Since our last post, Russia has officially acknowledged that Edward Snowden, the NSA leaker, is in the airport of Moscow – still.
The United States does not have an extradition treaty with Russia, and though there have been some extradition exchanges between them before, it appears that Russia is not willing to send him to the U.S. Besides, Russia says, he is not in Russia, has not entered the country, just that he is in the airport.
Wasn’t there a movie with that theme, based also on a real story?
Obama said he is “not going to be scrambling jets” to get Snowden. This refers to a possible flight interception if Snowden is on such a plane. That’s encouraging, and it would also appear unlikely that the U.S. would use other more drastic options, as mentioned in our last post.
Of course, Snowden could have taken a chartered plane, so he might not be in Moscow anymore. In fact, he might be in Ecuador already, as there appears to be document issued by the Ecuadorian embassy that would give Snowden the permission to enter Ecuador.
The NSA, in the meantime, is still active collecting and listening. The media focus is still right now on the man hunt, but with no more breaking news, the interest in the man hunt may fade away, while the discussion about all this spying continues. Even the Britons want some answers what own agency is doing and why. Also, over there in Europe, you have the EU concerned about data collection and privacy.
And, of course, Snowden may have something more in store.
So, the NSA, trying to protect their (and their contractors) multi billion dollar enterprise, are opening up just a little bit, so that the tax payers can see what they are paying for.
Of course, they don’t want to hurt national security, and neither do we. But once in while there are things that can be disclosed to the public at large, and we have been approached to publish some of their material.
So we have decided to create a series of small books called “The NSA diaries“, which we’re going to make available as ebooks on Amazon.
The first of these books contains a transcription of a meeting of Eric Holder with his staff just this past Sunday, when everybody was caught by surprise as Snowden had left Hongkong for Moscow. It gives some insight into what went wrong with the extradition request.
You can order this book here