Mr Snowden is heading for a different venue. He had a tourist visa for Hong Kong, so he couldn’t stay there for long. As expected the Hong Kong legal system didn’t accept the larceny charge as valid, and let him leave.

In as much as many governments, like the UK had already told their airlines not to give Mr Snowden a seat, even before he had been charged with anything, his choice was severely limited. He apparently took a flight to Moscow, which certainly did not have US Air Marshals on board.

He wasn’t in Hong Kong long enough to arrange a visa for Russia, so he will be staying in the airport awaiting another flight to his destination, possibly Ecuador.

There have been suggestions that his moves are making it seem like he is attempting to escape justice. People who think that should ask themselves where they think he would find justice? When it comes to terrorism or ‘espionage’ charges, the US no longer offers due process or a speedy trial. Look at what happened to Jose Padilla or Bradley Manning and then tell me that you believe that Edward Snowden can receive a fair trial in the United States.

This was taken from my front door looking northeast. Just to the left of the trunk of the pear tree in the center, if you look closely, you can see two white posts with orange tops.

They didn’t just install another fiber conduit, they installed a junction of some kind across the street from my house.

This is going into Eighth Amendment territory. Gigabits, possibly Terabits of connectivity in the ground across the street, and I limp along at 1.5 Megabits.

In the Soviet Union most people lived in apartment buildings. On every floor of every apartment building there was an old woman, a ‘grandmother’ [in Russian – Babushka] who sat in the hallway and kept track of all comings and goings. The ‘babushki’ received extra benefits from the KGB to supplement their meager pensions.

Given Zero’s latest ‘national security’ absurdity, I can see them appearing in the halls of all Federal buildings in short order.

Asking every government employee to be an informant [betrayer, blabbermouth, canary, deep throat, double-crosser, fink, grasser, narc, rat, shopper, sneak, snitch, squealer, stool pigeon, tattletale, tipster, turncoat, weasel] on all of their coworkers to stop whistle-blowers, should pretty much destroy ‘unit cohesion and morale’ as the military is wont to say.

The majority of ‘leaks’ come from the White House and Congress, not Federal civil service workers. Maybe if Zero tried to introduce a few of the policies that people actually want and need, and stopped pushing the Republican policies that the majority of people hate, he would have smoother sailing.

Update: Charlie Pierce is going with Orwell’s Big Brother, while others are talking about the Stasi. [Aside: Charlie, tell Ralph Lauren to buy that young woman a good dinner. She looks about ready for an ad on famine instead of denim.]