As to the drone strikes, I was replying to the other commenter who seemed to think drone strikes or some sort or intervention by the US military is a realistic risk Snowden faces. I'd put 'covert CIA assassination' in the same bucket and I don't really know how to put this politely but this is, in my mind, tinfoilhattery.
He's facing a big fat criminal indictment - there are probably people at the DOJ working on it who didn't get to go home this weekend after he started talking about entirely unrelated (to his civil liberties claims) details of US intelligence operations. There's probably nothing the US government would like more than to see him tried on criminal charges in open, civilian court - it's a slam dunk of a case, by this point. There's nothing whatsoever to be gained by killing him.
Once indicted, I think kidnapping is at least a plausible concern - there are documented cases of US Marshals pursuing people wanted by the US courts overseas - with varying degrees of success and with or without the cooperation of local authorities. I can even think of a couple of cases pre-war-on-terror military interventions as part of efforts to apprehend wanted persons. The Achille Lauro hijackers come to mind - and even they, while being actual terrorists and actual murderers, ended up being prosecuted in Italy and serving time in Italian prisons. But again, Snowden could have trivially avoided this entire line of unpleasant possibilities by simply not getting on a plane to Hong Kong.
I don't know how much any of us is in a position to assess the how 'tinfoilhattery' the risk of this is,
its easy to dismiss that as something that only happens in movies, but if it happens in real life, would we be any the wiser?
we do know that Iranian scientists have low life expectancies
couple of thoughts:
1) Snowdon is probably in a better position than us to assess that risk, and seemed to think it was real
2) either way, going public lessened the risk, if he gets in a drunk driving accident next week, or is shot by a mugger, most people won't assume it was coincidence
3) I think Mannings fate is argument enough against staying put
Most European countries have to a smaller or greater extent been complicit in illegal CIA rendition flights over the last decade and/or are extradition-happy or have already made it clear he's not a desirable person to host (UK telling airlines not to allow him onto flights).
Poorer countries or countries with unstable governments provide plenty of options to bribe someone to pick him up and/or drone strikes.
It needs to be somewhere where the US can't interfere without local government support without a massive backlash, and where there's at least a chance the local government or judiciary will hinder or delay an extradition, and there's not many places that fits those criteria and even fewer that fits those criteria and are desirable to go to. I assume, e.g. Iran isn't particularly tempting.
Releasing the information was incredibly risky. He might have chosen what he sees as the least bad alternative on a long list of bad alternatives.
> whatever one may think of the ethics, legality or quality of targeting of the drone strikes, they do target people involved in a violent, armed conflict with the US - 'enemy combatants' as the USG likes to call them.
Or so they say. And use as an excuse for all kinds of "collateral damage" including dead children. I don't see why the leap to going after Snowden if he were to hide in a country where they did not see a large risk of political fallout and didn't have other options, would be so great. E.g. if he were to hide in any country with a rebel movement hostile to the US, it'd be easy to claim he was meeting terrorists. I don't we have any basis for saying anything about what his risk of being taken out is.
I also find it interesting that you write off his risk of being killed by questioning the likelihood of drone strikes. US intelligence agencies have decades of history of "quieter" assassination methods.