Thursday, June 13, 2013
Is the Snowden Case Headed for a Plea Deal?
I’m guessing that there is more to Edward Snowden’s choice
of Hong Kong instead of Iceland as an intial refuge than a matter of dim sum over skyr, hangikjöt, kleinur,laufabrauð, and bollur.
At the very least, Snowden can keep the global media pot
boiling with interviews to the avid Hong Kong media about exciting China-related
hacking secrets, thereby raising his profile and improving his chances of receiving
genuine due process from the courts in Hong Kong and the United States.
It’s a better way to keep the world engaged in Snowden’s
situation than giving an interview to the Fréttablaðið (Iceland’s
biggest newspaper), watching the international stories slip to the inside page,
and waiting for somebody to kick the door in.
But there’s another card he can play, especially if he doesn’t
want to get extradited to the United States, albeit after a spectacular and
presumably fair trial in Hong Kong, and then spend the rest of his life in a US
prison.
That’s for him to make a deal with the US Government not to
ignite whatever dynamite he’s got on the four laptops he brought to Hong Kong,
in return for brief, easy time in some US penitentiary.
After all, in terms of informing and inflaming the public,
Snowden’s work is pretty much done.
And he’s done it without revealing any operational details.
Maybe the best use of the rest of the information he’s got
is as a “get out of jail” card.
If the USG doesn’t act interested, maybe its attitude will
change after a few more embarrassing tidbits make it into the public domain.
I’ll be interested to see if the US government tries to get
some kind of injunction to get the Hong Kong papers not to report his
revelations and remove Snowden’s public relations megaphone--and diminish his bargaining power.
In the worst case, Snowden could threaten to turn over his
goodies to the PRC if he didn’t get a deal.
That would certainly get Washington’s attention; but it
would be immediately leaked to the press, branding Snowden with the “traitor”
label, destroy any standing he’s been able to accrue, and make him fair game
for whatever skullduggery the US decides to send down the pipe.
I doubt that’s Snowden’s strategy.
But maybe he’s bedeviling the US government with the
unnerving prospect that the longer he stays in Hong Kong, the better the chance is that
he’ll get snatched by PRC security services; and, if he does get arrested prior
to extradition, who knows what will happen to him—and his laptops--during
interrogation?
It’s a dangerous game with no guaranteed outcome, but what
do you expect if you walk out of the United States with a computer full of
secrets?
I think Edward Snowden (and Glenn Greenwald) knew what to
expect, and that’s why he’s in Hong Kong.
Since I think China Matters readers expect some factual meat and potatoes as well as airy speculation, here are some more thoughts on Edward Snowden's Panopticon:
For Some People, Edward
Snowden’s Panopticon Is Already Here
Critics of Snowden’s leak concerning the extent of NSA
surveillance often fall back on the argument that “people who don’t do bad
things have nothing to fear”, i.e. extensive/intensive surveillance isn’t an issue
for non-wrongdoers.
The “Panopticon” issue raised by Snowden (from a Foucault
book) states, on the other hand, that omnipresent surveillance is by its nature
oppressive—for everyone, including the “good guys”.
The gold standard for routine, workaday surveillance used to be the post
office.
Some of us are old enough to remember the halcyon days when
the greatest threat to public safety was the danger that a postal worker would
go off and shoot himself and/or his boss and coworkers and/or the public at
large.
As was reported in the press in the 1990s, a big part of
“going postal” was the stressful work conditions (I’m assuming that some of the
same practices prevail today, with some modifications, but we’ve got bigger homicidal
fish to fry than the post office now and there isn’t as much reporting on the
labor conditions inside the USPS).
A key problem at the post office was rampant Taylorism
(industrial time management).
Workers who worked hard and were efficient were not
rewarded; they got more work and longer routes.
Therefore workers “paced themselves” so they would not conspicuously
exceed their quotas.
Management’s main job was squeezing more work out of the
employees, and a key task was to identify and push the workers who were “pacing
themselves”.
The whole system was underpinned by the surveillance system. It wasn’t just to detect mail theft. It was to catch workers who weren’t giving
what the USPS considered 100%.
In 1998, Traci Hikull profiled USPS operations in northern
California for the San Jose Metro:
Jan Maddux, president of the
1,000-plus-member American Postal Workers Union Local 73, sits in his San Jose
office describing some uncharming but typical managerial tactics. "You're
gone 10 minutes and 30 seconds on your break, and you're AWOL 30 seconds,"
he says. "They'll stand behind you and watch you to make sure you're not
casing [sorting mail] with one hand because that's wasting time, see? So
they'll write you up."
…
"These people work hard. The workload ..." [a
local postmaster] sighs, not finishing the sentence. When asked if he thinks
the pressure to perform makes employees feel like they're being watched for
slipups, he covers his face with his hands and scrubs at it, the same way
people do when they've been staring at a computer monitor too long.
"We're supervising them not to catch them messing up
but to be sure everything is handled properly," he says finally.
"We have all these spotlights on us, and that's why
we've just gotten better and better," Cattivera adds. "And isn't that
the way it should be? Shouldn't we be held accountable to make sure you get
your mail every day?"
…
It's not hard to see why people lose
it working for the post office. The constant surveillance alone would drive
some people over the edge, and the peculiar logic takes care of the rest.
The fact of being under continual surveillance is, by
itself, enough to stress people out.
A study in England concluded that pervasive workplace
surveillance increased stress-related complaints by 7 to 10%:
Monitoring noted by the PSI study includes logging emails
and internet usage, keystroke loggers, recording and timing calls and measuring
shop-till throughput.
Bearing the brunt of the IT scrutiny are administrative and
white-collar employees, such as call-centre staff and data-entry workers, who
complained of an increase in work strain of 10 percent when they are being
watched.
In 2013, the LA Times’ Alana Samuels wrote a two-part piece
on today’s “harsh workplace” and the central role of surveillance. She reported:
Phil Richards used to like his job driving a forklift in a
produce and meat warehouse. He took pride in steering a case of beef with
precision.
Now, he
says, he has to speed through the warehouse to meet quotas, tracked by bosses
each step of the way. Through a headset, a voice tells him what to do and how
much time he has to do it.
It makes the Unified Grocers warehouse in Santa Fe Springs
operate smoothly with fewer employees, but it also makes Richards' work
stressful.
"We're just like human machines," said Richards,
52. "But with machines, they don't care whether you feel good, or if
you're having a bad day."
Technology has eliminated many onerous work tasks, but it's
now one of the factors contributing to a harsher work environment.
Employers are using technology to read emails and monitor
keystrokes, measure which employees spend the most time on social networking
websites and track their movements inside and outside the office. They can see
who works fastest and who talks the most on the phone. They can monitor how
much time people spend talking to co-workers — and how much time they spend in
the bathroom.
…
The sanitation truck that James Brooker III drives in
Raleigh, N.C., has a GPS device that enables his bosses to track his every
move. Co-workers have been disciplined for driving too slowly or for taking an
extra 10 minutes on a lunch break on a tough day, he said.
"You're always worried that you're not doing your job
correctly," he said. "It makes you stressed out, and there's so much
pressure to rush."
…
Employers can read
workers' email, see what websites they visit and read any emails or text
messages stored on work-issued computers or smartphones. In all but six states
(California is one of the exceptions), employers can require employees to
provide their passwords to social networking sites. And in most states,
employers can monitor their employees and are not required by law to tell them
it's happening.
…
Michael Cunningham found this out the hard way.
His employer suspected he wasn't working when he said he was
and put a GPS device on Cunningham's personal car without telling him.
Officials tracked him driving to a diner instead of work, tracked his son
driving to an internship and tracked him during an approved vacation in
Massachusetts. A year later, they fired him, explaining the GPS had confirmed
their suspicions that he was falsifying his time sheets.
With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union,
Cunningham sued his employer, the New York state Department of Labor, but lost.
Judges in New York's Appellate Division ruled that the law does not prohibit
employers from using GPS to monitor employee behavior if it is relevant to
the employee's job performance.
The ruling means that although the government has to get a
warrant to use a GPS device to track criminals, it can legally track its
employees without approval from the employee or a judge, said Corey Stoughton,
the ACLU lawyer on the case.
…
When executives at Dixie Specialty Insurance, a Mississippi
company, noticed a few employees were working more slowly than they once had,
they installed software from Awareness Technology on company computers to monitor
what websites the employees were visiting and block the more popular ones.
Productivity jumped, said Cassandra Phillips, the company's information
technology manager.
Software from another company, SpectorSoft Corp., tracks how
much time employees spend on certain websites and can measure whether it is
"active time" — whether or not the employee is typing or clicking,
for example.
In the private sector, the objective of surveillance is
enhanced productivity.
And it works best, in true Panopticon style, when employees
assume surveillance is universal and pervasive and modify their activity
without the local Bill Lumbergh showing up to give them a nudge.
And then the company can lay off Bill Lumbergh! That’d be
great! Start chewing those Rolaids, Bill!
In other words, control is internalized together with, of
course, the stress.
In private life, I think a similar dynamic will apply as
surveillance becomes more pervasive.
The result will not be enhanced productivity; it will be
enhanced compliance.
We will experience the Stasi-worthy anxiety that our
activities are being continually observed and judged and we may be found
wanting.
The slogan could be: "I must do more; what must I do?"
That’s life in the brave new world of the Panopticon.
Safer? Maybe
More stressful? Definitely
Labels: Edward Snowden, going postal, Panopticon
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
Snowden, Hong Kong Extradition, and A Good Old Fashioned Ratfucking
Looking at the way this post scans on this site and over at Counterpunch, it occurs to me that I should have blockquoted the excerpts from the HRW report to make it clear they were direct quotes and not my paraphrases. So I've done that!
"There's little doubt [reason] to
believe that the Hong Kong authorities would not co-operate with the CIA in
this case," said Peter Bouckaert, who after the fall of Muammar Gaddafi
found faxes in Tripoli indicating that the Hong Kong authorities had
co-operated with the CIA in rendering an anti-Gaddafi Islamist to Libya.
Saadi says he was tricked by the
British authorities into travelling to Hong Kong. While in exile in China in March
2004 he approached British intelligence officers via an intermediary in the UK,
he says, and was told that he would be permitted to return to London, where he
had lived for three years after seeking asylum in 1993. First, however, he
would have to be interviewed at the British consulate in Hong Kong, and would
be met by British diplomats on his arrival.
Saadi flew to Hong Kong with his wife, two sons aged 12 and nine, and two daughters aged 14 and six. They were not met by any British officials but were detained by Chinese border guards over alleged passport irregularities, held for a week and then despatched to Tripoli.
Saadi says he always assumed the British were behind his rendition, "working behind the curtain". Confirmation came when Human Rights Watch, the New York-based NGO, discovered a cache of papers in Moussa Koussa's abandoned office.
Saadi was delivered back to Libya (where he was not put on
trial and was treated very badly in detention for over five years) at the time
of Tony Blair’s trip to Libya a.k.a. the notorious “Deal in the Desert” that
welcomed Libya back into the family of civilized nations.
Further my speculation that Edward Snowden, as a CIA guy,
may have chosen Hong Kong because the PRC would be less eager than most
jurisdictions to assist the CIA in whatever derring-do it might try to practice
on Snowden in Hong Kong, Peter Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch seemed to call
that idea into question by invoking the case of Sami al-Saadi, a leader of the
anti-Gaddafi Libyan Islamic Fighting Group:
The details are quite interesting, especially since the UK recently agreed to duck Saadi’s lawsuit and give him an EP 2.3 million out of court
settlement, presumably so that additional interesting and embarrassing details
would not be raised in open court (in recent UK news coverage, Saadi, who is a big
wheel in the new Libya, received the courtesy of being referred to as a “dissident”
rather than the perhaps more accurate “militant” or, for that matter, “terrorist”,
which is what the Qaddafi government called him).
As the Guardian reported in 2011, the UK administered a good
old-fashioned ratfucking to Saadi—who had lived in the UK under asylum for
three years—when it came time to offer him up as a sacrifice to rapprochement
with Muammar Qaddafi in 2004.
Saadi flew to Hong Kong with his wife, two sons aged 12 and nine, and two daughters aged 14 and six. They were not met by any British officials but were detained by Chinese border guards over alleged passport irregularities, held for a week and then despatched to Tripoli.
Saadi says he always assumed the British were behind his rendition, "working behind the curtain". Confirmation came when Human Rights Watch, the New York-based NGO, discovered a cache of papers in Moussa Koussa's abandoned office.
Seven years later, the UK helped administer a similar
ratfucking to Qaddafi, leading the “humanitarian intervention” pack baying for
his blood. It is interesting to remember
that Qaddafi had dismantled his WMD programs and paid out billions of dollars
to the West to normalize relations; indeed, Qaddafi’s actions were touted as “the
Libyan Model” for voluntary denuclearization.
I hope Kim Jung-un was taking notes (don’t worry; he was).
In the context of the Edward Snowden case, the most
interesting question is: why was Saadi renditioned?
This was not a case of the US secretly snatching some friendless nobody from a cooperative jurisdiction for some extralegal prison
and pummeling beyond the reach of habeas corpus.
The Saadi case was packaged as an Interpol “Red Notice”
request from the relevant Libyan authorities to detain Saadi, who was allegedly
travelling under a forged passport under an alias, for return to Libya for legal
proceedings.
The Hong Kong authorities duly detained Saadi—which is what
they are supposed to do, as members of Interpol (Interpol Red Notices are only
challenged by Interpol HQ if they are deemed blatantly political; certainly
that wasn’t going to happen in this case, since Interpol is very much a US
show), and the logical next step would have been a legal proceeding either to
deport him, or arrange his extradition to the jurisdiction in which his crime
was allegedly committed.
So why rendition? Was
it because the Libyan government did not have an extradition treaty with Hong
Kong? (haven’t been able to confirm this, by the way).
Or was it because time was of the essence?
Saadi was delivered back to Libya (where he was not put on
trial and was treated very badly in detention for over five years) at the time
of Tony Blair’s trip to Libya a.k.a. the notorious “Deal in the Desert” that
welcomed Libya back into the family of civilized nations.
Maybe Qaddafi had demanded the return of Saadi as a
precondition for Blair’s trip.
A pretty safe assumption, as the Guardian reported in 2011:
The operation coincided exactly with
Tony Blair's first visit to Libya. Two days after the fax [from the CIA re
mechanics of the rendition] was sent, Blair arrived to shake hands with
Gaddafi, and said the two nations wanted to make "common cause" in
counter-terrorism operations. It was also announced that Anglo-Dutch oil giant
Shell had signed a £550m gas exploration deal. Three days later Saadi and his
family were put aboard a private Egyptian-registered jet and flown to Tripoli.
Associates of Saadi cannot understand
why his capture and interrogation would hold any great intelligence value for
the British authorities, and are speculating that he may have been a
"gift" from the British to the Gaddafi regime.
Incidentally another anti-Qaddafi Libyan—and another
heavyweight in the post-Qaddafi regime, Abdul Hakim Belhaj—was renditioned to
Libya at the same time.
Maybe the Brits, instead of waiting for the wheels of Hong
Kong justice to grind (and maybe worried that a spirited legal defense in open court of Saadi--a
guy who had actually received asylum and resided in England for three years as
a respected guest—might fatally delay or even prevent his extradition),
arranged for Saadi to be released from HK custody and bundled on a plane to Libya with his
wife and children.
Since the Libyan security organs liaised with Hong Kong’s
principle secretary for security (per the introduction of the CIA) on the
matter of Saadi’s rendition, I assume the Chinese government knew about this,
and acquiesced as a brother in arms in the War on Terror (and as an eager
beneficiary of the lucrative business deals Qaddafi was showering on his
foreign friends).
As for Edward Snowden…
I think “judicial rendition”, as the British courts politely
characterized Saadi’s treatment, might work in the case of the unreported
detention of an anonymous Libyan detainee for the sake of a big geopolitical
win; but I don’t think that the PRC would choose to taint Hong Kong’s legal
reputation before the entire world in order to short circuit deportation or
extradition due process in order to satisfy an Obama administration request for
the early return of Edward Snowden unless the payoff was enormous.
As to whether the PRC’s Ministry of Public Security would offer
the CIA counterintelligence operations in Hong Kong the courtesy of the trade
with respect to Snowden—assistance in locating him, tracking his movements, intercepting
his communications, identifying his contacts, hassling them ad infinitum, covertly
entering his residence to search it, install a bug or a dead girl or a live boy,
drop a eight ton safe on his head a la Wiley Coyote etc.—getting Chinese
cooperation is going to be more difficult and costly than just picking up the phone
and yanking MI5’s chain,especially since the US has spent the last year on an
anti-Chinese espionage jihad.
But with ratfucking, you never know.
The nitty-gritty of Saadi’s case is quite interesting,
especially the part where he is able to get a Chinese visa and hang out there
for a few weeks. Have to think the
Malaysians told the Chinese when they pitched him over the transom. But, if Saadi’s account is accurate, the PRC
did not shop him to England; the wheels came off when his family in the UK told
him to go Hong Kong.
First, Saadi’s recollections, as recorded in the HRW report:
They went to Malaysia, where he hoped to get asylum. He visited a UN office and was given an appointment for a month later. Before then, he was arrested by the Malaysian authorities, who detained him and his family for about 10 days. Saadi asked to be released to go to his UN appointment. The Malaysian authorities said they would, but if he went back to the UN, he would find US officials waiting for him. So he asked to be sent to China, where he had already obtained a visa. “The Chinese visa was so easy for us,” he said. “The Chinese were receiving people from everywhere at the time.” The Malaysians then sent him to China.
From China he attempted to get back to the United Kingdom. Saadi’s friends and family in the UK told him that if he went to the UK embassy in Hong Kong, someone there would be able to help him.[331] When he arrived in Hong Kong, a man he assumed was a UK diplomat was waiting for him when he got off the plane. Instead, he was arrested for purported passport or immigration violations and detained, most of the time with his family. The room was monitored with cameras. During this period he said he overheard two police women arguing: “They were talking in their own language and I didn’t understand everything, but I did hear ‘CIA’ about four or five times, so I expected that something not good was about to happen.” After 13 days of detention, the Hong Kong authorities told him he would be sent back to China.
On or about March 28, 2004, Saadi said he was handcuffed, his legs zip-tied, and he was taken along with his wife and four children onto an empty plane with an Egyptian crew [and renditioned to Libya].
Second, the tale of the documents discovered in an abandoned government building after the fall of Qaddafi:
Saadi’s return appears to have been initiated by the MI6, but once the CIA discovered it was underway, they stepped in to do everything they could to assist. A March 23, 2004 fax from the CIA to Libyan intelligence, found in the folder marked “USA,” states that the CIA has “become aware” that Saadi and his family were being held in detention in Hong Kong and that the Libyans have been working with the British to “effect [his] removal to Tripoli” on a Libyan plane that was in the Maldives.[334] In the fax, the CIA said that it was aware that the Hong Kong special wing had denied permission for the Libyan airplane to land. It went on to explain, “However, we believe that the reason for the refusal was based on international concerns over having a Libyan-registered aircraft land in Hong Kong. Accordingly, if your government were to charter a foreign aircraft from a third country, the Hong Kong government may be able to coordinate with you to render Abu Munthir [Saadi] and his family into your custody.”[335] The CIA even offered to pay for the non-Libyan-registered charter aircraft. “If payment of a charter aircraft is an issue, our service would be willing to assist financially to help underwrite those costs.”[336]
The CIA requested perfunctory diplomatic assurances that Saadi and his family would not be harmed if they provided assistance: “Please be advised if we pursue that option [providing assistance], we must have assurances from your government that Abu Munthir [Saadi] and his family will be treated humanely and that his human rights will be respected.” [337]
In the same fax, the CIA also provided suggestions as to how the Libyans might expedite the process and convince the Hong Kong authorities to cooperate.[338] “[W]e believe that you will need to provide significant detail on Abu Munthir (e.g. his terrorist/criminal acts, why he is wanted, perhaps proof of citizenship)…. Specifically, the Hong Kong government must have a stipulation … that he will not be subject to the death penalty.”[339]
The next day, on March 24, 2004, the Libyan authorities sent a 32-page fax to Hong Kong authorities containing, among other things, a birth certificate, information on why Saadi was wanted, and details on the “crimes and the terrorist activities that [Saadi] committed.” They also promised that the “maximum penalty” for what he had done was “life imprisonment.”[340] (Though later, after being in Libyan custody for five years without charge, Saadi was sentenced to death). The United States also provided the name and telephone numbers for Hong Kong’s principal secretary for security.[341]
After the Hong Kong authorities received this information, it appears they agreed to allow the non-Libyan registered charter aircraft to land. Also in the Tripoli Documents, in the folder marked “USA,” a fax sent just two days before Saadi arrived in Libya contains a cover page marked “Hong Kong Landing Requirements” and two pages stamped “confidential.” It states that in order for the “Non-Scheduled Flight to land in Hong Kong,” the Libyan government has to comply with “certain regulations” so that a “Permission to Land” can be issued.[342] It also confirms, “[i]t is agreed that the subject person will be moved together with his whole family (a total of six persons) on board of the same flight” and recommends a “local Aircraft Handling Agent” for the transaction who needs to be paid in “cash (in US dollars).”[343] Saadi was transferred around March 28, 2004, just a few days after Tony Blair’s historic first visit to Libya on March 25. [344]
Labels: Edward Snowden, Human Rights Watch, Libya, Sami al Saadi, Tony Blair
