Snowden asks Putin on live television if Russia spies on its citizens

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/04/17/snowden-putin-question-surveillence/7815957/

by selmnoo • 12 years ago

34 20 12 years ago

mpyne4• 12 years ago

And Putin says no, of course not, that would be strictly illegal and would be unsupported by our society.

Which is, of course, B.S., at least insofar as it's possible to trust government in general with this kind of thing. Remember just a year ago when people were saying we couldn't compare what NSA does to what FSB does, because they're Russia and obviously would spy on their own people?

But the question wouldn't have come up (it appeared on live TV but was pre-recorded) if the answer Putin was going to give wasn't already teed up.... what is Snowden trying to play here with the softball? Surely he can't be meaning to be the fiddle for Putin to play (a similar Reuters article claims Snowden is trying to press on surveillance in other countries, but that makes zero sense whatsoever, pushing too hard on that could only get his asylum revoked...).

emhart• 12 years ago

Perhaps Russian authorities realized the shock value of helping Snowden had worn off and thought it was about time to leverage their position as asylum-granter to pressure him into lobbing the softball?

Avenger42• 12 years ago

But as gatehouse says, it comes back to bite them if it turns out that they were lying and he has proof.

gatehouse• 12 years ago

Now that Putin has clearly said "no", if evidence comes out that they have dragnet surveillance like the NSA, then he is shown to be lying.

This is like how they were able to prove that the NSA was lying in its responses, over and over again after each leak. So when mandarins attempt to say we're having a "great debate" or whatever it is transparent that they are fucking with you.

loceng2• 12 years ago

And he won't give a shit because he's already getting away with other things. We have to start treating the world as a global community. What if Russia was doing this to Canada? Would other countries just stand by to see how badly it escalates or immediately jump in as peace keepers?

Edit: I should clarify and that it isn't "Russia" doing it to anyone, it is Putin and the people in control there.

smsm422• 12 years ago

There's no need for anything to "come out", SORM and SORM-2 are official systems of mass surveillance deployed in Russia and everybody who knows anything about what's going on knows about it. Of course, Putin's words are directed to those that don't know, and these are the overwhelming majority.

XorNot2• 12 years ago

You do realize this is the Russia that publicly and obviously assassinated a critic by a means which left no doubt it could only have been state sanctioned (polonium).

The Russia where its not clear where the FSB ends, the executive begins, and which parts are in fact just the Russian mafia?

It's safe to say Snowden, in so far as he doesn't want to - at minimum - get his asylum revoked - has no choice. At worst Russia, and Putin specifically, are exactly the types to kill him and not tell anybody.

mpyne4• 12 years ago

It's safe to say Snowden, in so far as he doesn't want to - at minimum - get his asylum revoked - has no choice.

Of course he has a choice. The fact that he has not exercised that choice leads me to conclude it's not coercion at all, but that he's willingly cooperating.

brador• 12 years ago

My guess, it's a necessary favor to extend that one year asylum limit Snowden has.

icantthinkofone• 12 years ago

The US also has a law about stalking a particular person and the US, too, must get a court order. So it's even.

"We don't have as much money as they have in the States and we don't have these technical devices that they have in the States," Putin said.

"Ah but when we do....!"

jmsdnns• 12 years ago

I wonder what, if any, effect this will have on those that feel Snowden is a Russian Spy.

Zigurd• 12 years ago

His question was already called a "softball" on this thread. So probably not much.

at-fates-hands• 12 years ago

Well, it is pretty telling Putin says, "Mr. Snowden, you are a former agent, a spy, I used to be working for an intelligence service, we are going to talk one professional language."

Putin is such a master chess player, you always have to dig a LOT deeper every time he says something. A lot of people could say he said it because he thinks / knows Snowden is a spy (the whole Russian spy conspiracy angle: http://rockthetruth2.blogspot.com/2014/01/snowden-was-russia... ), or could just be playing a game with semantics where he's just trying to stoke the ire of the US government. Either way, it's going to reinforce whatever opinion you had of him prior to this.

smsm422• 12 years ago

You don't need to dig deeper, it's completely transparent. Everything Putin says is meant for internal consumption in Russia, where nobody (within 99% margin, Putin doesn't care about a minuscule bunch of geeks who only talk to people like them) knows how NSA or CIA works and can not distinguish between CIA operative and NSA technical contractor. So for them Snowden is a CIA spy, and the fact that CIA spy has defected to Russian side is a welcome reference to the olden times, where the cases of such defectors were celebrates and triumphantly displayed as a proof of the superiority of everything Soviet. There's nothing new and deep here - it is a simple lie that is designed to deceive the uninformed and keep them this way so that they would keep supporting Putin who protects them from CIA atrocities. Any authoritarian thug with quarter a brain does that.

Snowden asks Putin on live television if Russia spies on its citizens

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