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I also enjoyed this tidbit in the article, which I had not known before: "The presidential plane of Bolivian leader Evo Morales was forced to ground in Vienna,
by mturmon 11y ago
I also enjoyed this tidbit in the article, which I had not known before:
"The presidential plane of Bolivian leader Evo Morales was forced to ground in Vienna, after four EU nations refused airspace access on the mistaken belief that Snowden was hidden on board."
Can you imagine the feeling of impotence, as a national president, when your plane is forced to land because of such suspicions?
- peterkelly 11y agoAnd imagine the shitstorm that would follow the grounding of Air Force One under the exact same circumstances but by any country other than the US
- mturmon 11y agoOK, I bit. Turns out this was a major brouhaha. France participated, but later apologized, and Assange was involved as well. Quite fascinating in its own right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident and picture from Reuters story: http://www.webcitation.org/6O7egNjku http://www.webcitation.org/6O7egNjku
- revelation 11y agoCan you imagine the feeling of impotence, as NSA/CIA/$100b+ industrial extralegal agency, of telling people to stop that plane without having any remote certainty on the information? It's this somewhat unnoticed fact of the saga: these agencies are really, really terrible at whatever they imagine their job to be. I wonder if there is still some intern at NSA combing manually through log files to figure out what Snowden possibly took.
- caskance 11y agoThat feeling is warranted. Relative to the US, Bolivia is impotent.
- mturmon 11y agoIndeed. Having it demonstrated so viscerally would make an impact. Apparently the Austrian police briefly boarded his plane, although a spokesman in his government denied it. It also speaks to the panic of the American government in those days about Snowden.