Edward Snowden currently lives somewhere in Russia. Rumor has it us somewhere around the dismal and unsighty moscow suburb of Lyubertsy (although I do recommend the Ресторан Центральный is absolutely delicious. Ignore my friend Valeria. She insists the place is cursed, but that’s hardly the restaurant’s fault after she attempted to combine herring, vodka, pelmeni, and what I strongly suspect was industrial solvent before redecorating the toilet bowl.). If you ask the internet, he’s on Ulitsa Kirova near Oktyabrsky Prospekt. If you ask someone else, he’s three apartment blocks over. If you ask me, I just made that all that up to annoy both the CIA and the FSB.
To not mince words about it – I believe the Netherlands should formally offer Edward Snowden, his wife Lindsay Mills, and their children political asylum, long-term protection, and, should they wish to pursue it through the normal legal process, a path to Dutch citizenship. Better still, the offer should come from the European Union as a whole.
The offer should carry no expectations or reciprocal responsibilties. In fact, he should be received with generosity and great respect. Edward Snowden should be entirely free to accept such offer, whatever the precise details, politely ignore it, or formally decline it.
One question remains…. Is he actually free to leave Russia?
Perhaps he is. Perhaps reality is a little less auspicious. None of us outside a very small circle can answer that with confidence. That uncertainty alone is all the more reason enough to extend the invitation. If he is free to choose his own life going forward, the decision to follow his destiny should be his. If he is not, Europe will at least have made its position unmistakably clear. Whatever the case, the Netherlands should clearly and unambiguously state that Snowden and his family would, should and will be safe for both Russian and US intelligence reprisal.
I do have a minor personal stake in writing this.
In 2017 I attended an event in Amsterdam organised by Brunel together with the late Arjen Kamphuis, celebrating Edward Snowden’s work and Oliver Stone’s film Snowden. The guest of honour was William Binney, the former NSA Technical Director who had himself become one of the earliest and most outspoken critics of mass surveillance. The evening was hosted by Ancilla van de Leest. It was an extraordinary gathering of security professionals, hackers, engineers, journalists and privacy advocates. I could with absolute certainty recall identifying at least the infiltrant of the CIA, Russian Intelligence, two Dutch intelligence guys and a stray Mossad Crab. You know how it goes, a lot of stinky ankles.
Only later did I realize it was also the last time I would ever see Arjen Kamphuis before his disappearance in Norway the following year. I remember none of us imagining that evening would become a farewell. One might succumb to conspiracy thinking if you contemplate all this too deeply.
Looking back today, I believe the free world owes Edward Snowden an immeasurable debt of gratitude.
It is difficult to put into words the magnitude of the sacrifice he made. He gave up his homeland, his career, his future, his freedom of movement, and any realistic hope of living an ordinary life. He became a target for calls for assassination, vile slander. He accepted exile so that billions of people could finally understand the scale on which modern governments had come to collect and analyse our digital lives. His disclosures transformed the global debate on privacy. Courts reconsidered surveillance powers. Legislatures were forced to answer uncomfortable questions. Technology companies accelerated the deployment of end-to-end encryption. Citizens became aware that mass surveillance was no longer a dystopian fantasy but a contemporary reality.
Europe frequently presents itself as the global champion of democracy, civil liberties, privacy and the rule of law. So here is an opportunity to demonstrate Europe’s balls have in fact sunk and that these principles are more than words.
Offering Edward Snowden and his family a safe home would cost relatively little, except some yelling from across the Atlantic and well what else is new these days?
The symbolic value of such an offer would be enormous.
To Washington, it would say that democracies should be capable of distinguishing between espionage on behalf of hostile powers and disclosures made in what many sincerely regard as the public interest.
To Moscow, it would say that no human being should become a permanent geopolitical chew toy.
We don’t know in what head space Ed has evolved. Maye he really likes Moscow. Well, that would be a stretch of the imagination. Perhaps he has built a life in Russia that he values and has no wish to leave. …. I would find that incredulous. Lots of Ukrainian drones in Moscow lately.
I sometimes suspect that if Edward Snowden so much as burped in the wrong direction, the Kremlin would glue a Dyson vacuum cleaner into his hands, wrap it in blinking Christmas lights, staple him naked inside a fluorescent inflatable Air Dancer, bolt a pair of blue flashing beacons to his shoulders, tape a beehive to his arse for good measure, and send him wobbling toward the Donbas with a brass band playing Korobeiniki behind him.
The point is not that he should come to Europe. The point is that Europe should ensure he has the genuine freedom to choose.