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Brazil - Glenn Greenwald, your primary reporter you're working with is based there, big country, cost-effective when you're on a budget, and Greenwald would hav

Brazil - Glenn Greenwald, your primary reporter you're working with is based there, big country, cost-effective when you're on a budget, and Greenwald would have a local network of people who could help hide you, and Brazil doesn't extradite political prisoners. Not to mention, borders on a ton of other countries with fairly porous borders, so you have the possibility of moving from one country to another. I'm sure there's a lot more options that would crop up depending on a variety of factors. But if you're Snowden you want: - A network of friends and associates you can trust to help support you, emotionally, physically, and fiscally - To be in a country where the information you're in possession of might be valuable to that country, and could be used as a bargaining tool - A country with good, but not great, relationships with the US (so no UK, Canada, EU is probably out). - A country with a huge bureaucracy and judicial system - you want it to take years to extradite you Hong Kong makes little sense on most of those, other than the judicial system.

kylelibra 13y ago
You make some really good points, but why do you say "a country with good, but not great, relationships with the US?"
- mattzito 13y ago
  This is hard to define in quantifiable terms, but you don't want a country that's besties with the US, or too heavily dependent on them, because they'll be too willing to jump through hoops to avoid making them angry. But you also don't want a country that is enemies or has strained relations with the US - they're very likely to take advantage of you/snowden for their own gain. Or arrest you and torture you for the information you have. You want a country where they like the US, have normal diplomatic relations, but don't necessarily want to seem like a puppet of the americans. They should have a strong belief in protecting individual freedoms. Also, when you try to get asylum/protection in a country like Brazil or Ecuador or Iceland, etc. - no one can stand up and say, "He's helping our enemies".

kylelibra 13y ago

You make some really good points, but why do you say "a country with good, but not great, relationships with the US?"

mattzito 13y ago
This is hard to define in quantifiable terms, but you don't want a country that's besties with the US, or too heavily dependent on them, because they'll be too willing to jump through hoops to avoid making them angry. But you also don't want a country that is enemies or has strained relations with the US - they're very likely to take advantage of you/snowden for their own gain. Or arrest you and torture you for the information you have. You want a country where they like the US, have normal diplomatic relations, but don't necessarily want to seem like a puppet of the americans. They should have a strong belief in protecting individual freedoms. Also, when you try to get asylum/protection in a country like Brazil or Ecuador or Iceland, etc. - no one can stand up and say, "He's helping our enemies".