Russia's Mark Zuckerberg offers Snowden a job.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/08/05/technology/social/snowden-vkontakte/

by teawithcarl • 13 years ago

177 105 13 years ago

money.cnn.com

bur4k• 13 years ago

Mark Zuckerberg Facebook Adversiting managent debug bug, açık

kshatrea• 13 years ago

On the same day, Pavel Durov, CEO of the social network VKontakte, offered Snowden a job as a security software developer.

In his career, hasn't Snowden been more of a sys admin type?[1]. Putting all the hoopla/outrage over his leaks aside, from a career perspective, would Snowden be qualified for a developer role? I guess my question is whether Durov's motivation is to get PR points or to get a suitable engineer for that role.

[1]http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/01/us/job-title-key-to-inner-...

nicholassmith• 13 years ago

I'd imagine both potentially, he could always work in a security system administrator role alongside the main development team.

Definitely good PR though.

iliaznk2• 13 years ago

That's what I'm saying, it's no more than just stupid PR aimed at laymen.

guard-of-terra• 13 years ago

Old news, it's been a week since.

chalst• 13 years ago

We had the story (via Gigaom) posted here

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6140948

but nobody picked up on it and that post is practically unresurrectable. Reposting is legitimate, I think.

nish1500• 13 years ago

How does a job offer help him, or anyone else, for that matter? I'm not sure job hunting is his first priority right now.

There must be hundreds of businesses out there who would offer him a job for novelty's sake.

TsiCClawOfLight• 13 years ago

I think computer guys hate boredom ;)

Andrenid• 13 years ago

If I were him, a full-time job at a reputable company would be the last thing I'd want. Then everyone knows where you are, when you're there, etc.

A huge number of people would love to see him disappear (permanently)...

I'd be laying low, maybe writing a book about the whole thing and releasing it via a third party, if it was a matter of making income while staying off-grid.

simgidacav3• 13 years ago

You don't need to be working in a specific place if you run computer-related activities. Also TOR.

D9u3• 13 years ago

"In such moments one feels pride with our country and regret over the course taken by United States -- a country betraying the principles it was once built on,"

Even Russians get it... Why don't more Americans get it?

weland• 13 years ago

This painfully reminds me of George Carlin, who referred to the original artisans of his country -- in jest -- as "a bunch of white slaveowners who wanted to be free".

dmix• 13 years ago

I understand this was in jest, but this comes up on HN often.

Slavery was introduced in America ~two centuries before the founding fathers had influence.

They were focused on the threat of authoritarianism/british rule, and failed to properly address their own complicit authoritarianism.

Very much like many people today who are all of a sudden concerned about the abuses of the "police state" aggressively targeting protesters and activists, when black communities have been harassed and targeted for decades (see the only domestic aerial bombing in US history targeting black activists in the 1980s [1] or recently "stop and frisk") with little public protest from white communities.

...or the difference in legal sentencing for crack cocaine vs powdered cocaine.

Racial hypocrisy is hardly a thing of the past in public discourse.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOVE

Gonzih6• 13 years ago

Believe me, Russian government is doing the same thing as NSA did. There are rumors about spying hardware installed in Russian ISPs. There are rumors about Russian organization that produces hardware for logging all internet traffic, decrypting on the fly encrypted data, filtering it and etc. Difference between this and NSA is than information about NSA is now public.

praptak• 13 years ago

No contradiction to the point that GP made. Nobody said that Putin's Russia is more free than US. They just did the right thing in this particular case and made the "land of the free" look hypocritical as a result. This doesn't imply anything about how Russia citizens are treated by their own state.

calibraxis• 13 years ago

I recall hearing about polls where like a third of US respondents believe that the US government was behind 9-11. Of course I don't believe it did, but clearly lots of us think we're run by a bunch of criminals. In comparison to graver problems (being the most incarceration-happy nation, mass international killings, etc), the Snowden thing is minor.

Durov's whole line about "betraying the principles it was once built on" is a reference to the usual quasi-religious nationalist founding mythologies.

melling• 13 years ago

I really don't get how people can be so naive on HN. Let's talk about Snowden all day and wish we were more like Russia, where it's perfectly ok to say anything you want.

Sorry guys, but not every one really believes the NSA should be disbanded. They have a real job to do. Certainly there needs to be limits, which we could of course discuss for years on end, but I don't see the point of doing it in a forum that really isn't suitable for the topic.

Ok, back to the echo chamber. 4 downvotes and this message disappears. Well, I do need to try occasionally. HN used to be a great site.

bazillion2• 13 years ago

Seeing this post made me very happy, actually. I've commented before about my perspective in the NSA and doing government work, but immediately get showered with downvotes because I have a point of view that differs from what other people have been rallying towards. I don't understand the motivation behind preventing discussion of actual facts or interesting points of view.

If 11 year old BBS-hacking NSA-conspiracy-fearing me had an opportunity to talk to and ask questions of former NSA analyst/programmer me, I would definitely have come up with a better discussion than the HN community.

At least my upvote will counter at least one close-minded person.

sspiff• 13 years ago

D9u said "even Russians get it", not "the Russians get it", "Russia gets it", or "the Russian government gets it", so I don't think D9u meant to say that the political and social climate in Russia is what we should aspire to.

Clearly, if he/she did, he would be poorly informed. Russia's crackdown on LGBT rights, their out-of-proportion prosecution of Pussy Riot and the oppression of opposition are recent markers of how free speech does not rule in Russia.

olalonde• 13 years ago

Ok, back to the echo chamber. 4 downvotes and this message disappears. Well, I do need to try occasionally. HN used to be a great site.

I'm sorry but this kind of comment is what makes HN worse. From the HN guidelines: "Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downmod you."

hermaj• 13 years ago

Although I agree with you on many points I think you might be projecting onto D9u's comment. Nothing in the quote he posted suggests it is necessary to disband the NSA, nothing suggests Americans should wish they lived in a country like Russia. A 'course taken' implies a general direction, not a revolutionary change.

In the current situation Russians should be allowed to feel pride that it was their decrepit mafia state that opposed the United States on Snowden. That doesn't mean Russia did it for the right reasons, or that Russia is now a better place than it was before. A lot of Russians who feel pride in this action would probably still take the opportunity to live and work in the USA, the two are not mutually exclusive.

The problem I have with posts like yours is that they imply that because other places are a mess that exonerates the USA heading in that direction too.

throwaway9848• 13 years ago

And it would be one thing if it were a country that had any sort of positive track record on privacy protection. The idea that Russia of all places should be used as an example of privacy protection vs. the US is _hilarious_.

I mean, off the top of my head: Gazprom/Rosneft, Anna Politkovskaya, Alexander Litvinenko... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_R...

And that's not to even just generally discuss the FSB, which is a proportionately larger and more corrupt version of the CIA and NSA combined. Just imagine if Bush or Obama were a former CIA officer, and had used a loophole in the Constitution to stay in power for more than a decade.

Russia's human rights and privacy rights are deplorable. Good for Snowden and his sense of realpolitik, but let's not pretend this is anything more than nation-state theater.

dspillett• 13 years ago

and wish we were more like Russia

We are not saying we think the states should be more like Russia, well I aren't at least, we're pointing out the hypocrisy of the Powers That Be state-side.

They publicly chant "our way is better, what you are doing it wrong" but when their way doesn't work or otherwise becomes inconvenient they are perfectly happy to quietly use the techniques and policies they deride when others use them.

Russia doing many more bad things than the US is not justification for the US doing one thing we consider wrong.

I can't say I see anyone who is in the right in all this:

* I can see the national security argument having some validity so Snowden is culpable for releasing state secrets. He was trusted with information, he abused that trust (for reasons he and many others consider morally correct, but that morality issue does not mean it wasn't an abuse of trust).

* But what he released was details of the states doing something that they promised they were not doing, something that they deride oppressive states for. Whether Snowden's actions are right or wrong does not alter the fact the powers that be over there are both liars and hypocrites. They have abused the trust of their people.

* Russia is only taking part in this little game to wind up people it (or perhaps more specifically, Putin) feels the desire to wind up. They don't care one way or the other for Snowden specifically nor that the US is explicitly spying on its own people.

drone2• 13 years ago

Even Russians get it... Why don't more Americans get it?

Get what?

A large group of the American people are upset that the NSA was spying on its own citizens. There's a healthy, and sometimes rancorous discussion going on over here. Lawmakers are trying to tighten up laws, the cabinet is defensive, and the populace is arguing amongst its self.

betraying the principles it was once built on...

No, "the country" is not. There seems to be this mythical belief that varies from country to country as to what it "means" to be the United States; even within the United States no one can agree as to what those principles actually are -- so how can someone outside of it be so sure? What have we learned in 200+ years of representative democracy? It hurts, it's hard, we can't always agree, we can't always make up our mind, we struggle to find balance, and when groups of people can make rules sometimes they make absolutely atrocious ones just like individuals do. Along the way, it will look terrible and horrible to outsiders who think they "see the obvious that no one inside of the system sees." Sorry, as an outsider you're not miraculously the only one aware of the truth - you're like that annoying other programmer who is always full of great ideas about how your code should be written, but always seems to gloss over the hard parts.

So, for those countries that romanticized about how utopian the United States must be for decades and decades of some other type of rule, and very recently have been given some semblance of democracy, it must be jarring to see there is no magic pill for the corruption and tyranny they may occasionally live under. But to think that "America has lost its way," it to act like a partisan here. I hear that every day from someone who is griping about some thing they don't like. It's trite at best.

The person who made the statement clearly has no idea as to what the principles of the United States actually are, and instead has idolized them into some inner picture of perfection that never existed.

thuuuomas• 13 years ago

You speak as though you know "what the principles of the United Sates actually are", but much like the maligned "annoying other programmer", you don't mention what these principles might be.

dylangs10307• 13 years ago

You're ridiculous. This comment is a spectacular example of the faulty politicizing and black and white mentality being tossed about willy-nilly since the NSA scandal.

First of all - this is not indicative of Russia. This is just one Russian national giving him a job, and his stated reasons in the press may not be the real reasons why.

Second, Russia gave him asylum yes, but instead of echo chambering your preconceived beliefs about the NSA, why don't you apply the same critical skepticism to news coming out of Russia? Why don't you examine why Russia might want to grant asylum to an American refugee like Snowden instead of just saying, "Oh, they just get it man. They get it."

Third, there isn't anything concrete to get - the NSA isn't an evil, demonic institution sent here as a harbinger of the apocalypse. It's an institution whose abuses were wildly exaggerated and need to be corrected, not something to be burned to the ground. The country would not be better off without the agency in its entirety.

You're just applying this naive sense of cops and robbers to the entire dilemma and not critically examining all the evidence/stories. Your bias allows you to over-criticize one side and over-praise the other.

danenania4• 13 years ago

Sorry, secretly storing and analyzing the private communications and browsing history of everyone on the planet absolutely is evil. Doesn't matter what the reason is.

If you don't understand this, there is something severely wrong with your moral compass.

beloch• 13 years ago

Realistically, I don't think Snowden needs a job. Not for income at any rate. There's no shortage of very wealthy people willing to support him for opposing the U.S. government.

simgidacav3• 13 years ago

Yeah, but there's nothing worse than boredom for a computer guy. And besides, protecting the user privacy is probably something he cares about.

Semaphor• 13 years ago

Yeah, but there's nothing worse than boredom for a computer guy.

If he has no problems getting money, the boredom is easily alleviated by having access to a computer and internet. He could just work for himself.

krrrh• 13 years ago

Aside: the CNN mobile site made it almost impossible to get the address bar to show in Safari or Chrome on iPhone. I've never seen this antipattern on a mobile site before.

nakedrobot2• 13 years ago

Is Putin Russia's Obama, as well?

precisioncoder3• 13 years ago

Sure I guess, after all it's basically just who runs the largest social network in the country. I guess Putin is the Obama of Russia in that he's the man in charge there.

oleganza4• 13 years ago

Excuse me for anarchistic correction here.

None of them is a man in charge. Both of them think of themselves as being "in charge". And maybe some "voters" even support that idea. But that does not change matters for those who didn't vote for or support them (including all foreign citizens). For them, Putin/Obama are just bullies from high school. Most of the time they don't have to do anything with your life, but sometimes their associates in form of judges/cops/army/etc are coming to you and forcing you to do things you don't approve. E.g. sponsoring a war, or "national project", or having your money diluted by inflation or something else.

huhtenberg3• 13 years ago

It's the same douchebag that was making paper airplanes out of real money, throwing them from his office window and then going all ecstatic over people on the ground fighting each other for these planes.

Yeah, it's once in a lifetime opportunity for Snowden. Woo. Hoo.

oleganza4• 13 years ago

I worked with Durov in 2007 and 2008 (making everything for the VK video service; I moved to Paris after getting bored managing 200+ servers in 3 datacenters). He is a brilliant guy, however he's also eccentric. And his brother's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Durov) sysadmin/system programmers team is one of the best in the world as far as I can say.

Unlike Facebook, VK guys are still capable to work in a very small team without hundreds of mediocre outsourced developers.

huhtenberg3• 13 years ago

I don't doubt he is not a usual person, but taking glee at people fighting over money that you throw out of the window is hardly "eccentric". But then 2008 was 5 years ago and people change fast.

iliaznk2• 13 years ago

Don't believe everything you read, first, that guy ('Russian zuckerberg') is a douche known for his freaky escapades like throwing money out of the office's window and watching people fight for them, second.

What is he proud about? That Snowden became a pawn in Putin's game while our own Russian protesters get prosecuted in fake cases? He's just one dumb motherfucker who got rich by stealing the facebook idea.

litemn• 13 years ago

Or you don't know little more about VK and Durov, or you just envy.

Gonzih6• 13 years ago

I know that VKontakte is giving information and even messaging history about people to authorities on the first request. That what was happening in Belarus after election and protests related to "fair" election. People where requested to go to the KGB/Police. In "nice" conversation with "pleasant" people they saw messaging logs from VKontakte, movements history based on mobile phone data and etc. Requests from different country and VKontakte was still giving that information for free.

Good job, Pavel. Talk more about Privacy now.

acqq• 13 years ago

Wouldn't Pavel then rather not offer job to Snowden, knowing that every word from Snowden would be listened by the whole world, and that the whole world would then learn about such actions too?

Gonzih6• 13 years ago

As far as I remember that kind of actions once was officially admitted by Vkontakte. They said something about helping in crimes investigation and etc.

Expeck• 13 years ago

I dont know about that, but I know that he didnt cooperate with Fedaral Security Service:

After mass anti-Kremlin protests broke out in the wake of the disputed December 2011 elections to the Russian parliament, the State Duma, Durov reportedly refused to comply with a request from the Federal Security Service (FSB) to block opposition groups from using the site. There appeared to be no immediate repercussions, but then in April of 2013, Durov was accused of hitting a traffic policeman with his car, with a video of the alleged incident appearing online. On April 16, VKontakte's main offices in central St. Petersburg were searched by police. Durov, who denies even owning a car, fled the country and has not been seen in public since. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavel_Durov

kayoone• 13 years ago

Just a publicity stunt.

beshrkayali2• 13 years ago

The title of this article is typical Americanism...

kome• 13 years ago

So true. Americans (from US) deserve a better and less provincial mainstream media. "Russia's Mark Zuckerberg" is a ridiculous title.

gyardley• 13 years ago

'Owner of Russian social network offers Edward Snowden a job' is pretty clunky, and if you titled the article 'Pavel Durov offers Edward Snowden a job', it would be meaningless for 99.99% of its American readers. The title as it is does a decent job conveying the contents.

Or are Americans to be blamed for not knowing the owner of a social service hardly anyone here uses?

l33tbro• 13 years ago

dang ... i posted this article here 5 days ago. enjoy my karma teawithcarl xD

dylangs10307• 13 years ago

How about instead of stumbling about intellectually like a mob intent on hating the NSA, we set a few things straight:

* This is not indicative of Russia as a collective endorsing or supporting Snowden. One man residing in Russia, a Russian national, offered Snowden a job relevant to his experience. This article says nothing about the public perception of Snowden in Russia. Anything else is supposition. All he has is asylum and a job. Both things can be granted by a huge minority of people in government, of which we do not yet understand their obscured motivations and agendas.

* I don't think we should be praising Russia for this - let's remember Russia is the place where homosexuality is almost scathingly rejected, human rights violations are normal, and freedom of the press is in effect...except when it's not. Yes, they gave Snowden asylum. I wonder what they could gain from that aside from just being a bunch of good guys...come on. This says nothing about the Russian people understanding America's problems, and they are certainly not an ideal to strive towards (nothing against Russians as a people, but a lot of their laws are deplorable by modern standards).

* I wouldn't trust the job, and I wouldn't take it. I wouldn't want any solid association with anyone, high-roller or not, who could be leveraged against me. This is paranoid, but whatever is uncertain about the NSA scandal, it's certain the government (or members thereof) is probably desperate to retrieve Snowden.

* Again, as I have said repeatedly since this all came out - don't let your outrage at the (vastly exaggerated) NSA scandal prevent you from seeing the truth - as a government agency, the NSA is largely beneficial to our country, and we shouldn't seek to disband it. Rather, we should correct its abuses and continue forward. I clearly see the black and white "us and them" mentality being tosses around with the NSA, Russia, Snowden and the U.S. government in the comment threads here and it's misinformed.

insuffi2• 13 years ago

Please note:

1) U.S. is 32nd in the world when it comes to freedom of the press. 2) U.S. is also pro-torture and quite clearly anti-human rights, with their judicial system being just as corrupt as Russia's, if not more(See: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-judge-re...). I can go on and on about Gitmo, overthrowing foreign governments(Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, Gaza strip) et cetera et cetera. U.S. doesn't really have a clean record when it comes to human rights abuses.

The only difference is that the U.S. hides behind "Justice!" propaganda and americans believe it, but everybody in eastern europe knows that Putin is quite clearly against democracy, and he doesn't try to hide it.

I'm not saying that Russia is better, I'm just saying that it's naive to think that U.S. is much better, with its imperialist politics (Assange/Sweden case and forcing a president's plane to land).

dylangs10307• 13 years ago

Thank you for the citations. I agree with you on all points, my point was simply that Russia is not a superlative example either. Both the U.S. and Russia are locked in a murky political limbo with all sorts of controversies, but neither should be a shining example to the other.

Russia has (as other commenters and myself noted elsewhere) historically been against privacy and press freedom when it's inconvenient for them, and has a host of other human rights violations. But you're right, I'm definitely not attacking Russia from a superior position as an American here :)

jbooth• 13 years ago

We didn't throw the Dixie chicks in jail.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pussy_Riot

I mean, the US has tons of problems and what's really disturbing are the trend lines -- seems like liberty peaked somewhere in the mid 70s with the CIA hearings.

But Russia being nicer than the US to US dissidents means nothing -- how do they act towards their own dissidents?

zzzeek• 13 years ago

This article says nothing about the public perception of Snowden in Russia.

Except it does, paragraph eight:

An opinion survey conducted by Russian news agency RIA Novosti shows 51% of Russians back Snowden's decision to leak the NSA information, and 43% were in favor of Russia granting him asylum, according to the Levada Center poll.

(edit: i appreciate the position you're defending here, re: reform vs. abolition, and how that is pretty tricky in this environment. the abolitionists here definitely have some tunnel vision issues going on).

Russia's Mark Zuckerberg offers Snowden a job.

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