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Secret US flight flew over Scottish airspace to capture Snowden

thenational.scot

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Re: Secret US flight flew over Scottish airspace to capture Snowden

#191

Post by jccc »

tptacek wrote: post #185
jccc wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.aim.org/aim-column/prosecuting-glenn-greenwald/ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/12/peter-king-glenn-gr... https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2013/06/... http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/would_ag_holder_... http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/eric-holder-says-he-... Taken literally from the entire first page on Google: https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=prosecu…

You are not out of bounds asking any of those people to answer for what they said, but please stop asking me to.

With absolutely sincere respect, given your credentials and your role on this forum, I will ask you to answer for what you say when it -- albeit perhaps unintentionally -- entails false innuendo.

Re: Secret US flight flew over Scottish airspace to capture Snowden

#192

Post by grandalf »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #176
grandalf wrote: post #120

If it weren't for the mistreatment of Bradley Manning, I'd consider US Government attempts to capture Snowden somewhat reasonable. If (in hindsight) there had been any high level response acknowledging the inappropriateness of any of the revealed programs, and attempting to fix or impose accountability measures on covert programs, I'd feel reassured that the bad behavior evidenced by the leaked information was an ano…

You should consider that the utter silence to which you refer has an alternative interpretation. Namely that the powerful people have said nothing not because they are afraid, but because they are unconcerned.

This is certainly a logical possibility. We are in the midst of a scary slide toward authoritarianism, and an even more scary slide away from respect for the rule of law.

Re: Secret US flight flew over Scottish airspace to capture Snowden

#193

Post by ThrustVectoring »

slr555 wrote: post #184

The range of a Gulfstream V is about 6500 miles. Given that fact the jet could have easily flown without entering UK airspace at all. The Gulfstream V also has an initial cruising altitude of 41,000 feet with a max of 51,000 feet. 45,000 feet may be high for a commercial jet but the G5 cruises comfortably at that altitude. Given these facts I am not sure why the CIA would create the exposure flying over the UK would…

There's safety restrictions for flight paths - in case of sudden engine failure, you want the plane to be able to glide to an airfield or other inhabited areas that you can get rescued from.

I'm also not familiar enough with air-traffic control rules in the area to be sure, but it looks like you'd have to either pass through Icelandic or Scottish airspace to get to Scandinavia.

Re: Secret US flight flew over Scottish airspace to capture Snowden

#194

Post by vacri »

mc32 wrote: post #183
vacri wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not going to find one magic rule that defines "a country". And I would particularly caution you against using "Does China think you are a country in your own right?" as the measuring stick - they have quite notable differences in this area when compared to others.

With a couple of exceptions, it's fairly straightforward. Is it recognized as a sovereign nation by the UN, does it issue passports, does it control import and export of goods, does it enter into international treaties? Yes, I know we have people in Arizona who claim to be sovereign and people in places like Texas who want to become their own nation. Thing is, it's only in their view, no external authority recognizes…

"With a couple of exceptions"...

Scotland in particular is one of those exceptions.

There really is no one magic rule that says 'country vs no country' - even what you offered up is a collection of rules, where some rules catch edge cases that other rules don't.

Re: Secret US flight flew over Scottish airspace to capture Snowden

#195

Post by tptacek »

jccc wrote: post #191
tptacek wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not out of bounds asking any of those people to answer for what they said, but please stop asking me to.

With absolutely sincere respect, given your credentials and your role on this forum, I will ask you to answer for what you say when it -- albeit perhaps unintentionally -- entails false innuendo.

There's no way to accuse someone of lying "with absolutely sincere respect", but at any rate: I've actually answered the question you're pressing me on, clearly, elsewhere on the thread --- in fact, you literally replied to a comment where I did that --- and am no longer interested in this conversation.

Re: Secret US flight flew over Scottish airspace to capture Snowden

#196

Post by ljk »

halviti wrote: post #41
tptacek wrote: post #22

The craft was used in controversial US ‘rendition’ missions This is apparently true, but misleading. The specific plane we're discussing was used by the CIA, but by this point had been transferred to DOJ for some time. It's also misleading to use the word "rendition" as a shorthand for "extraordinary rendition" (which is itself newspeak for "kidnapping"). "Rendition" itself is simply the process of effectuating extra…

To me I could really care less what the plane was used for in the past. A plane flying from anywhere that doesn't file a flight plan is just plain wrong, especially when it crosses foreign airspace.

> * I could really care less*

do you mean "couldn't care less"?

Re: Secret US flight flew over Scottish airspace to capture Snowden

#197

Post by kafkaesq »

tptacek wrote: post #190
kafkaesq wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, some sort of extra- or pseudojudicial rendition, then.

Based on what evidence? Most of the EU will respond to extradition requests and render subjects in response to the crimes Snowden was indicted for.

It's the preponderance of the multiple factors (as cited in the article), along with the immediacy of the flight and the USG's well-documented predilection for pulling similar shenanigans for the sake of far lesser targets, that are sufficient to raise reasonable suspicion.

And it's the immediate dispatch of the plane which strongly suggests that the U.S. wasn't going to wait to go through normal judicial channels to pick up their target.

Re: Secret US flight flew over Scottish airspace to capture Snowden

#198

Post by vonklaus »

oceanstone wrote: post #154
grandalf wrote: post #120

If it weren't for the mistreatment of Bradley Manning, I'd consider US Government attempts to capture Snowden somewhat reasonable. If (in hindsight) there had been any high level response acknowledging the inappropriateness of any of the revealed programs, and attempting to fix or impose accountability measures on covert programs, I'd feel reassured that the bad behavior evidenced by the leaked information was an ano…

> A principled president would have owned up to the misconduct and taken steps to regain the public trust. A principled president would be ashamed of the chilling effect on journalists. There were only two Senators who voted against the "Freedom" Act [1] and also supported defensible net neutrality [2]. One of them is now a presidential candidate. Last May, they wrote: "I voted against the Patriot Act every time, and…

link [1] is down, in fact several links at senate.gov are down. I don't want to say your claim is disingenuous because you did throw a caveat in there, however Rand Paul did not support handing the internet off to the FCC to regulate if we want to call that defensible. He did however publicly rail against the freedom act and tried to fillibuster it though ultimately that failed.

Re: Secret US flight flew over Scottish airspace to capture Snowden

#199

Post by revelation »

mturmon wrote: post #72
doe88 wrote: post #5

Not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker. -- Obama 6/27/13 http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/27/19166043-obama... He's true though, it wasn't jets.

I also enjoyed this tidbit in the article, which I had not known before: "The presidential plane of Bolivian leader Evo Morales was forced to ground in Vienna, after four EU nations refused airspace access on the mistaken belief that Snowden was hidden on board." Can you imagine the feeling of impotence, as a national president, when your plane is forced to land because of such suspicions?

Can you imagine the feeling of impotence, as NSA/CIA/$100b+ industrial extralegal agency, of telling people to stop that plane without having any remote certainty on the information?

It's this somewhat unnoticed fact of the saga: these agencies are really, really terrible at whatever they imagine their job to be. I wonder if there is still some intern at NSA combing manually through log files to figure out what Snowden possibly took.

Re: Secret US flight flew over Scottish airspace to capture Snowden

#200

Post by tremon »

tptacek wrote: post #61
Zigurd wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be having it both ways: Tptacek claims this isn't kidnapping because the plane is a DoJ asset, at least nominally. So it would not need DoD secrecy.

I think I'm saying it isn't kidnapping because there is no evidence at all of an attempt to kidnap Snowden.

At least not a succesful one.
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