Snowden granted 1-year asylum in Russia, leaves airport

As a U.S. Citizen I support Snowden.<p>Since 1865, there have been 5,031 deaths and 22,125 injuries caused by terrorism in the United States. Source: <a href="http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/terrorism/wrjp255a.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.johnstonsarchive.net&#x2F;terrorism&#x2F;wrjp255a.html</a><p>5,000 deaths in 148 years.<p>In 2011, 32,367 people died in vehicle accidents. Source: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in...</a><p>There are all kinds of cancers that &quot;only&quot; kill 1,000 or so people per year that are deemed not worthy of research because they are so rare. But for terrorism, we sacrifice nearly inexhaustible supplies of money and time. We sacrifice our liberty, our privacy. None of it makes any sense.<p>Terrorism is nothing but fear mongering to effect an increase in power.

What a strange world we live in, when you have to run from the US government after revealing its illegal and unconstitutional activity and hope for safe haven in Putin&#x27;s Russia.

This is a sad day for America.<p>It&#x27;s a sad day because a citizen of our nation decided he needed to go to a foreign journalist instead of one of our own to break this story.<p>It&#x27;s a sad day because that same citizen felt like he wouldn&#x27;t get a fair trial in our justice system and might be treated the same way Bradley Manning was until he did get a trial.<p>It&#x27;s a sad day because lots of decent, honest people who work in our intelligence services that are trying desperately to uncover the next possible attack are going to have to work much harder.<p>It&#x27;s a sad day because those people are going to work harder because the leaders do not feel like they can trust the American people to understand and decide for themselves how much of their privacy they are willing to trade for the work that the government&#x27;s intelligence services do.<p>It&#x27;s a sad day because we demonstrated that we care more about the embarrassment of our duplicity being revealed than in the ideals of our commitment to civil liberties.<p>And I&#x27;m sad because I&#x27;m an American and I love my country and I want it to do better.

It&#x27;s kind of amazing that I visited and traversed the entire country by train (St Petersburg to Vladivostok) all while he was in the airport.<p>So when everyone is talking about big political issues, all I can think of is all the mundane stuff he must be putting up with. Like: how much clothing does he have, and how is he doing laundry? And: Who&#x27;s paying for his expenses? I assume his ATM card and Visa aren&#x27;t good anymore.<p>Get a blini and some квас at Теремок, Edward. It&#x27;s pretty tasty.

Reminder: the real reason Snowden could not walk out of the airport is not because of some virtual &quot;passport&quot; that US &quot;revoked&quot;. It is because there are real armed obedient guys on the border who would not let Snowden go his way.<p>This whole story is not about privacy, spying or politics. It is about your personal inability to choose your phone company, internet provider, or a bank without confronting armed &quot;state&quot; which dictates what is allowed to you. Don&#x27;t like NSA spying through Verizon? Build your own phone company. Oops, there are feds with an order to &quot;cooperate&quot;.<p>Guns and violence are the problem, not all these abstract inventions like &quot;rights&quot; or &quot;privacy&quot;.

This is good news. I&#x27;m glad his airport captivity is finally over. Russia is possibly the safest place for him at this point. And I&#x27;m glad there&#x27;s at least one country that can openly stand up against the growing US offense.<p>Well done, Russia.

Since the NSA says that there are such strict controls on who can access what sorts of data, how did Snowden gain possession of that data?<p>If some <i>private contractor</i> can walk out with &quot;thousands of classified documents&quot; how are we supposed to believe that the NSA isn&#x27;t lying about their allegedly <i>strict controls?</i>

If it wasn&#x27;t for Snowden the general population of the US would never be even having a discussion about widespread national spying on everyone.<p>They could bury previous whistleblowers and Manning but Snowden has finally made people sit up and realize while the TSA is groping your genitals at the airport, the NSA is groping everything else about your life at that same intimacy.<p>The sad part is, in 100 years nothing will have changed, it will just be hidden better and whistleblowers seized before they can get to the press.

That&#x27;s super news, I was concerned that yesterdays release by Greenwald might imperil Snowdens chances in Russia but it appears that was unfounded.<p>It&#x27;s funny how this whistleblower thing might turn into a mirror image of the torture scheme the CIA employed: the CIA would use other countries to ship prisoners to to have them tortured&#x2F;interrogated in ways that the country where the capture took place or the USA would not condone on their own soil (but for some magical reason doing it somewhere else or even hiring people to do it makes it ok).<p>Now we get whistleblowers that move outside of the jurisdiction of the country the revelations are about. Cue a Russian whistleblower to flee to the USA for some symmetry.

I&#x27;ll bet Snowden is a Hacker News and Reddit user. I expect that he might read this thread when he gets to a computer, perhaps even taking the time to do a Reddit AMA.<p>If so, Hi Ed! Thanks for doing what you did!

Just as well he&#x27;s not gay then - Bradley Manning would have found things a bit harder in this situation

Another day I&#x27;m proud to be Russian.

I don&#x27;t think this was ever posted on HN and happened just 2 months ago. This is how Russia deals with extradition when the shoe is on the other foot and they want someone:<p><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/czechrepublic/10090013/Fuel-tanker-ordered-to-block-Russian-plane-from-taking-off-at-Czech-airport.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.telegraph.co.uk&#x2F;news&#x2F;worldnews&#x2F;europe&#x2F;czechrepubl...</a><p>Reportedly &quot;dangerous stand-off&quot; meant that Russians pulled guns on the plane and Czech police withdrew in order not to escalate.

Remember that we’re wired to respond to personal news. That’s the secret to Facebook’s and tabloid magazine’s success. So as happy as I am about this, let it also be a reminder that Snowden&#x27;s not the story. The fate of the internet is.<p>If you haven&#x27;t read it, this is a great article on the subject: <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jul/28/edward-snowden-death-of-internet" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;2013&#x2F;jul&#x2F;28&#x2F;edward-sno...</a>

I don&#x27;t live in DC but it would be nice if someone could stop by the Russian embassy and put some flowers in front. It would show that American people don&#x27;t necessarily agree with our government and are grateful for the Russian&#x27;s support.

I&#x27;m flying into Sheremetyevo this Sunday. I was secretly hoping they would be holding one of those press conferences while I was there, a long shot I know.<p>ES: if you&#x27;re reading this- Anything you want from the homeland? I can drop it off in a secure location, I&#x27;ll be staying about 100km south of Moscow. &#x2F;u&#x2F;@gmx

This of course happening the day after what was perhaps the biggest revelation so far, even though Putin said that asylum would be conditional on Snowden promising &quot;to stop harming the United States.&quot; I do not think this highly symbolic timing was coincidental.

For info on next steps in the processing of refugee applicants in Russia:<p><a href="http://rt.com/news/snowden-russia-immigration-asylum-758/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;rt.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;snowden-russia-immigration-asylum-758&#x2F;</a>

Is US Administration seeking peace or obedience from rest of the world?

Contracted rendition team in place...

413 points, 4 hours, half way down the page? something is a miss with the voting system on HN.

Good thing he&#x27;s not gay.

God Bless Russia.

Snowden had me until he traveled to Russia with 4 laptops full of NSA secrets. I mean no matter how bad NSA is, Putin is 1000 times worse

Does anyone else find it odd that he immediately went to the US&#x27;s biggest rivals. I mean right away he ran to Hong Kong (China) and now he has accepted asylum in Russia.<p>I mean these countries have huge interest in this guy. He knows intimate details about how the USA gathers intelligence. I mean I wonder what kind of info he has given (if any) to these countries. I am sure Putin would love to get a hold of those laptops he took with him.