6 ms·

Snowden banned from flying to UK

76 points by yenoham 13y ago

buro9 13y ago
He'd be foolish to come to the UK anyway, we'd extradite him before he'd left the airport.
- gutnor 13y ago
  "liable to costs relating to the individual's detention and removal'' should they allow him to travel. According to the Home Office's website that charge would be £2,000" Being a little bit cynical, but 2000 GBP seems closer to the cost of shipping him to the US than the cost of detaining him.
  - smelendez 13y ago
    Even if they just denied him entry and/or deported him, it would probably would be back to either where he flew from or where his passport's from. And Hong Kong might not want him back once he's been denied entry to the UK, so to the US he would most likely go.
kryten 13y ago
He'll be fine if he can get to the Ecuadorian Embassy quick enough :) I live in the UK and am utterly disgusted at the pieces of shit that act in our name. You can't vote them out as it's a bipartisan system with two sets of the same ideals. You can't revolt because everyone is too busy staring at Simon Cowel's nefarious trash pumped through our telescreens. You can't speak up because it's illegal. Sit, obey, conform.
- ameen 13y ago
  That cracked me up. Is Assange expected to die in that embassy?
  - kryten 13y ago
    At the moment, yes. His only other options are: 1. Get from the building to a diplomatically immune car and out of the EU. Not going to happen: the fuzz will snag him the moment he steps out of the door. 2. Wait for a politically sympathetic party is voted in and the extradition rules are changed. Not going to happen: people are too stupid to vote for anything other than "the big two" and if they did, they won't change policy or America will go all "Fuck Yeah" on our arses. 3. Wait for the whole thing to be uncovered publicly as a fucking massive international political scam and he is pardoned. 4. Hope that Kurzweil was right, upload his conscious mind to a machine with OpenSSH and SCP himself overseas. I reckon (3) is most likely.
    - aptwebapps 13y ago
      I'd add: 5. He finally gets stir crazy enough to attempt to sneak out and gets collared or just decides to take his chances in Sweden. 6. Ecuador gets sick of him and kicks him out (maybe after a change of leadership). And I think 5 is likelier than 3.
      - potatolicious 13y ago
        I feel like 6 is likely to happen before anything else. His presence is a net negative for Ecuador, I can't see it being very popular that they have a highly wanted individual hanging around the house all day.
      - gaius 13y ago
        Swedish jails are actually very humane; the irony is he would have gotten more sunlight, fresh air, exercise and probably better food too, if he had just surrendered a year ago.
        kryten 13y ago
        Until they extradite him to the US that is...
- theklub 13y ago
  I came up with a crazy idea this morning for an internet based political party that allows its members to vote on all ideas and actions the party will take. I think now is the time for something like this. We need to make it happen.
  - kryten 13y ago
    Could be right. If you could text your vote in, most of the UK could even manage to have an opinion between the adverts in the X-Factor and their next cigarette.
  - nly 13y ago
    Good distributed voting at scale is still an unsolved problem. Well, it is if you care about both the integrity of the vote and voter privacy.
  - jpatokal 13y ago
    The Pirate Party has been there and is doing that: http://liquidfeedback.org/mission/ http://liquidfeedback.org/mission/
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
  - Jenk 13y ago
    Be careful on what you wish for. "The strongest argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter." Winston Churchill.
    - kryten 13y ago
      Perhaps we should give people a proportional vote weighted by their intelligence?
      - alexjeffrey 13y ago
        that sounds like a formula for a true intellectually elitist society. The people's opinions should be heard equally if at all.
- znowi 13y ago
  Funny, it sounds very similar to the US :) I wonder why :)
  - kryten 13y ago
    Well same turd, rolled in different glitter to be honest.
hackerboos 13y ago
Surely Snowden knows that there isn't safe harbour in the UK after what happened to Assange?
- mpyne 13y ago
  Though I do agree with your main point, nothing happened to Assange until Sweden asked to have him extradited to complete the charging process.
  - jetti 13y ago
    Which is what the US is already doing with Snowden. It shows what the UK would already do with Snowden if he did go to the UK.
    - mpyne 13y ago
      I'm a bit confused here, even Schneier said that Snowden undoubtedly broke the law, what did you think the U.S. was going to do, especially now that he is talking about leaking details of NSA hacking activities over to China? It's comparatively easy to grant a pardon after extradition for PRISM alone, he's making the rest more difficult.
josscrowcroft 13y ago
"There is no suggestion that he has any intention to try to travel to the UK." Says it all really. Don't waste your time reading this hypey article.
junto 13y ago
I imagine that Snowden is well aware of the UK's 'poodle' relationship.
wilfra 13y ago
I'm not sure if this is a clever or pathetic attempt to try and manipulate the courts in HK, but that's pretty clearly what it is. They are a former English colony, whose courts are based on English law and who presumably hold the opinions of England in very high regard.
DanBC 13y ago
Why on earth would he want to come to the UK? It's [edit] certainly not the place to be if you want privacy. RIPA (regulation of investigatory powers act) has been abused by local council staff spying on public to see if they live within a school catchment area or within an area qualifying for cheap parking. There are other abuses too. We're bringing in a "snooper's charter" - this is just traffic data and not content of calls, but still, it's pretty unpleasant. We had / have "Phorm" - deep packet inspection of customer internet traffic in order to serve ads. The idea of national ID cards had a small number of opponents, but was mostly met with "meh". The thing that actually killed it was the cost to the individual. I'm sure that if they had kept the cost to £30 per person we'd all have ID cards today. In theory GCHQ have strict regulatory oversight. I do know people who work for GCHQ. I never talk to them about work, and they never talk to me about work, but they do say that regulatory oversight is real and true. But we don't have the US concept of "fruit of the poisoned tree" - in the US a wiretap needs a court order, and without that any evidence gained cannot be used in court. That forces cops to actually get the court order, or risk losing cases. In the UK we allow spies to gather this stuff, and police to take action on it, but we don't want it used in court because then it's a matter of public record and thus subject to scrutiny and we leak information about capabilities. I see the benefit in both approaches, but I can appreciate that some people would be horrified with the English approach. We were complicit in torture of innocent, untried, uncharged, soldiers / terrorists / combatants. We have detention without charge (http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/human-rights/terrorism/detention-without-charge/index.php http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/human-rights/terroris...). The UK has about 1% of the world population, but about 20% of the installed CCTV base. Cheshire has a population of 700,000 people (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheshire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheshire) but has over 12,000 CCTV cameras, of which about 500 - 600 are run by public authorities. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/mar/02/cctv-cameras-watching-surveillance http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/mar/02/cctv-cameras-watchi...) We happily ship people to the US under our unbalanced extradition treaty. tl;dr: He'd be nuts to want to come here. {EDIT: Strikethrough [a horrible place to live, and] in response to people below}
- singular 13y ago
  "It's a horrible place to live" Though we have many problems, please speak for yourself and stay off general comments about the country. Your other points are valid and interesting but you really ruin them with your frankly childish comment - just because you, personally find the entirety of the country horrible doesn't mean that is close to the reality of living here or the experience of everybody else.
ck2 13y ago
the notice was not supposed to be seen by the public I am starting to think the people on the other side of "the public doesn't need to know" enjoy their little fantasy world a little too much.
- mtgx 13y ago
  What do they have to hide, if they've done nothing wrong? I think we should ask them this question everytime they try to keep something secret from the public. I don't remember who said it recently, but it's the people who need to know everything their government is doing at all times, not the other way around, with the government knowing everything their citizens do, but keeping everything they do secret. We need to turn this around.
alxbrun 13y ago
As always, the UK merely acts as a vassal to the US.
xutopia 13y ago
This is known as the highest honour you can get just above knighthood.
MRSallee 13y ago
Remember when radio host Michael Savage was banned from the UK? I get the feeling it's not hard to get banned from the country.
- daywalker 13y ago
  Michael Savage is still banned apparently. He was raging about it the other day.
  - biff 13y ago
    I remember when that decision first came down, and his show was playing The Kinks "Living on a Thin Line" into and out of break (the first part: "All the stories have been told / Of kings and days of old, / But there's no England now.") Within a few days, if I recall correctly, he was asking the audience to buy copies of his new book and mail them to whoever it was in England that set the rules in this regard, to send her a message. I'm on the left edge of the political spectrum, assuming that's 2D, but every time Michael Savage was on and I was doing something where I could listen to talk radio I'd tune in. Guy knows how to put on an entertaining show.
jimmithy 13y ago
Could this not be them acting in his best interests? Giving a warning that they will be unable to help him while still looking strong to the Americans?
eliasmacpherson 13y ago
At one time America was England's colony, fancy that.
thehme 13y ago
I hope Edward Snowden is well wherever he goes, even if the UK, but according to "news" reports, he was making a lot of money, so he is probably in a beach somewhere. In any case, hopefully bring the NSA problem to the public eye will encourage the world to be more private and to demand privacy from their govs.
- gaius 13y ago
  Being on the run is incredibly expensive. You will burn money at 10x the rate of normal life. And he's not getting a salary any more (and even so, that salary wasn't too dissimilar from what a sysadmin in SF would get).

76 points by yenoham 13y ago

buro9 13y ago

He'd be foolish to come to the UK anyway, we'd extradite him before he'd left the airport.

gutnor 13y ago
"liable to costs relating to the individual's detention and removal'' should they allow him to travel. According to the Home Office's website that charge would be £2,000" Being a little bit cynical, but 2000 GBP seems closer to the cost of shipping him to the US than the cost of detaining him.
- smelendez 13y ago
  Even if they just denied him entry and/or deported him, it would probably would be back to either where he flew from or where his passport's from. And Hong Kong might not want him back once he's been denied entry to the UK, so to the US he would most likely go.

kryten 13y ago

He'll be fine if he can get to the Ecuadorian Embassy quick enough :) I live in the UK and am utterly disgusted at the pieces of shit that act in our name. You can't vote them out as it's a bipartisan system with two sets of the same ideals. You can't revolt because everyone is too busy staring at Simon Cowel's nefarious trash pumped through our telescreens. You can't speak up because it's illegal. Sit, obey, conform.

ameen 13y ago
That cracked me up. Is Assange expected to die in that embassy?
- kryten 13y ago
  At the moment, yes. His only other options are: 1. Get from the building to a diplomatically immune car and out of the EU. Not going to happen: the fuzz will snag him the moment he steps out of the door. 2. Wait for a politically sympathetic party is voted in and the extradition rules are changed. Not going to happen: people are too stupid to vote for anything other than "the big two" and if they did, they won't change policy or America will go all "Fuck Yeah" on our arses. 3. Wait for the whole thing to be uncovered publicly as a fucking massive international political scam and he is pardoned. 4. Hope that Kurzweil was right, upload his conscious mind to a machine with OpenSSH and SCP himself overseas. I reckon (3) is most likely.
  - aptwebapps 13y ago
    I'd add: 5. He finally gets stir crazy enough to attempt to sneak out and gets collared or just decides to take his chances in Sweden. 6. Ecuador gets sick of him and kicks him out (maybe after a change of leadership). And I think 5 is likelier than 3.
    - potatolicious 13y ago
      I feel like 6 is likely to happen before anything else. His presence is a net negative for Ecuador, I can't see it being very popular that they have a highly wanted individual hanging around the house all day.
    - gaius 13y ago
      Swedish jails are actually very humane; the irony is he would have gotten more sunlight, fresh air, exercise and probably better food too, if he had just surrendered a year ago.
      - kryten 13y ago
        Until they extradite him to the US that is...
theklub 13y ago
I came up with a crazy idea this morning for an internet based political party that allows its members to vote on all ideas and actions the party will take. I think now is the time for something like this. We need to make it happen.
- kryten 13y ago
  Could be right. If you could text your vote in, most of the UK could even manage to have an opinion between the adverts in the X-Factor and their next cigarette.
- nly 13y ago
  Good distributed voting at scale is still an unsolved problem. Well, it is if you care about both the integrity of the vote and voter privacy.
- jpatokal 13y ago
  The Pirate Party has been there and is doing that: http://liquidfeedback.org/mission/ http://liquidfeedback.org/mission/
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- Jenk 13y ago
  Be careful on what you wish for. "The strongest argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter." Winston Churchill.
  - kryten 13y ago
    Perhaps we should give people a proportional vote weighted by their intelligence?
    - alexjeffrey 13y ago
      that sounds like a formula for a true intellectually elitist society. The people's opinions should be heard equally if at all.
znowi 13y ago
Funny, it sounds very similar to the US :) I wonder why :)
- kryten 13y ago
  Well same turd, rolled in different glitter to be honest.

hackerboos 13y ago

Surely Snowden knows that there isn't safe harbour in the UK after what happened to Assange?

mpyne 13y ago
Though I do agree with your main point, nothing happened to Assange until Sweden asked to have him extradited to complete the charging process.
- jetti 13y ago
  Which is what the US is already doing with Snowden. It shows what the UK would already do with Snowden if he did go to the UK.
  - mpyne 13y ago
    I'm a bit confused here, even Schneier said that Snowden undoubtedly broke the law, what did you think the U.S. was going to do, especially now that he is talking about leaking details of NSA hacking activities over to China? It's comparatively easy to grant a pardon after extradition for PRISM alone, he's making the rest more difficult.

josscrowcroft 13y ago

"There is no suggestion that he has any intention to try to travel to the UK." Says it all really. Don't waste your time reading this hypey article.

junto 13y ago

I imagine that Snowden is well aware of the UK's 'poodle' relationship.

wilfra 13y ago

I'm not sure if this is a clever or pathetic attempt to try and manipulate the courts in HK, but that's pretty clearly what it is. They are a former English colony, whose courts are based on English law and who presumably hold the opinions of England in very high regard.

DanBC 13y ago

Why on earth would he want to come to the UK? It's [edit] certainly not the place to be if you want privacy. RIPA (regulation of investigatory powers act) has been abused by local council staff spying on public to see if they live within a school catchment area or within an area qualifying for cheap parking. There are other abuses too. We're bringing in a "snooper's charter" - this is just traffic data and not content of calls, but still, it's pretty unpleasant. We had / have "Phorm" - deep packet inspection of customer internet traffic in order to serve ads. The idea of national ID cards had a small number of opponents, but was mostly met with "meh". The thing that actually killed it was the cost to the individual. I'm sure that if they had kept the cost to £30 per person we'd all have ID cards today. In theory GCHQ have strict regulatory oversight. I do know people who work for GCHQ. I never talk to them about work, and they never talk to me about work, but they do say that regulatory oversight is real and true. But we don't have the US concept of "fruit of the poisoned tree" - in the US a wiretap needs a court order, and without that any evidence gained cannot be used in court. That forces cops to actually get the court order, or risk losing cases. In the UK we allow spies to gather this stuff, and police to take action on it, but we don't want it used in court because then it's a matter of public record and thus subject to scrutiny and we leak information about capabilities. I see the benefit in both approaches, but I can appreciate that some people would be horrified with the English approach. We were complicit in torture of innocent, untried, uncharged, soldiers / terrorists / combatants. We have detention without charge (http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/human-rights/terrorism/detention-without-charge/index.php http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/human-rights/terroris...). The UK has about 1% of the world population, but about 20% of the installed CCTV base. Cheshire has a population of 700,000 people (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheshire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheshire) but has over 12,000 CCTV cameras, of which about 500 - 600 are run by public authorities. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/mar/02/cctv-cameras-watching-surveillance http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/mar/02/cctv-cameras-watchi...) We happily ship people to the US under our unbalanced extradition treaty. tl;dr: He'd be nuts to want to come here. {EDIT: Strikethrough [a horrible place to live, and] in response to people below}

singular 13y ago
"It's a horrible place to live" Though we have many problems, please speak for yourself and stay off general comments about the country. Your other points are valid and interesting but you really ruin them with your frankly childish comment - just because you, personally find the entirety of the country horrible doesn't mean that is close to the reality of living here or the experience of everybody else.

ck2 13y ago

the notice was not supposed to be seen by the public I am starting to think the people on the other side of "the public doesn't need to know" enjoy their little fantasy world a little too much.

mtgx 13y ago
What do they have to hide, if they've done nothing wrong? I think we should ask them this question everytime they try to keep something secret from the public. I don't remember who said it recently, but it's the people who need to know everything their government is doing at all times, not the other way around, with the government knowing everything their citizens do, but keeping everything they do secret. We need to turn this around.

alxbrun 13y ago

As always, the UK merely acts as a vassal to the US.

xutopia 13y ago

This is known as the highest honour you can get just above knighthood.

MRSallee 13y ago

Remember when radio host Michael Savage was banned from the UK? I get the feeling it's not hard to get banned from the country.

daywalker 13y ago
Michael Savage is still banned apparently. He was raging about it the other day.
- biff 13y ago
  I remember when that decision first came down, and his show was playing The Kinks "Living on a Thin Line" into and out of break (the first part: "All the stories have been told / Of kings and days of old, / But there's no England now.") Within a few days, if I recall correctly, he was asking the audience to buy copies of his new book and mail them to whoever it was in England that set the rules in this regard, to send her a message. I'm on the left edge of the political spectrum, assuming that's 2D, but every time Michael Savage was on and I was doing something where I could listen to talk radio I'd tune in. Guy knows how to put on an entertaining show.

jimmithy 13y ago

Could this not be them acting in his best interests? Giving a warning that they will be unable to help him while still looking strong to the Americans?

eliasmacpherson 13y ago

At one time America was England's colony, fancy that.

thehme 13y ago

I hope Edward Snowden is well wherever he goes, even if the UK, but according to "news" reports, he was making a lot of money, so he is probably in a beach somewhere. In any case, hopefully bring the NSA problem to the public eye will encourage the world to be more private and to demand privacy from their govs.

gaius 13y ago
Being on the run is incredibly expensive. You will burn money at 10x the rate of normal life. And he's not getting a salary any more (and even so, that salary wasn't too dissimilar from what a sysadmin in SF would get).