Edward Snowden made the right choice. He needs to remain, at least temporarily, in an environment that has a strong intelligence presence that is not aligned with the United States. I think he went too far in his releases, but in the end, maybe not so far he cannot recover. The big missing piece in all of this, and the aspect of this conflict I suspect Vladimir Putin raised with the President, is that arrest and prosecution by the Justice Department is not the only concern. The United States intelligence agencies have extensive extra-judicial covert authority independently of law enforcement and counter-terrorism efforts. Edward Snowden is genuinenely not safe in the United States, or in any nation where the United States has dominant influence or US intelligence agencies can operate freely.
Posted on: Sat, 13 Jul 2013 12:53:15 +0000