A Thought Experiment: Would the U.S. Grant Asylum to a Man Who Exposed Russia's Spying?

[cali]

<snip>

To me, the U.S. would be foolish to let the Edward Snowden controversy affect its relationship with a nuclear power, or to prioritize Snowden when so many more important issues are at stake.

But I raise Obama's statement and Sullivan's post for a different reason.

Imagine that an employee of a secretive surveillance agency in Russia or China landed at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York, somehow called a press conference, and made the following revelations: that the leaders of his country were secretly gathering up the private data of all Russians or Chinese in previously unknown ways; and that they were also spying on many Americans.

What would be the right thing to do in that situation? Should Obama return the leaker to Russia or China to face charges of revealing classified information, and likely spend the rest of his life in prison? Or would the demands of justice and morality be better served by granting political asylum?

<snip>

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/08/would-the-us-grant-asylum-to-a-man-who-exposed-russias-spying/278436/

[Jackpine Radical]

1. Nice.

[geek tragedy]

2. the leaker would die of plutonium in his coffee before we had to choose nt

[cali]

3. let's assume he would not.

what would the U.S. do?

[geek tragedy]

7. Presumably, the person would get in touch with the US embassy and work something out ahead of time.

But, there would never be such a person in those countries, because everyone there knows that the government spies on all of its citizens with a specific intent of squashing dissent. It would be like someone from Iran whistleblowing by revealing that they are a theocracy.

The more usual course is transactional--give me a visa, help me get my family out, and I'll dish the dirt.

[JoePhilly]

5. Ouch!!

[millennialmax]

6. OH, SNAP!

[Puzzledtraveller]

4. These days, no

[on point]

8. Based on history of asylum for mig pilots I would say in a heartbeat

Empires and bullies don't follow rules of equal standards

[leftynyc]

9. I'm sure we already have

Many are simply called defectors.

[n2doc]

10. If they were Cuban they wouldn't even need that n/t

[Shrike47]

11. I doubt it. Besides, we all know they spy on their citizens. Yawn.

[frazzled]

12. Depends on if it was merely speaking out or ...

if this hypothetical Russian citizen had hacked, stolen, and disseminated actual documents ... hundreds of thousands of them, from the government.

It's possible for someone to "speak out" about a perceived abuse of their government (and something to which they have direct knowledge and are expert) and someone merely absconding with a government's confidential internal workings and exposing them to the world, allies and enemies alike.

I should like to think we would grant asylum to dissidents who speak their minds (the Solzhenitsyns of the world) but cooperate with nations in the latter case. And here's why: hacking, cyberwarfare, and all this kind of technological mischief is a huge problem for all countries right now, even Russia and Venezuela. It will be the new warfare of the future, both for antagonistic regimes and for anonymous "revolutionaries." It's the new world danger, and we can't let some of it slide in the name of dissidence while finding other examples acts of aggression or even terror. We need to find a way to contain the power of technology in order to achieve a stable world order, and that would start with countries cooperating with each other on this front.

Speaking out should be a right for everyone. Hacking is not a human right.