So…where is Snowden, exactly?

Is he in a refugee camp in Moscow? Do they have those? (I remember once visiting Azeri refugees in a worker's dormitory in Solnichenoye — would they put him there or at the Metropol?)

It turns out that he was never really in the capsule hotel. I suspect he's in some back border guards' office in a room with a cot, fed out of a microwave.

Lifenews has a "obtained a video" from the "sterile zone" at Sheremetyevo.

Lifenews described some of the visitors to the meeting at the airport — Genri Reznik, the veteran civil rights lawyer; Olga Kosterina, a known quantity as advisor to the FSB; Vladimir Lukin, the human rights ombudsman; Tatyana Lokshina from Human Rights Watch, and Anatoly Kucherin, a lawyer,  chairman of the All-Russian Civic Movement Civil Society, and chairman of the Institute for Democracy and Cooperation– and still a member of President Putin's Russian Federation Public Chamber (although others like Ludmila Alexeyeva, chair of Moscow Helsinki Group, have left since Putin's crackdown on human rights).

It's customary to say that only the coopted remain in this presidential chamber, yet there are still some good people in it like Alla Gerber and Boris Altshuler who no doubt believe that their single-issue projects, i.e. against fascism and antisemitism and for children's rights, are worth keeping the access for. Of course, this council now is so huge, and has so many figures in it — everybody from Vladimir Potanin of Norilsk Nickel to lots of Russian Orthodox clergy and Muslim muftis (belatedly Putin thought to expand it to religious figures) — that it's hard to know what it does, exactly, other than provide decoration and distraction.

Lukin, in my view, made the most reasonable statement, suggesting that Snowden should be interviewed as to his refugee status by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. The UN has a representative office in Moscow and there should be a representative of UNHCHR, but if there wasn't, one could come soon enough. Then the UNHCR, after determining if he was not ineligible due to the article in the Refugee Convention that excludes persons who are charged with "serious non-political crimes," he could then in theory be sent to a third country, i.e. Venezuela who would agree to take him. That's often how it works.

Interestingly, despite Human Rights Watch already pre-determining that he was a refugee as a human rights activist discovering "violations" — a function I don't believe they performed legitimately or accurately as they made no findings — Sergei Lavrov was found to give a statement that no application had been received from Snowden at the Federal Migration Service, i.e. to apply directly to Russia as a refugee, i.e. as somebody from Sudan or Turkmenistan might do.

Lavrov said that under Russian law, asylum seekers must first make an
official appeal to the Federal Migration Service. But its director,
Konstantin Romodanovsky, said on Saturday the agency had not yet
received such a request from Snowden.

Maybe because they didn't provide him with the right anketa. Yes, but for that, Snowden would have to be issued a visa to Russia and enter the city of Moscow to go to the FMS and file his petition. Does the FMS do house calls? I don't think so.

"We are not in contact with Snowden," says Lavrov. No, the Foreign Ministry isn't, but other secret agencies may well be. Putin, as we know, has told us that "as strange as it sounds coming from my lips" — indeed! — he doesn't want the troublesome figure of Snowden. I find this utterly disingenuous postering, as Putin knows full well — because he controls them? — that WikiLeaks never leaks on Russia, and that figures like Appelbaum and Poitras, never, ever get involved in criticizing Russia. The notion that continued leaks about America will "harm the relationship with our partner, the US" as Putin put it so lachrymosely just isn't persuasive.

But Lavrov's terse reply from an SCO meeting in Kyrgyzstan today suddenly put a different spin on the story, as rather than "taking Putin up on his offer" as some media and activists have described it — an offer which Snowden may not be able to refuse — which was to accept the status of political asylee if he agreed to make no disclosures — Russian officials are now stalling or pretending to stall and Snowden is in the position of merely making an informal public petition surrounded by various legal types.

Then there's this, according to Lifenews, which of course, often has the news before it happens, as I characterize it, and isn't the best of sources, but here goes:

As has become known by Life News, Vladimir Lukin suggested the American appeal for protection to the UN and Red Cross, however the intelligence agent in reply said that he feared pressure from the USA on these organizations.

Naturally, I'm rolling my eyes at this, because both these bodies feel free to blast the US and Israel, despite even a supposed mandate on the part of the International Committee for the Red Cross not to comment on situations. Just today, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said  — taking the HRW line, and without finding facts — that basically Snowden had a case. Neither fear nor favour of the US there, and it's silly to claim it given the track record of outright anti-Americanism coming from this office on many an occasion.

Following Snowden's own invocation of Article 12 at his press conference, Pillay said:

“While
concerns about national security and criminal activity may justify the
exceptional and narrowly-tailored use of surveillance programmes,
surveillance without adequate safeguards to protect the right to privacy
actually risk impacting negatively on the enjoyment of human rights and
fundamental freedoms,” Pillay said.

“Both Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human rights and
Article 17 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political rights
state that no one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with
one’s privacy, family, home or correspondence, and that everyone has the
right to the protection of the law against such interference or
attacks,” said the High Commissioner.

No one has shown any actual cases of anyone who had arbitrary interference or attacks. A scan of metadata would not be that. Even a mechanical scan of the texts of email itself, as Gmail routinely does to pitch ads, can't be shown to be the violation of privacy that some might imagine if no human agent individually picked out the file and took action on it such as to restrict someone's rights.

And I see my old friend Martin Scheinin, former UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and
protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering
terrorism, who has parsed many a line between terrorism and human rights, standing up to both Russia and the US, has ruled:

“reliable factual information about serious
human rights violations by an intelligence agency is most likely to come
from within the agency itself. In these cases, the public interest in
disclosure outweighs the public interest in non-disclosure. Such
whistleblowers should firstly be protected from legal reprisals and
disciplinary action when disclosing unauthorised information.”

True enough — such information would come from inside the NSA, but is it reliable and factual? We've already seen this "direct access" business blown out of the water. Did violations occur and did the disclosure to the Chinese of US plans to counter Chinese hacking really involve that proper "outweighing" of which Scheinin speaks? Interesting that he was brought out of "retirement" as he is no longer in this position, to make this statement.

I was wondering when somebody would invoke the unwieldly-named UN
Declaration on the Right and Responsibility of Individuals, Groups and
Organs of Society to Promote and Protect Universally Recognized Human
Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. And I didn't have long to wait! Here it is! But Pillay doesn't say how the "defenders' declaration" as it is called — which was a decade in negotiations because countries like Russia kept blocking it — really enables an airtight clause protecting whistleblowers — defectors — who expose state secrets of this nature.

In any event, to avoid any American ire, Pillay has an escape clause:

“Without
prejudging the validity of any asylum claim by Snowden, I appeal to all
States to respect the internationally guaranteed right to seek asylum,
in accordance with Article 14 of the Universal Declaration and Article 1
of the UN Convention relating to the status of Refugees, and to make
any such determination in accordance with their international legal
obligations,” Pillay said

That's really where HRW and she should have left it, without making determinations in advance that there were "alleged large-scale violations of the right of privacy by surveillance programmes"  — of the kind that are routine in Russia, where the Internet is controlled, and China, where the Internet is blocked, and not in the US, where no one has proved this, least of all in a court of law.

Lifenews also took the opportunity to give a platform to Snowden's geek whining, that the US "didn't notify him" of the annuling of his passport and that he "learned it from the media".

Well, the US didn't get a notification of his theft and leakage of classified documents, either, pal; they appear to have learned it from the media, too. I'm not away of any international norm that says a state can't revoke a passport, which is what sovereign power is all about. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Snowden is quoted as saying:

They are making a kind of example of me, so that people did not express their political views if they are against the policy of the United States. On the way here the American ambassador called me and asked to convey that the USA considers me not a whistle-blower, but a law-breaker. I would like those here to express their support of me as much as possible.

Interesting that in this version of the story, it's not a call to Tanya Lokshina, which she faithfully reported, but a call somehow to Snowden himself, personally. Well, it could be a conflation of points.

But it's preposterous to say that because someone who has stolen seriously damaging classified information and exposed it to the enemy that none of us can express our opinions. This is the usual whiny WikiLeaks victimology that first seeks to create victimhood and then whine about the status and imply legitimate prosecution of serious crime is the same thing as blanket political repression of everybody. Not playing. It's an old griefer tactic honed to an art by hackers and Snowden knows that. "OMG you bannanated me and violated my First Amendment rights!". Bring me the waambulance.

So, maybe Edward can turn on his Android and let himself be geolocated so Google could track him, and download FourSquare and maybe do a G+ hangout.

But Dmitry Trenin, never one to buck the Kremlin, has probably called this accurately:

“They cannot keep him here indefinitely, they cannot extradite himself
to the U.S., they cannot send him out of the country so that he can be
picked up,” Mr. Trenin said. “The government at this stage feels they
have to do something to end this stalemate, and the only way to end the
stalemate is to go to a default position — that has always been that he
stays in Russia and observes certain rules.”

The FMS form that seems so mysteriously out of stock at the airport these days will magically appear when Snowden concedes this point.