged him back to America and turned him over to the US Marshals it wouldn't impact his charges. There is no recognized right to be a fugitive.
  - ryanlol 11y ago
    Who was talking about American law?
    - rhino369 11y ago
      Why should the CIA care about Danish law?
      - ryanlol 11y ago
        Diplomatic relations. US LEAs might have a hard time harassing people like me if EU countries stopped coöperating with them.
        rdl 11y ago
        Generally actions done to your citizens abroad will cause less retribution than actions done to host nation citizens in host nation. Even better if there is any level of plausible (or even implausible) deniability. Russia pretty much got away with murdering Litvinenko in London; if they'd done that to a natural-born UK citizen in the UK with no other ties to Russia, and unambiguously, there would have been much more serious consequences.
        pjc50 11y ago
        Russia pretty much got away with murdering Litvinenko in London Well, up until now. It was so clearly a political decision to ignore it when it happened and now that relations with Russia have deteriorated it's been investigated and the obvious conclusion reached. The CIA could have someone with 'CIA' on their jacket shoot a UK citizen on the street in broad daylight and the UK would avoid investigating it if it was politically inconvenient to do so.
- at-fates-hands 11y ago
  If the CIA wanted to grab him, they could, regardless of where he is. The fact that it might ruffle a few feathers diplomatically is hardly something the CIA considers when they handle operations like the one they're describing. Also, if they did grab him, trust me, he wouldn't be heard from again. Considering Snowden has an army of governments after him, it would be easy for the CIA to run a disinformation campaign to keep people guessing who really kidnapped him. It would be easy for the CIA to rotate him between several of their "black sites" around the world and basically let him wither and die in one these miserable places.
  - rl3 11y ago
    I doubt this. It's likely the FSB has him under constant surveillance. Moreover, even if the US managed to grab him, it'd be easier to manufacture a bogus story explaining how he suddenly ended up in custody. After that, he'd just be sent off to ADX Florence for life.
  - kafkaesq 11y ago
    If the CIA wanted to grab him, they could, regardless of where he is. Umm, no. That's not quite how things work.
    - Caprinicus 11y ago
      They could do it, it would absolutely destroy our geopolitical relations with important countries in the process, which is hopefully why they didn't try.
      - tezza 11y ago
        ? An ex KGB guy was assassinated in London with radioactive poison and lived to name the killers. That ruffled the feathers until a few years later when it was all swept under the carpet. Now the disagreement is over Ukraine and Syria. So Russia is in the bad books again for the killing
        11y ago
obituary_latte 11y ago
Kidnapping is quite different from extradition. Likely I'm not understanding the situation correctly, but I'd think an extradition should require some type of oversight/consensus whereas a rendition skips straight to confining the subject.
- BWStearns 11y ago
  > ... extradition should require some type of oversight/consensus whereas a rendition [kidnapping?] skips straight ... Since the Danish government agreed to let the plane sit there and there is an extradition treaty between the two countries I expect there was oversight and consensus.
  - rdtsc 11y ago
    > I expect there was oversight and consensus. Right. Except if there was an extradition treaty and they planned on relying on it, they wouldn't need a plane on the ground and a paramilitary team ready to go?
    - BWStearns 11y ago
      > Right. Except if there was an extradition treaty they wouldn't need a plane on the ground and a paramilitary team ready to go? You would if the Danes didn't want to go apprehend him themselves (I wouldn't if I were them, the news clip would look bad). If he were already in custody there would be no need for a plane and a team, though presumably he would get on some plane at some point if apprehended just as a matter of practicality.
      - letitleak 11y ago
        I don't really get your point. If someone is going to be apprehended on your soil that basically has to be by your nationals. Agents of another nation are not capable of placing or moving someone in custody they are just criminals engaged in a kidnapping unless the situation matches some extraordinary one covered in a specific treaty. It would be fascinating if Denmark and the US have such a treaty, and if that is recent then I would wonder if that doesn't subject Denmark to penalties by other members of the EU and/or other nations in the Schengen treaty. It certainly should.
nickpsecurity 11y ago
The words "CIA" and "kidnap" are key here. That's their torture flights program that allegedly dropped the torture part. Best to assume that due process isnt involved if CIA is doing a clandestine op.
Zigurd 11y ago
It isn't "trying to bait outrage." Kidnapping is a crime. There are CIA agents that have been tried in absentia in Italy for that crime. Our government planned to commit a crime to get at Snowden. We should, instead, investigate and prosecute the planners behind this intended crime.
jbapple 11y ago
> Whistleblowing protections that extend to what Snowden did would effectively convert the entire classification system to a set of recommendations as opposed to laws (a wholly different demand which I think is patently childish as a demand). Can you elaborate a bit on this? For instance, if Snowden's leaks had been targeted so that they only showed illegal programs[0], do you believe that advocacy of a whistleblowing protection that would have covered the leaks would be "patently childish"? [0] It is possible that Snowden's leaks were that targeted. I don't know, because I did not follow them closely enough to know.
- BWStearns 11y ago
  Basically Whistleblowing laws are in a tough spot with regards to classified info (remember, such laws also protect people calling out corruption etc that have no classified info). IANAL nor am I an expert on whistleblowing law, however, it is my understanding that such laws as they relate to classified are generally meant to allow individuals to go talk to congress and let congress know that their agency has gone off the rails. Obviously this protects the government from a rogue piece of itself more than it protects the people from a rogue government. However, I am disinclined to take the fully cynical view of this since I have yet to concoct or hear a plan which was capable of a) maintaining a legally enforceable classification system, b) permitting ethically and patriotically motivated unilateral public disclosure of unconstitutional activities. Perhaps this is a failure of my imagination (I suspect that if there is an answer it relies in finding a way around needing the second requirement). I think that the current best solution to the problem is where we are currently (I said best, not good). That is to hope that in the event of sufficiently egregious abuses an individual will set aside personal risk and expose said programs. In the ideal Disney version we as a society recognize that they did this in service to the constitution and fulfillment of their oath and urge the president to pardon the risk taker. Maybe call it the Jefferson Strategy, after the quote about the tree of liberty needing to be watered with the blood of patriots. Maybe, in order for the republic to stay healthy, we need people brave/stupid enough to be executed or die in jail as the modern equivalent to the rebellion Jefferson was referencing. This plan has several failure modes. First is a false positive. This is the mode where someone for whatever reason believes that they're being a whistleblower and just dumps a bunch of documents that hurt US foreign policy but don't really expose any wrongdoing. You basically have to believe that all US foreign activity or all secrecy is inherently bad to say that that the Manning dump moved us forward as a democracy. Note, I'm not defending her treatment or sentencing or whatever, but the dump was pretty devoid of any gross U.S. wrongdoing (we can argue about the chopper video elsewhere). This failure mode is dangerous but probably won't end the republic. It is increasingly damaging per occurrence though because someone can take far more documents than they could ever read. This has a negative potential effect on the accountability of the leaker since they can take now and sift later. I wonder if this will lead to a cycle of more "example making" and leakers putting out more docs per dump since they know they'll be made examples of anyways. The other failure mode is that everyone stays silent, which is also not ideal, but large orgs have issues with secrecy even without relying on self-sacrificing affirmative decisions, so I'm not worried about this one over the very long run. Edit: There's no way to shape policy to recognize ahead of time that it's ok to leak illegal programs (such a policy would need to be ok with the existence of legal programs in the first place). It's similar logically to saying that it's OK to torture people who know about terrorist plans. You can't really know ahead of time for sure that they know what you want to know, so making a moral exemption on such a basis is inherently flawed and you should refer back to the general case of "don't torture people" (in this case, the general case is "don't leak classified"). I was primarily directing the "childish" comment towards the idea that we ought to get rid of the classification system entirely. It's a nice utopian ideal, and I can see and even maybe agree with the logical arguments that secrecy in any form in government is an inherently corrupting feature. What I can't see however is how to conduct the business of government (diplomacy, intelligence, and military specifically) in any fashion without it, and I'm left with the impression that a sober view of the situation has to accept secrecy in some instances and look to mitigate its corrosive effects rather than to complain about its existence.
TTPrograms 11y ago
Furthermore, this is not even to that point. The article only claims that they PLANNED such a rendition. Government agencies have plans for thousands of scenarios! I can only imagine how people would feel if they knew the details of the likely hundreds of contingency plans in place to handle a wide variety of natural disasters and exchanges of nuclear weapons, among others. The real question is what was the likelihood that this plan would be executed, and who makes that call (Obama I'd assume?). The CIA probably had 3 flavors of extradition on Obama's desk as soon as they had any idea where he was - that's their job.
- ryanlol 11y ago
  I think the bigger news here is that an european state agreed to it, considering that gross abuses by the US aren't really anything new.
nabla9 11y ago
Criminal complaint against Snowden is from political crime. Political crimes against one country are not automatically crimes in other countries. EU countries don't send Chechen fighters to Russia when Russia charges them. US is not going to send head of the CIA's Germany station back to Germany to be charged for spying. ps. EU parliament passed a resolution (mostly symbolical) that called on European Union member states to “drop any criminal charges against Edward Snowden, grant him protection and consequently prevent extradition or rendition by third parties, in recognition of his status as whistle-blower and international human rights defender”.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
choppaface 11y ago
The US people would be better served having the top Fed prosecutors go after bank fraudsters (from the petty ~$1000 robocalling crooks to the big cats like Jamie Dimon) or cyberterrorists than Snowden. Moveover, any police action against Snowden will be heavily colored by those in the Fed who hate him-- it would simply be feeding the wolves.
codeddesign 11y ago
Forget about if the cia could kill him or not...do you really think Russia doesn't keep constant watch over him? If he suddenly went missing you don't think the Kremlin would go nuts? How about if they found out it was the cia that took him inside their borders? Ha! Putin is crazy...who knows what he would do then... Cut off all gas to Europe?
codeulike 11y ago
The CIA has no jurisdiction outside of the USA. Do you not understand that?
- tomjen3 11y ago
  What? The CIA has no juristriction anywhere. What they do is illegal in all the countries they spy on and they are forbidden by law from spying in america.
hartator 11y ago
> Whistleblowing protections that extend to what Snowden did would effectively convert the entire classification system to a set of recommendations as opposed to laws Snowden as a CIA contractor or even if it was a CIA employee doesn't have whistleblowing protections.

ryanlol 11y ago

Generally there's this thing called "due process", if they were just planning on putting Snowden on a CIA plane I really can't see how that's supposed to be okay.

BWStearns 11y ago
Fair point, but it doesn't really say the manner in which they planned to put him on a plane, so I would give benefit of the doubt to using the extradition agreements in such a high profile case. It's not like the death penalty would be sought (I think the last execution under the Espionage Act was the Rosenbergs) so they'd have no problem meeting the requirements of the extradition treaty. Edit: >> Why would you give that particular benefit of the doubt? If it's a) legal, b) gets the job done, why on earth would you make an unforced error when you know everyone on the planet would be watching how you handled this? I'm not relying on the better angels of men here, I'm relying on self interest, path of least resistance, and government laziness. Each on their own has rarely failed me and never all three at once.
- js8 11y ago
  And was there an extradition agreement (I mean the actual specific paperwork or court decision for Snowden's case, not just the abstract international agreement)? Shouldn't the U.S. get that in order before they send an actual plane? I am not U.S. taxpayer, but it's at least a waste of money otherwise..
  - ryanlol 11y ago
    yes
  - rbanffy 11y ago
    Unless they did something else and used Snowden as a distraction.
    - js8 11y ago
      It's also possible that UK police really wanted to do something else at Ecuadorian embassy, and Assange was just an useful cover. I don't think secret services feel the need to justify their operations in this manner. On the other hand, people who pay for it..
- BWStearns 11y ago
  @js8: http://www.mcnabbassociates.com/Denmark%20International%20Extradition%20Treaty%20with%20the%20United%20States.pdf http://www.mcnabbassociates.com/Denmark%20International%20Ex... If my explicit reference to it was not enough to convince you then you can go read it.
- ryanlol 11y ago
  There's a very good chance the DK<->US extradition treaty could block the extradition of Edward Snowden. >Extradition shall not be granted in any of the following circumstances: >6. In respect of a military offense.
  - BWStearns 11y ago
    It's a civilian criminal offense. The fact that he was a defense contractor doesn't make it a military offense. That would have to be a charge under the UCMJ. @ryanlol: I very much hope that laws and treaties are never interpreted via "common sense". Tech is not the only field with a technical argot, and it is good that specific words have specific meanings. If laws were enforced by "common sense" then every time you had an interaction with a contract or government agency would be subject to the whims of whatever moron happened to have power over you that day. Even though that is sadly frequent in practice, it shouldn't be, it isn't law that it be so, and I feel much better that we at least aspire to better.
rhino369 11y ago
Due process in regard to which laws. I presumably would be a violation of Danish law, but under American law it isn't. It's more of an insult to Denmark than anything else. Which is why it's not typically done. But if the CIA just dragged him back to America and turned him over to the US Marshals it wouldn't impact his charges. There is no recognized right to be a fugitive.
- ryanlol 11y ago
  Who was talking about American law?
  - rhino369 11y ago
    Why should the CIA care about Danish law?
    - ryanlol 11y ago
      Diplomatic relations. US LEAs might have a hard time harassing people like me if EU countries stopped coöperating with them.
      - rdl 11y ago
        Generally actions done to your citizens abroad will cause less retribution than actions done to host nation citizens in host nation. Even better if there is any level of plausible (or even implausible) deniability. Russia pretty much got away with murdering Litvinenko in London; if they'd done that to a natural-born UK citizen in the UK with no other ties to Russia, and unambiguously, there would have been much more serious consequences.
        pjc50 11y ago
        Russia pretty much got away with murdering Litvinenko in London Well, up until now. It was so clearly a political decision to ignore it when it happened and now that relations with Russia have deteriorated it's been investigated and the obvious conclusion reached. The CIA could have someone with 'CIA' on their jacket shoot a UK citizen on the street in broad daylight and the UK would avoid investigating it if it was politically inconvenient to do so.
at-fates-hands 11y ago
If the CIA wanted to grab him, they could, regardless of where he is. The fact that it might ruffle a few feathers diplomatically is hardly something the CIA considers when they handle operations like the one they're describing. Also, if they did grab him, trust me, he wouldn't be heard from again. Considering Snowden has an army of governments after him, it would be easy for the CIA to run a disinformation campaign to keep people guessing who really kidnapped him. It would be easy for the CIA to rotate him between several of their "black sites" around the world and basically let him wither and die in one these miserable places.
- rl3 11y ago
  I doubt this. It's likely the FSB has him under constant surveillance. Moreover, even if the US managed to grab him, it'd be easier to manufacture a bogus story explaining how he suddenly ended up in custody. After that, he'd just be sent off to ADX Florence for life.
- kafkaesq 11y ago
  If the CIA wanted to grab him, they could, regardless of where he is. Umm, no. That's not quite how things work.
  - Caprinicus 11y ago
    They could do it, it would absolutely destroy our geopolitical relations with important countries in the process, which is hopefully why they didn't try.
    - tezza 11y ago
      ? An ex KGB guy was assassinated in London with radioactive poison and lived to name the killers. That ruffled the feathers until a few years later when it was all swept under the carpet. Now the disagreement is over Ukraine and Syria. So Russia is in the bad books again for the killing
      - 11y ago

obituary_latte 11y ago

Kidnapping is quite different from extradition. Likely I'm not understanding the situation correctly, but I'd think an extradition should require some type of oversight/consensus whereas a rendition skips straight to confining the subject.

BWStearns 11y ago
> ... extradition should require some type of oversight/consensus whereas a rendition [kidnapping?] skips straight ... Since the Danish government agreed to let the plane sit there and there is an extradition treaty between the two countries I expect there was oversight and consensus.
- rdtsc 11y ago
  > I expect there was oversight and consensus. Right. Except if there was an extradition treaty and they planned on relying on it, they wouldn't need a plane on the ground and a paramilitary team ready to go?
  - BWStearns 11y ago
    > Right. Except if there was an extradition treaty they wouldn't need a plane on the ground and a paramilitary team ready to go? You would if the Danes didn't want to go apprehend him themselves (I wouldn't if I were them, the news clip would look bad). If he were already in custody there would be no need for a plane and a team, though presumably he would get on some plane at some point if apprehended just as a matter of practicality.
    - letitleak 11y ago
      I don't really get your point. If someone is going to be apprehended on your soil that basically has to be by your nationals. Agents of another nation are not capable of placing or moving someone in custody they are just criminals engaged in a kidnapping unless the situation matches some extraordinary one covered in a specific treaty. It would be fascinating if Denmark and the US have such a treaty, and if that is recent then I would wonder if that doesn't subject Denmark to penalties by other members of the EU and/or other nations in the Schengen treaty. It certainly should.

nickpsecurity 11y ago

The words "CIA" and "kidnap" are key here. That's their torture flights program that allegedly dropped the torture part. Best to assume that due process isnt involved if CIA is doing a clandestine op.

Zigurd 11y ago

It isn't "trying to bait outrage." Kidnapping is a crime. There are CIA agents that have been tried in absentia in Italy for that crime. Our government planned to commit a crime to get at Snowden. We should, instead, investigate and prosecute the planners behind this intended crime.

jbapple 11y ago

> Whistleblowing protections that extend to what Snowden did would effectively convert the entire classification system to a set of recommendations as opposed to laws (a wholly different demand which I think is patently childish as a demand). Can you elaborate a bit on this? For instance, if Snowden's leaks had been targeted so that they only showed illegal programs[0], do you believe that advocacy of a whistleblowing protection that would have covered the leaks would be "patently childish"? [0] It is possible that Snowden's leaks were that targeted. I don't know, because I did not follow them closely enough to know.

BWStearns 11y ago
Basically Whistleblowing laws are in a tough spot with regards to classified info (remember, such laws also protect people calling out corruption etc that have no classified info). IANAL nor am I an expert on whistleblowing law, however, it is my understanding that such laws as they relate to classified are generally meant to allow individuals to go talk to congress and let congress know that their agency has gone off the rails. Obviously this protects the government from a rogue piece of itself more than it protects the people from a rogue government. However, I am disinclined to take the fully cynical view of this since I have yet to concoct or hear a plan which was capable of a) maintaining a legally enforceable classification system, b) permitting ethically and patriotically motivated unilateral public disclosure of unconstitutional activities. Perhaps this is a failure of my imagination (I suspect that if there is an answer it relies in finding a way around needing the second requirement). I think that the current best solution to the problem is where we are currently (I said best, not good). That is to hope that in the event of sufficiently egregious abuses an individual will set aside personal risk and expose said programs. In the ideal Disney version we as a society recognize that they did this in service to the constitution and fulfillment of their oath and urge the president to pardon the risk taker. Maybe call it the Jefferson Strategy, after the quote about the tree of liberty needing to be watered with the blood of patriots. Maybe, in order for the republic to stay healthy, we need people brave/stupid enough to be executed or die in jail as the modern equivalent to the rebellion Jefferson was referencing. This plan has several failure modes. First is a false positive. This is the mode where someone for whatever reason believes that they're being a whistleblower and just dumps a bunch of documents that hurt US foreign policy but don't really expose any wrongdoing. You basically have to believe that all US foreign activity or all secrecy is inherently bad to say that that the Manning dump moved us forward as a democracy. Note, I'm not defending her treatment or sentencing or whatever, but the dump was pretty devoid of any gross U.S. wrongdoing (we can argue about the chopper video elsewhere). This failure mode is dangerous but probably won't end the republic. It is increasingly damaging per occurrence though because someone can take far more documents than they could ever read. This has a negative potential effect on the accountability of the leaker since they can take now and sift later. I wonder if this will lead to a cycle of more "example making" and leakers putting out more docs per dump since they know they'll be made examples of anyways. The other failure mode is that everyone stays silent, which is also not ideal, but large orgs have issues with secrecy even without relying on self-sacrificing affirmative decisions, so I'm not worried about this one over the very long run. Edit: There's no way to shape policy to recognize ahead of time that it's ok to leak illegal programs (such a policy would need to be ok with the existence of legal programs in the first place). It's similar logically to saying that it's OK to torture people who know about terrorist plans. You can't really know ahead of time for sure that they know what you want to know, so making a moral exemption on such a basis is inherently flawed and you should refer back to the general case of "don't torture people" (in this case, the general case is "don't leak classified"). I was primarily directing the "childish" comment towards the idea that we ought to get rid of the classification system entirely. It's a nice utopian ideal, and I can see and even maybe agree with the logical arguments that secrecy in any form in government is an inherently corrupting feature. What I can't see however is how to conduct the business of government (diplomacy, intelligence, and military specifically) in any fashion without it, and I'm left with the impression that a sober view of the situation has to accept secrecy in some instances and look to mitigate its corrosive effects rather than to complain about its existence.

TTPrograms 11y ago

Furthermore, this is not even to that point. The article only claims that they PLANNED such a rendition. Government agencies have plans for thousands of scenarios! I can only imagine how people would feel if they knew the details of the likely hundreds of contingency plans in place to handle a wide variety of natural disasters and exchanges of nuclear weapons, among others. The real question is what was the likelihood that this plan would be executed, and who makes that call (Obama I'd assume?). The CIA probably had 3 flavors of extradition on Obama's desk as soon as they had any idea where he was - that's their job.

ryanlol 11y ago
I think the bigger news here is that an european state agreed to it, considering that gross abuses by the US aren't really anything new.

nabla9 11y ago

Criminal complaint against Snowden is from political crime. Political crimes against one country are not automatically crimes in other countries. EU countries don't send Chechen fighters to Russia when Russia charges them. US is not going to send head of the CIA's Germany station back to Germany to be charged for spying. ps. EU parliament passed a resolution (mostly symbolical) that called on European Union member states to “drop any criminal charges against Edward Snowden, grant him protection and consequently prevent extradition or rendition by third parties, in recognition of his status as whistle-blower and international human rights defender”.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

choppaface 11y ago

The US people would be better served having the top Fed prosecutors go after bank fraudsters (from the petty ~$1000 robocalling crooks to the big cats like Jamie Dimon) or cyberterrorists than Snowden. Moveover, any police action against Snowden will be heavily colored by those in the Fed who hate him-- it would simply be feeding the wolves.

codeddesign 11y ago

Forget about if the cia could kill him or not...do you really think Russia doesn't keep constant watch over him? If he suddenly went missing you don't think the Kremlin would go nuts? How about if they found out it was the cia that took him inside their borders? Ha! Putin is crazy...who knows what he would do then... Cut off all gas to Europe?

codeulike 11y ago

The CIA has no jurisdiction outside of the USA. Do you not understand that?

tomjen3 11y ago
What? The CIA has no juristriction anywhere. What they do is illegal in all the countries they spy on and they are forbidden by law from spying in america.

hartator 11y ago

> Whistleblowing protections that extend to what Snowden did would effectively convert the entire classification system to a set of recommendations as opposed to laws Snowden as a CIA contractor or even if it was a CIA employee doesn't have whistleblowing protections.