Incredibly Naive or very cunning
I agree... I found his description of Hong Kong as some (ad lib) bastion of liberty frighteningly naive. I guess he wasn't reading all those cables about Hongkie cops snatching Free Tibet T-shirt wearing youths left right and up the middle along the parade route for the Olympic torch, or the gross mandhandling of protestors and reporters during mainland officials' visits to our fair city.
And he's dead-wrong on assuming the Hongkers won't summarily hand him over to the US if requested to. Then I saw an interview with one-time CIA case officer Bob Bear wondering if young Mr. Snowden wasn't some sort of Chinese plant meant to embarrass the US on cyber issues just as Xi Jinping was stepping off his plane for his meet with Barry. According to Bear's interpretation Hong Kong is mainland intelligence's bailiwick and Mr. Snowden's fate is up to the whims of the communists.
We'll soon see. Either way, the information he's released has essentially been public knowledge for several years now for anyone with the slightest interest in the matter. The CIA used a front company as an angel investor for Facebook... so Zuckerberg's comment that FB doesn't "hand-over" user information to the intelligence community is partly correct: he doesn't need to. The intelligence community is seeded inside the company. They don't need anything handed over. They have direct access.
Last edited by Shutterbug; 10th June 2013 at 13:15.