When I saw a headline that Snowden was going to Cuba via Moscow, I had to read it just to see where in Cuba he was bound, Havana or Guantanamo. Putin can be rather unpredictable. He still might surprise Snowden and us. But probably not.

I so agree with what you have written, especially:

Do you know what I think a person with pro-American, pro-democracy, ideologically pure motives would have done? I think that person would have released the information and then lawyered up. I think that person would have said "I respect my country and I respect the laws of my country. I know I broke them, but I broke them because this is a conversation that needs to happen and I'm willing to make that sacrifice because I believe it is my patriotic duty." 

You're just mad because he's not stopping in Malaysia or whichever backwater you now find yourself in.

It's odd that he skipped Malaysia, actually, since it has the second worst privacy rating in the world, right after China and just before Russia. He could have had a trifecta.

In any case, I'm sure that Snowden will use his tour to publicly denounce surveillance in each of his various host countries.

PS I hope he doesn't check his luggage.

Somewhere, J. Edgar Hoover is smiling, that is if you believe that there was a lesson we should have learned. 

The discoveries went well beyond Hoover, though, and well beyond the FBI. According to the Church Committee reports, every federal intelligence agency had engaged in widespread civil liberties abuses over the previous 30 years, beginning with mass surveillance of domestic political groups and moving on up through the assassination of foreign leaders.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history/2013/06/prism_j_...

Orlando, Snowden has pretty much done what you described--released the information and lawyered up, with the only exception being that he's done it from a physical location outside the country rather than in it.

In terms of legal advice, Assange's team may be an unfortunate choice of prom date, but  "Espionage High" is no 90210.  His options are limited. And in terms of "going out of his way to be a jerk," I don't see it. If he'd really had his wits about him, he'd have hired a publicist to manage his online reputation, but Selena Gomez' team, for example, is busy distancing her from Justin Bieber right now and was too busy to take it on......

Those of us who think the conversation needed to happen shouldn't get too exercised about Snowden himself. He's not running for office or marrying our daughters, so we should focus on the information he provided and not the supposed taint being produced by those who are talking about him.

He he he... "Flew in from Lantau Beach B.O.A.C, didn't get to sleep last night. On the way the paper bag was on my knee, man I had a dreadful flight..." Obviously Snowden going to Cuba had to be true - they said it on the internetz.

Meanwhile, China edged out Mexico in April to become our #2 trading partner - but Snowden must be a traitor for dealing with the Chinese.

(actually the Hong Kong government - shame the US population isn't much up to date on how the HK system works and local level of support for dissidents, though Snowden certainly had some concerns, as HK, British & US governments conspired to send a Libyan guy to Gaddhafi to be tortured, for which the Brits paid 2.2m pounds to settle)

When the US needed help with the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, 2001, we went to our partner of choice - Vladimir Putin (nice downhome visit in Crawford). Within weeks, dollars were flowing freely - some taken in on camel & horseback - and the Northern Alliance was on the attack. You might say Snowden was flying to see an old friend of ours?

Now what might be happening, for those that care, is that it's probably simpler for Snowden to get from Hong Kong to Moscow event free, and it's unlikely that the US would mess with a Russian plane flying to Cuba, which might proceed on to Venezuela, and then to Ecuador. Kinda beats sitting in a small room in the embassy for the next dozen years. I hope Ecuador has llamas - he can at least ride the llamas.

.....Wikileaks Freedom of Speech Haven.....Ecuador?

Human Rights Watch, 9 days ago on press censorship in Ecuador:

Ecuador: End the Assault on Free Speech.  

- It prohibits so called “media lynching” which is defined as “the dissemination of concerted and reiterative information, either directly or by third parties, through media outlets, with the purpose of undermining the prestige” of a person or legal entity or “reducing [their] credibility.” The provision would allow the authorities to order the media outlet to issue a public apology and states that they are also subject to criminal and civil sanctions,

America as a fascist dystopia? Obama as the worst dictator in the world?

So you saw some idiots posting crazy shit on the internet. What's your point in bringing that up? Yes there are some brain dead morons on the far left that are as crazy as the brainless imbeciles on the far right.

American is not a fascist dystopia, that's crazy nonsense.

Obama is not the worst dictator in the world, its incredibly stupid to say that.

And in case you're wondering, Obama did not use a weather control machine to cause hurricane Sandy to win the election as some morons on the far right claim.

Thanks for bringing those comments from other sites here so we can all weigh in. Those are the kind of questions dagblog is here to discuss.

I haven't had time to read all the comments above, so forgive me if someone else pointed out the obvious failure in your logic underpinning your outrage:

"Do you know what I think a person with pro-American, pro-democracy, ideologically pure motives would have done? I think that person would have released the information and then lawyered up."

It was said that Bradley Manning had "pro-American, pro-democracy, ideologically pure motives" in committing his alleged crimes. But it was a couple years before he "lawyered up," not because he was avoiding detention but rather because he was being detained sans habeus corpus and a whole passel of other rights guaranteed him by our Constitution.

That's no small detail, ESPECIALLY when confronting a secretive and immensely powerful "security" apparatus that is being (quite plausibly!) accused of wholesale violation of said rights. (We won't mention War Crimes here, just to keep things simple and domestic where these things seem to count - violations against 'muricans.)

It's laughable to hear the NSA renegades squealing about the Rule of Law. At the very least, they surrendered that argument most fully in their extra-judicial handling of Manning and other whistle-blowers.

Nah, I don't share your outrage, leastwise as it is directed at Snowden. I fear renegades in uniform working in secret with an unlimited budget and other powers of state far more than I fear Snowden or others shining sunlight on their abuses. That's really a pretty simple construct, but it's extremely apt when considering the "damage" Snowden's alleged document dump has created.

Snowden is smart to avoid being thrown into the maw of this lawless surveillance state. They have shown that they can be trusted no more than any of the abusive police states of Cold War East Germany or Hungary or Russia - which I remember being taught were the antithesis of a free and democratic society.

I don't think you have to confuse Obama with a dictator to believe that Snowden did us all a favor and that the world is better off is he escapes prosecution.  I know that some people are critical of him for leaving in the first place, as if there's some value in him taking his lumps in front of a U.S. court.  I think that, given what happened to Bradly Manning, that would be an inadvisable course. Manning's jailers used every procedural trick in the book to harass and torture him during his confinement.  Why should Snowden allow himself to be subjected to that, or worse?

Orlando, I think using the word "traitor" is as bad as using the word hero.  I don't feel betrayed in the least, nor do I imagine that I am less safe now than I was a month ago.  I think I'm better off knowing what my government is doing.  Telling the rest of the world what it already knows, that we are hacking their computers.

As for his travel itinerary.  There are a lot of reasons why China should be considered an enemy of the U.S., but we traded those away for cheap manufactured goods a long time ago.  China is a massive trading partner, not an enemy.  Russia is a major trading partner.  Venezuela... people throughout the U.S. fuel up their cars and buy home heating oil from its state owned energy company.  Cuba?  Cuba is only an enemy of the U.S. because the U.S. has chosen to continue its unilateral sanctions to please a sorry bunch of Florida voters who long for the bygone days of Bautista's dictatorship.

So, I won't worship him as a hero but I won't condemn him as a traitor either.  As for the current situation -- I'm pulling for the underdog and I hope that he escapes prosecution forever and reveals more of what he knows.

So I guess the consensus is that Snowden is a hero, after all?  Let's hear it for the ballsy punk who stole our stuff, saving us all from snoops and spooks and things that go bump in the night. 

Never mind that he slipped out of the country spreading our stuff all over the place, accompanied by equally heroic members of our new Guiding Light, WikiLeaks.  Serves us right!  We NEED to be embarrassed.  We're such idiots, anyway, and we can hardly go down the tubes any more than we have. 

Hey, kids!  Lookin' for a new line of work?  How about helping us take down a big ol' rogue government?  Involves Grand Theft Secrets, but they shouldn't be secrets, anyway.  Could be dangerous, but the rewards are enormous.  Fame and fortune await--but only if you don't get caught.  So be careful out there, tripping around that moral high ground.  And remember--the walls have ears.

Snowden admits that he took the job with Booz specifically to gather information on the NSA programs and to release that information to multiple countries. He is the sole person determining what is released. I will now use the word traitor.

According to Putin, Snowden's goal is to spread information. As Snowden sits in a Russian airport it is very likely that supplied data via a thumb drive to Chinese Land Russian intelligence. He has accomplished his goal of harming the US.

Michael Maiello made an important point earlier in this thread. The NSA, and through it the U.S. government, assures the public, "We don't eavesdrop on American citizens -- just foreigners -- so don't worry." But it's been known for more than a decade that English-speaking allies (Canada, Britain, Australia) freely share their intercepts with the U.S. They issue exactly the same assurances ("We don't spy on Canadians/Brits/Aussies.") Obviously, those claims are meaningless, if everyone is sharing with everyone else. The program used to be called Echelon, and PRISM looks like an updated version. I haven't seen anything Snowden revealed that hasn't been known for years. There were NSA flaps in 2005, 2007 (if I recall correctly) -- including use of intercepts for private commercial advantage -- but the government pooh-poohed concerns, the public outrage died, and the media went back to sleep. That's probably what will happen this time. Look up NSA, look up Booz Allen, look up Verint. You won't find real budgetary info (classified, I guess) but look at the size of their operating centres -- tens of thousands of employees at multiple points across the country. Looking for "patterns." Nothing to worry about -- they're all just "keeping you safe."