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Snowden Seeks Assurance from Norway It Won’t Extradite Him

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Re: Snowden Seeks Assurance from Norway It Won’t Extradite Him

#121

Post by csense »

Even if Snowden gets this assurance from the Norweigans, how can he be sure they're not lying?

E.g. the US tells Norway they should say "yeah sure we won't arrest and extradite you," then go back on their word and arrest him as soon as he enters the country. The US makes some under-the-table bribes or threats to be sure Norway goes along with this scheme.

Something along the lines of "It sure would be a shame if we tanked your economy by making it illegal for US businesses to operate in Norway...those juicy Internet taps Snowden claims we have, well we can't confirm or deny them, but we might or might not know certain delicate things that were said in private by Norwegian politicians, and we might or might not know about certain financial relationships between certain wealthy Norweigans and high-ranking politicians, and it sure would be a shame if the things we might or might not know became public and had unfortunate consequences for your party's political position...now let's talk about how you're going to handle this Snowden situation..."

Also as other posters have pointed out, the US could simply send a CIA team to kidnap or murder him. Norwegian counterintelligence is presumably a lot weaker than Russia's, and their politicians presumably a lot more afraid of the US, so it's probably a lot less risky for the US to run an op like that in Norway than in Russia.

Re: Snowden Seeks Assurance from Norway It Won’t Extradite Him

#122

Post by woodman »

rl3 wrote: post #90
woodman wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That assumes the man did not first violate... My point exactly - your brain skips right over reckless or accidental and goes straight to malice. > ...doesn't absolve Snowden of responsibility. Not my intent, just pointing out the use of the phrase betrayed a thinly veiled hope for some federal pound me in the ass prison time. > ...foreign high-level leadership targets... If you are referring to NATO allies, then I…

> My point exactly - your brain skips right over reckless or accidental and goes straight to malice. No, I was just trying to illustrate that the analogy is absurd given the context. Snowden was not unwitting and made explicit choices that had consequences, regardless of underlying motivation. > Not my intent, just pointing out the use of the phrase betrayed a thinly veiled hope for some federal pound me in the ass p…

> This is actually apples and oranges.

You are making a distinction without a difference here. The ss7 network has been known to be broken forever, and all the carriers sell their customer's historical data - so the Italians could have applied the same technique anywhere in the world.

> ...automated co-traveler inference...

That is exactly what they did, only instead of protecting in real time they ran models after the fact. Real time would actual be easier, because instead of dealing with the carrier - you just poll the ss7 network. There is nothing novel about the tracking methods, the inference, or the combination of the two.

Re: Snowden Seeks Assurance from Norway It Won’t Extradite Him

#124

Post by rl3 »

woodman wrote: post #122
rl3 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My point exactly - your brain skips right over reckless or accidental and goes straight to malice. No, I was just trying to illustrate that the analogy is absurd given the context. Snowden was not unwitting and made explicit choices that had consequences, regardless of underlying motivation. > Not my intent, just pointing out the use of the phrase betrayed a thinly veiled hope for some federal pound me in the ass p…

> This is actually apples and oranges. You are making a distinction without a difference here. The ss7 network has been known to be broken forever, and all the carriers sell their customer's historical data - so the Italians could have applied the same technique anywhere in the world. > ...automated co-traveler inference... That is exactly what they did, only instead of protecting in real time they ran models after t…

NSA's setup isn't simply SS7 though, and it's probably entirely passive at that.[0] They operate on an industrial scale and have every facet down to a science.

Granted, field operatives who carry active cellphones with them while conducting a tail are probably bad at their job to begin with, so you're probably right in that the damage isn't much.

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2013/12/10...

Re: Snowden Seeks Assurance from Norway It Won’t Extradite Him

#125

Post by walrus01 »

rl3 wrote: post #26

Sounds like a great way to get nabbed by a CIA snatch-and-grab operation. Even if his FSB protection plans the field trip and accompanies him, it's still a huge risk. It also provides an ample opportunity for Russia to divest themselves of Snowden should they wish, making the West look bad in the process. Norway's NIS maintains a friendly relationship with U.S. intelligence.[0] NSA documents leaked by Snowden refer t…

there was at one time talk of expanding the 'five eyes' community to seven or nine, countries such as norway, denmark and germany would have been the top candidates for inclusion.

Re: Snowden Seeks Assurance from Norway It Won’t Extradite Him

#126

Post by hnhnhn3 »

dang wrote: post #123
PlzSnow wrote: post #52

If he's so courageous then why doesn't he ever criticise the corrupt totalitarian state of Russia? I really can't imagine why...

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11547298 and marked it off-topic.

Hi dang:

Would you and the HN staff consider disabling captchas on HN when the user is not logged in? Some users read HN over tor, and have to cycle through circuits just to get passed the captcha. HN is read-only when the user is not logged in, so I am not sure what benefit the captcha brings there.

Sorry about replying to a random comment rather than emailing you.

Re: Snowden Seeks Assurance from Norway It Won’t Extradite Him

#127

Post by woodman »

rl3 wrote: post #124
woodman wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is actually apples and oranges. You are making a distinction without a difference here. The ss7 network has been known to be broken forever, and all the carriers sell their customer's historical data - so the Italians could have applied the same technique anywhere in the world. > ...automated co-traveler inference... That is exactly what they did, only instead of protecting in real time they ran models after t…

NSA's setup isn't simply SS7 though, and it's probably entirely passive at that.[0] They operate on an industrial scale and have every facet down to a science. Granted, field operatives who carry active cellphones with them while conducting a tail are probably bad at their job to begin with, so you're probably right in that the damage isn't much. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2013/12/10...

Well it can't be entirely passive for time-sensitive/comprehensive monitoring, because telemetric data won't cross one of their numerous tap points unless the target is roaming or the target's carrier is being queried by a roaming partner (or partner of a partner of a...). I'm sure they've got taps inside of major carriers, but I doubt they're inside every network. Considering how regularly ss7 is abused for criminal/commercial activity, they may not have to do much active probing for intra-network monitoring - but the barrier to entry is so low that it would be silly for them not to front a carrier with direct access. I can accept the excuse that ss7 was designed for a world with a few trusted carriers, but the latest stuff (that isn't even backwards compatible) has the exact same class of security flaws. The only rational explanation for the obviously insecure standard defining LTE RRC connection setup (base station control, no mutual auth, no crypto, identifying info in the clear - often with lat/lon) is intentional design. So the argument that the leak had any operational impact sounds pretty silly to me, but I won't deny that it caused serious embarrassment to people who really don't take criticism well.

Re: Snowden Seeks Assurance from Norway It Won’t Extradite Him

#128

Post by dang »

hnhnhn3 wrote: post #126
dang wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11547298 and marked it off-topic.

Hi dang: Would you and the HN staff consider disabling captchas on HN when the user is not logged in? Some users read HN over tor, and have to cycle through circuits just to get passed the captcha. HN is read-only when the user is not logged in, so I am not sure what benefit the captcha brings there. Sorry about replying to a random comment rather than emailing you.

That's a good suggestion, but IIRC it's Cloudflare that puts those up and we can't configure it differently for logged-in vs. logged-out users.

Re: Snowden Seeks Assurance from Norway It Won’t Extradite Him

#129

Post by tripzilch »

karmacondon wrote: post #43

The US government isn't going to kidnap Edward Snowden at any point. He's too high profile and the press would eventually find out. And I don't think Putin will let him leave Russia unless it would hurt the US in some way. If Snowden really wants to leave, he can probably leave. But the Russian government won't make it easy for him. Snowden should just come home and face the music. He'll probably get a pro bono all-s…

> Snowden should just come home and face the music.

You're calling for a man's certain torture and possible death. What the hell is wrong with you.

Re: Snowden Seeks Assurance from Norway It Won’t Extradite Him

#130

Post by vintermann »

alkonaut wrote: post #112
vintermann wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also a myth that Sweden can't do the same for Assange (although one defended by certain lawyers for political reasons). The courts can only stop extraditions, not non-extraditions. Politicians like to pretend their hands are tied because they would like to blame the bureaucracy for unpopular decisions, but they have full freedom to interpret their own bilateral treaty obligations. If the Norwegian government say…

> The courts can only stop extraditions, not non-extraditions. Not sure what you are implying by that. An extradition is tried in a court (if the person to be extradited does not want to be extradited). The supreme court tries the extradition against the legislation and then hands it to the government for decision [1]. I think you may be thinking about this passage from[1]: "Anser Högsta domstolen att det finns hinde…

If the government can see beforehand that they would not agree to extradition, I think it's just a waste of money to ask the courts whether it would be legal.

There's nothing legally stopping the Swedish government, at best notions of procedural propriety that are not binding. Truth is even so, ministries meddle with the departments - or are accused of it, with varying degrees of reasonableness - all the time. When the case against Assange was revived (the first prosecutor dismissed it in unusually clear terms), that was as I see it far more pernicious meddling than pre-rejecting extradition of a political refugee would be.

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