Snowden says he'd like to return to Geneva. Edward Snowden has made a public appeal for Switzerland to grant him asylum, saying he would like to return to live in Geneva, where he once worked undercover for the Central Intelligence Agency.

For one, the infamous "dead man's switch" he told Greenwald about:

From Greenwald's La Nación interview:

"He has already distributed thousands of documents and made sure that various people around the world have his complete archive. If something happens to him, these documents would be made public. This is his insurance policy. The U.S. government should be on its knees everyday praying that nothing happens to Snowden, because if anything should happen, all the information will be revealed and this would be its worst nightmare."

His AP interview:

"It's not just a matter of, if he dies, things get released, it's more nuanced than that," he said. "It's really just a way to protect himself against extremely rogue behavior on the part of the United States, by which I mean violent actions toward him, designed to end his life, and it's just a way to ensure that nobody feels incentivized to do that."

His Daily Beast interview:

Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist who Snowden first contacted in February, told The Daily Beast on Tuesday that Snowden “has taken extreme precautions to make sure many different people around the world have these archives to insure the stories will inevitably be published.” Greenwald added that the people in possession of these files “cannot access them yet because they are highly encrypted and they do not have the passwords.” But, Greenwald said, “if anything happens at all to Edward Snowden, he told me he has arranged for them to get access to the full archives.”

His Rolling Stone interview:

"He has built these encryption cells, and made sure that he doesn't have the passwords to them – other people have the passwords," says Greenwald, who has also said the "insurance" archive will only be accessed if something happens to Snowden. Greenwald doesn't say who those "other people" are.

His Guardian column:

That Snowden has created some sort of "dead man's switch" - whereby documents get released in the event that he is killed by the US government - was previously reported weeks ago, and Snowden himself has strongly implied much the same thing. That doesn't mean he thinks the US government is attempting to kill him - he doesn't - just that he's taken precautions against all eventualities, including that one.

...

I don't have access to those "insurance" documents and have no role in whatever dead man switch he's arranged. I'm reporting what documents he says he has and what precautions he says he has taken to protect himself from what he perceives to be the threat to his well-being.

...

[T]he answer about the dead man's switch came in response to my being asked: "Are you afraid that someone will try to kill him?" That's when I explained that I thought it was so unlikely because his claimed dead man's switch meant that it would produce more harm than good from the perspective of the US government.


And here's Snowden's Gellman interview:

Some news accounts have quoted U.S. government officials as saying Snowden has arranged for the automated release of sensitive documents if he is arrested or harmed. There are strong reasons to doubt that, beginning with Snowden’s insistence, to this reporter and others, that he does not want the documents published in bulk.

If Snowden were fool enough to rig a “dead man’s switch,” confidants said, he would be inviting anyone who wants the documents to kill him.

Asked about such a mechanism in the Moscow interview, Snowden made a face and declined to reply. Later, he sent an encrypted message. “That sounds more like a suicide switch,” he wrote. “It wouldn’t make sense.”

/r/worldnews Thread Link - reuters.com