WASHINGTON – Doors are closing on Edward Snowden. As he seeks asylum in 21 countries, the U.S. National Security Agency leaker who keeps on leaking is in perpetual limbo.
Russia doesn’t want him.
“Mr. Snowden is a free man,” Russian President Vladimir Putin, the former lieutenant colonel in the KGB, told reporters Tuesday. “The faster he chooses his ultimate destination the better it is for us.” Then he dismissed Snowden as a minor distraction, “the same as shearing a piglet. A lot of squealing but very little wool.”
Indeed, no welcome mat there. Still, Putin, aware of his own strongman image, refused to surrender to heightened U.S. demands for Snowden’s return, noting that the two countries have no extradition treaty.
India delivered an outright “no” to Snowden’s pleas. Nor did Ecuador, Snowden’s original country of choice for asylum, seem eager. While it granted Wikileaks founder Julian Assange asylum at its London embassy, it now appears to have shut the door on Snowden. Its president, Rafael Correa, said Monday that Snowden’s asylum request would be considered only if he could get himself to the South American country.
Only Venezuela opened the door a crack when its president, who is in Moscow on an official visit, said he would “leave the decision to the people” when considering Snowden’s asylum request.
The man who disclosed the extent of covert U.S. monitoring of its citizens’ phone calls and emails, as well as its wiretapping of European Union diplomats and its hacking into China’s government computers, has become at once a pariah and a pawn to be used and abused on the international stage.
For two weeks, he has been trapped in everybody’s worst nightmare: an airport (and a Moscow one at that). The Russians refuse to grant him a visa officially to enter the country because his U.S. passport has been cancelled.
Stateless, he can’t find an airline that will take him anywhere. And even if a willing country grants him safe haven, there is no guarantee it will last. In the end, the FBI and its criminal indictment against Snowden for violating his secrecy oath stands as the only sure-fire welcome mat on offer.
Whatever happens, Snowden is not likely to come out of this well. But neither is U.S. President Barack Obama.
Obama’s reaction to Snowden “is making the administration look ridiculous,” said Fred Cate, a law professor at Indiana University and legal adviser to the U.S. government on privacy law.
“His first day in Africa (Obama) said he is not going to use the military to track down a 30-year-old hacker, thereby giving the impression he wasn’t that worried about it – and the very next day we learn that he has been on the phone with senior government officials around the world trying to deny Snowden a refuge.”
One minute Snowden is merely a tempest in a teapot. The next minute Obama is sending the diplomatic equivalent of the U.S. seventh fleet after him. That’s some teapot.
There’s no question Snowden has damaged the image of the Obama administration, giving the Republicans plenty of ammunition with which to attack his weak leadership. “The way, you know, Putin was conducting himself, he seems to be coming across as a strong man and the president seems to just be flailing out,” New York republican Peter King told Fox News, for instance.
Snowden’s revelations have deflated Obama’s campaign against China as the world’s biggest hacker and greatest threat to the U.S. security and corporate secrecy. They have raised tensions with the EU over the already touchy issue of privacy. And they have discredited Obama’s constant promises of transparency and respect for individual privacy rights.
He also has sparked a public debate on cyber privacy that no amount of policy papers, lawsuits and law review articles has been able to provoke.
His revelation that the U.S. has bugged EU diplomats and hacked into EU communications could make it harder to settle long-standing grievances over privacy and tip the balance towards the EU’s demand for tighter controls, Cate said.
U.S. law does not provide any privacy protection to non-citizens, while EU law does. Yet the two governments craft deals that allow them to share financial data and airline passenger information.
“I think this runs the risk that in the short term the data protection authorities in Europe are going to say, look these deals aren’t valid, they aren’t meaningful if we are not living up to them, if we are conducting surveillance even while we are negotiating the deals,” Cate said.
“The fundamental structure of the (U.S.) law treats the EU and the Taliban exactly the same. They are all lumped into the same category.”
Imprisoned in Moscow’s airport, Snowden still has his laptop and Internet connection. Obama must have a pretty good idea of what Snowden has on that laptop. As an anxious White House tightens the screws, Obama has to be worried about Snowden’s next leak.
wmarsden@postmedia.com
