[bluepen44]

Why 29? Is it easier to resist persuasive measures when you are older or younger than 29? Seems pretty irrelevant to me.

I think it's fairly obvious Obama used "29 year old" to imply immaturity and chip away at his credibility thereby. (esp since he is 30 now, surprising how different "30 year old hacker" sounds than "29 year old hacker"..)

[gojomo]

Snowden surely knows more about various aspects of spycraft and national-security-coercive-techniques than I and many other older people.... both from his Army training and later jobs. But still, extra awareness and wariness comes with age.

Holding other things constant, an older Snowden would be relatively more likely to have...

• ...known what kinds of tricks and pressures (including non-consensual drugged interrogation) he might be subjected to

• ...received official training, initial or refresher, in resistance

• ...planned well for worst-case outcomes, like not being able to stay above-ground in law-and-order Hong Kong, but rather winding up at the mercy of Russia

I don't know for sure whether in general, older or younger people are better at resisting interrogation. I suspect the 'dark arts' for coercing compliance have evolved over a longer term than any person's lifetime, and prey on any one person's limited experience, so I tend to think they'll work better with the younger... but it's an interesting question.

I do suspect an older person would be more likely to protect himself beforehand, for example by not traveling with the most truly US-interest-damaging data, or encrypting data with a better cipher, or even encrypting data in a way he couldn't, alone under coercion, decrypt.