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Home Front: WoT
Snowden disappears in Hong Kong
2013-06-11
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A contractor at the National Security Agency who leaked details of top-secret U.S. surveillance programs dropped out of sight in Hong Kong on Monday ahead of a likely push by the U.S. government to have him sent back to the United States to face charges.

Edward Snowden, 29, who provided the information for published reports last week that revealed the NSA's broad monitoring of phone call and Internet data from large companies such as Google and Facebook, checked out of his Hong Kong hotel hours after going public in a video released on Sunday by Britain's Guardian newspaper.
Back-packing in Laos, safely ensconced in a guest house in China, or weighted down with chains a mile off Kowloon?
Snowden told the Guardian that he went to Hong Kong in hopes it would be a place where he might be able to resist U.S. prosecution attempts, although the former British colony has an extradition treaty with the United States.

On Monday, some local officials suggested that Snowden might have miscalculated.

"We do have bilateral agreements with the U.S. and we are duty-bound to comply with these agreements. Hong Kong is not a legal vacuum, as Mr. Snowden might have thought," said Regina Ip, a Hong Kong lawmaker and former security secretary.
"We don't want him. He's yours. Unless of course our masters in Beijing say no."
Snowden, who the Guardian said had been working at the NSA for four years as a contractor for outside companies, told the Guardian he had copied the secret documents at the NSA office in Hawaii three weeks ago and had told his supervisor that he needed "a couple of weeks" off for epilepsy treatments. He flew to Hong Kong on May 20.

Staff at a luxury hotel in Hong Kong told Reuters that Snowden had checked out at noon on Monday. Ewen MacAskill, a Guardian journalist, said later in the day that Snowden was still in Hong Kong.

"He didn't have a plan. He thought out in great detail leaking the documents and then deciding rather than being anonymous, he'd go public. So he thought that out in great detail. But his plans after that have always been vague," MacAskill said.

"I'd imagine there's now going to be a real battle between Washington and Beijing and civil rights groups as to his future," MacAskill said. "He'd like to seek asylum in a friendly country but I'm not sure if that's possible or not."
There may not be a friendly country, except maybe Iran or Zimbabwe...
If Snowden is charged on criminal counts as many lawmakers and officials expect, the focus will turn to the extradition treaty that the United States and Hong Kong signed in 1996, a year before the former British colony was returned to China. The treaty, which allows for the exchange of criminal suspects in a formal process that also may involve the Chinese government, went into effect in 1998. It says that Hong Kong authorities can hold a U.S. suspect for up to 60 days after the United States submits a request indicating there is probable cause to believe the suspect violated U.S. law. In Snowden's case, such a request could lead Hong Kong authorities to hold him while Washington prepares a formal extradition request.

Snowden could try to stay in Hong Kong by seeking political asylum. Simon Young, a professor of law at the University of Hong Kong, said there are strong protections for people making asylum claims under Hong Kong's extradition laws. A decision this year by Hong Kong's High Court requires the government to create a new standard for reviewing asylum applications, putting the cases on hold until the new system is finished.
That might take years...
"He's come really at probably the best moment in time because our asylum laws are in a state of limbo," Young said.
If we had a CIA worth anything it wouldn't be a problem at all...
Posted by:Steve White

#2  Wonder if Xi said some drone flights over Hong Kong were OK.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2013-06-11 08:47  

#1  Looks like the "Reset" button has been set to 1962....

HT: Drudge
Posted by: Uncle Phester   2013-06-11 08:28  

00:00