The Guardian‘s Ewen MacAskill, valiantly soldiering on:
Edward Snowden has set out the case for Barack Obama granting him a pardon before the US president leaves office in January, arguing that the disclosure of the scale of surveillance by US and British intelligence agencies was not only morally right but had left citizens better off.
The US whistleblower’s comments, made in an interview with the Guardian, came as supporters, including his US lawyer, stepped up a campaign for a presidential pardon. Snowden is wanted in the US, where he is accused of violating the Espionage Act and faces at least 30 years in jail.
Speaking on Monday via a video link from Moscow, where he is in exile, Snowden said any evaluation of the consequences of his leak of tens of thousands of National Security Agency and GCHQ documents in 2013 would show clearly that people had benefited…
“I think when people look at the calculations of benefit, it is clear that in the wake of 2013 the laws of our nation changed. The [US] Congress, the courts and the president all changed their policies as a result of these disclosures. At the same time there has never been any public evidence that any individual came to harm as a result.”
Although US presidents have granted some surprising pardons when leaving office, the chances of Obama doing so seem remote, even though before he entered the White House he was a constitutional lawyer who often made the case for privacy and had warned about the dangers of mass surveillance.Obama’s former attorney general Eric Holder, however, gave an unexpected boost to the campaign for a pardon in May when he said Snowden had performed a public service.
The campaign could receive a further lift from Oliver Stone’s film, Snowden, scheduled for release in the US on Friday. Over the weekend the director said he hoped the film would help shift opinion behind the whistleblower, and added his voice to the plea for a pardon…
More than three years on, he appears cheerful and relaxed. He has avoided the fate of fellow whistleblower Chelsea Manning, who is in solitary confinement in the US. Snowden is free to communicate with supporters and chats online late into the night.
His 2.3 million followers on Twitter give him a huge platform to express his views. He works on tools to try to help journalists. He is not restricted to Moscow and has travelled around Russia, and his family in the US have been to visit him.
But Snowden still wants to return to the US and seems confident, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, that it will happen. “In the fullness of time, I think I will end up back home,” he said.
“Once the officials, who felt like they had to protect the programmes, their positions, their careers, have left government and we start looking at things from a more historical perspective, it will be pretty clear that this war on whistleblowers does not serve the interests of the United States; rather it harms them.”…
I know it’s unlikely many people here will change their minds about Snowden, pro or con, but he’s not wrong that even three years’ time has provided a little more perspective. Snowden’s not being held in solitary confinement, being further punished for the ‘rules breach’ of attempting suicide; on the other hand, unlike Julian Assange, he’s done nothing to support the charges of being a Russian puppet and / or sympathizer. (That role, this summer, is being played by an entirely different individual.)
I’d like to think that President Rhymes-with-Bucket Obama will grant Snowden a pardon… after the election, of course. Obama’s done so many history-making things already, having this one additional proof of his wise clemency would be a nice capper for the long term.
RobertDSC-Quad Intel Mac
He can go fuck himself. Traitor.
Walker
He ran and went straight to Russia, which is cyber-warfare central. He is pretty delusional if he thinks this administration is going to help him.
WaterGirl
If President Obama did pardon Snowden, and I have no idea whether he will or won’t, I hope to hell he doesn’t pardon Julian Assange. With every day that passes, Assange shows himself to have an agenda, and it does not serve him well.
Walker
@WaterGirl:
It is pretty clear that Russian intelligence owns WikiLeaks.
Cacti
Go jump up Vlad’s ass, Eddie.
Keith P.
My money (what little I have left, being out of work and all) is on Obama not pardoning him. Obama tends to restrict his pardons to old drug convictions and cases where the person is remorseful for the crime.
WaterGirl
@Walker: I agree with that. It appears that Julian Assange and Edward Snowden and Wikileaks have all begun merging in this little brain of mine. Leaking with an agenda like that is not helping anyone’s case.
SiubhanDuinne
@WaterGirl:
Assange isn’t even a U.S. citizen. Could POTUS pardon him even if he wanted to? (Serious question, I don’t know the legalities or precedents.)
AFAIC, both Assange and Snowden can fuck off. Fuck ’em.
Major Major Major Major
Well, I suppose stranger things have happened.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
Obama’s January 17, 2014 speech:
Emphasis added.
I would be flabbergasted if Obama pardoned Snowden. IMO, there’s no reason for him to even consider doing so.
Cheers,
Scott.
Bobby Thomson
Anne, you’re pretty goddamn naive if you think Snowden isn’t collaborating with the Russian hackers.
amk
snowboy and his fanboys should start looking up the definition of whistleblower. spilling your nation’s secrets to enemies doesn’t qualify as one.
Bobby Thomson
@Keith P.:
That is an extremely safe straight up bet. You could even give odds without breaking a sweat.
Major Major Major Major
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: my thoughts exactly.
Such an action would make me reconsider my position on young Edward, though. Obama is a thoughtful man after all.
schrodinger's cat
How can Snowden be pardoned before he has been sentenced?
OT:
I need your vote, for the next installment of the Weekend Movie Club.
WaterGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: Doubtful. As I said, the lines between Assange and Snowden seem to be blurring for me. I initially had some sympathy for Manning’s decision to expose information, and I surely don’t like how Manning has been treated in confinement and I do think it has to be safe for whistleblowers. But I think you have to blow the whistle responsibly and without personal agendas.
Cacti
@SiubhanDuinne:
He could theoretically pardon anyone facing federal criminal liability, citizen or no. And the precedent for a preemptive pardon was set with Nixon, who hadn’t actually been charged with a crime.
PPCLI
@SiubhanDuinne: Assange is wanted in Sweden in connection with a rape charge. Obama cannot pardon that, even if he wanted to, and I find it hard to imagine that he does.
Cacti
@schrodinger’s cat:
Ask the ghost of Dick Nixon.
Mai.naem.mobile
If Obama won’t pardon Don Siegelman he sure as hell is not going to pardon Snowdon. Also too,fvck Snowden. He could have planned to go to another country but noooo he goes to China and Russia. Really? Lay in your hovel and enjoy it. It doesn’t help that he comes across as a pompous prick.
Omnes Omnibus
I see a better case for commuting the remainder of Manning’s sentence.
PPCLI
@Cacti: It goes back farther than that. SCOTUS ruled in 1866, in ex Parte Garland (not that Garland) that pardons could be offered even before legal proceedings occur.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@SiubhanDuinne: a quick glance at Wiki suggests the US is investigating Snowden, but no charges have been brought. The sexual assault charges have to do with Sweden.
At one point I supported a plea deal with Snowden if he provided a full accounting of what he did both at and after the NSA, but now I”m wondering if he has any info worth trading for.
amk
and the guardian moron thinks how many twitternuts ‘follow’ you will get you a pardon?
WaterGirl
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: It’s complicated, but I agree with your assessment. Taking back what I said in #3.
Walker
@PPCLI:
But my understanding is that Assange does not fear the rape charge. If that was it, he would not be living in an embassy. Think about how ridiculously easy it is for men to convince juries of consent.
He fears Sweden extraditing him to the US over WikiLeaks.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
Documentary Now! is starting on IFC…
Cheers,
Scott.
Major Major Major Major
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: we know what he did at the NSA. He asked somebody for their password.
Cacti
@WaterGirl:
Manning also handed over personally identifiable information on over 70,000 people, including US military personnel, and intelligence assets. Way too cavalier about endangering the lives of others.
PPCLI
@Walker: Perhaps not quite as easy in Sweden as elsewhere, but I’m sure you’re right that he is more worried about extradition to the US to face charges related to his Wikileaks activity.
The Dangerman
First, come back and plead guilty and then we’ll pardon you. Promise.
Asshole.
Carlo Graziani
The obvious compromise is not pardon, but a written promise not to charge Snowden under the Espionage Act. The EA is a revolting, dangerous legal insult against democratic governance and civil liberty, which limits evidence and testimony in ways that prejudge the outcome. Having Snowden return to face EA charges is tantamount to kicking him directly into life in solitary without allowing him to make any kind of case for the legality of what he did. It’s an automatic railroading.
There are other statutes that he could be charged under, which would allow Snowden to attempt to show at trial that he was a genuine whistleblower, deserving of some mercy and even gratitude for his actions and his sacrifice. He could easily be tried in this way without any sacrifice to any National Security interest. If the US government had any interest in resolving his case, this is certainly what would happen.
I am morally certain that the US government, up to and including Obama, has no interest in such a resolution. The risk that a court or a jury might acknowledge Snowden’s whistleblower status is not acceptable to the crowd that launched a deliberate war on whistleblowing, set a record for leak prosecutions, and accumulated the worst transparency record of any administration in US history, including Nixon’s. These people believe in the necessity of protecting the Deep State from public scrutiny, and would rather ride razor blade slides than expose it to legal interference from courts, to say nothing of juries. They’d let Snowden rot in Russia first.
aimai
@Walker: Yeah, no.
WaterGirl
@Cacti:
Agreed.
mkro
Forget it. Snowden and Assange made their pact with the Russians, now live with the consequences. Particularly after the enormous rise in Russian hacking ever since Snowden moved to Russia, I highly doubt any POTUS would consider a pardon for this traitor.
Cacti
@Carlo Graziani:
There is no compromise.
Snowden can turn himself in, or he can live as a fugitive in the Russian Federation, or maybe some other authoritarian hell.
Enjoy the borscht, Eddie.
Captain C
@schrodinger’s cat: cf. Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.
Felonius Monk
More likely Obama will pardon those that do the wet work (i.e. termination with extreme prejudice) on Assange and/or Snowden.
redshirt
@Major Major Major Major: Great show.
Villago Delenda Est
Snowden’s selection of a refuge damns him for all time.
Davebo
A pardon would be unprecedented for a person who has not admitted to violation of law and refused to surrender himself to authorities.
Sorry Ed, maybe you can find yourself a Russian mail bride without having to pay the postage.
Omnes Omnibus
@Davebo: Nixon.
different-church-lady
Grading on a curve, are we?
Anne Laurie
@Bobby Thomson:
Snowden is not Assange; from what I’ve seen, the two have pulled apart sufficiently over the last few months that the neoNazis now running Wikileaks are suggesting Snowden is a “deep cover” mole for the CIA.
Which doesn’t mean Putin isn’t manipulating Snowden — or at least pretending he’s doing so. One argument in favor of President Obama issuing a pardon is that Snowden might be less of a celebrity if he were giving TED talks as just another motivational speaker, rather than a glamorous ‘cyberpresence’ robot at media-friendly art exhibits and movie screenings.
There’s not much, we’re told, that Obama can do to help Chelsea Manning, because Manning is a prisoner of the military, not the government. And Assange is a foreign national (apart from being openly hostile to the United States) so FvckThatGuy. But Snowden, IMO, is in the grey area where a small gesture on the President’s part has a major publicity upside (now & historically) and a minor chance of harm to anything other than some partisans’ feelings. It would require Obama to be a better person than most of us are… but that’s one reason among many why he’s the President, and I’m not!
SiubhanDuinne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
But the Swedish sexual assault charges are on Assange, not Snowden.
I agree with Water Girl — Assange and Snowden and Wikileaks and whistle-blowing (and Greenwald and Manning) are all kind of mooshing together in my head at this point.
Joel
@Mai.naem.mobile: The reason why he went to China and Russia is that he would have assuredly been extradited from just about anywhere else.
He will not be getting pardoned.
Anne Laurie
@schrodinger’s cat:
Same way the new President Gerald Ford pardoned ex-President Nixon for all crimes that may or may not have been committed in connection with the Watergate investigation. Some people — including quite a few conservatives — screamed like wounded banshees, but it was legal then and it would be legal now.
bk
Sorry. OT, but NYT vent. From an article on Trump’s “child care plan”. “But in selling his case, Mr. Trump stretched the truth, saying that his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, has no such plan of her own and “never will.” THIS ISN’T STRETCHING THE TRUTH. THIS IS LYING. In just the next paragraph – “Mrs. Clinton issued her plan more than a year ago, and it guarantees up to 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave for a newborn or a sick relative, financed by an increase in taxes on the wealthiest Americans. On Twitter, her campaign posted a link to her plan after Mr. Trump’s remark.” What is wrong with these fucking people???
Sasha
I really don’t understand people who think Snowden isn’t/hasn’t been helping the Russians at the expense of the US. People who, I might add, are normally very clear eyed about what Putin is. Because it is inconceivable to me that the government of Vladimir Putin has opened it’s arms to Edward Snowden without any expectations at all. Just because he doesn’t go on television and announce it to the world doesn’t mean he hasn’t been called to “pay his rent”. It seems naive bordering on delusional to think otherwise.
Anne Laurie
@Omnes Omnibus:
Can the President do that? I thought it had been established that the President has no authority over “military” sentences?
amk
@Anne Laurie: kenyan has been quite unforgiving in all wilful leaks. not.gonna.happen.
Frankensteinbeck
Except for constantly releasing anti-American propaganda in interviews and on Twitter, under the pretense of speaking for the Left. Russian intelligence heavily vets every American press meeting with Snowden. Yes, he’s working for Putin, even if he’s not hacking for him.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Carlo Graziani: I disagree.
Snowden said:
Last I heard, Snowden wasn’t a lawyer. He’s got enough hubris to be the next F. Lee Bailey, though. ;-)
He made his bed and will get to lie in it.
Defendants don’t usually get to choose how they are prosecuted. If Snowden didn’t want to be charged under the “Espionage Act”, then perhaps he shouldn’t have (seemingly) committed espionage under 18 USC 37.
Hasn’t he more or less bragged about violating 18 USC 37§798?
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
hilts
Anne,
I’d like to think that you’ll never write a sentence as silly as this one in the future. Snowden is a scumbag and does not deserve a fucking pardon.
Davebo
@Anne Laurie:
I would ad HW Bush’s pardon of Cap Weinberger “for all the things he didn’t do that I didn’t know about”.
In my mind that was ten times more ballsy than Nixon’s.
Cacti
@Sasha:
No shit. If Snowden didn’t play ball with his host, the best thing that would have happened to him was getting dropped off at the gates of the US embassy.
Anne Laurie
@Adam L Silverman:
Fair enough. Can he get one, given the current “espionage laws”, were he to return without some kind of agreement in advance? Would it be possible to craft such an agreement?
Keith P.
OT Pet Rescue post: Some poor dog spend 7 years stuck in a barn just getting food thrown to it. Horrible.
different-church-lady
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: But if they don’t play ball with this dude, they’re never going to get their PowerPoints back.
Helen
tl;dr fuck him. Melania Trump’s lawyer up on Lawrence.
Peale
I’ve never quite understood the anger that he fled to Russia and tried to go to China. Seems fairly rational to me. There aren’t THAT many countries that would be capable of protection. Regardless, I very much doubt that Obama will be pardoning him, so its a moot speculation. He had freedom before and used it unwisely. As far as I can tell he’s hardly suffering now. I’m not interested in his fate.
Anne Laurie
@Sasha:
What Putin wanted and what Putin got from Snowden are not necessarily the same. As I said in another comment, having Snowden literally under Putin’s physical control is maybe not the best tactic for protecting America’s secrets… much less its image.
Splitting Image
@Cacti:
You can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs. That said, it would be morally wrong to suggest that heroes like Assange and Snowden ought to be the ones that get broken. The privilege of dying for the Revolution belongs to others.
Fuck Snowden. And fuck his supporters too. For all the oxygen he’s taken up over the past few years, he didn’t reveal much about the U.S. security apparatus that wasn’t already well known to anybody paying attention. And his revelations haven’t done anything to shift the media narrative towards anything like “Maybe the Patriot Act wasn’t such a good idea.” (In fairness, that’s not entirely Eddie the Insignificant’s fault.) The Bush regime still gets a complete pass for everything they did and the bobbleheads obsessed with Clinton’s email server can’t even be bothered to note that Powell and Rice did the exact same thing when they were in her position.
I’m also damned if I can see any difference between Snowden arguing that his prosecution is unconstitutional and the government should come crawling to him for forgiveness and the Bundy clan arguing the same. Snowden might have a better chance of being acquitted than they do if he had the guts to return home and stand trial, but he doesn’t. So fuck him.
Adam L Silverman
@Anne Laurie: That is all he is entitled to. I have no idea whether he can or cannot get one. That said, you need to think carefully about the phrase I wrote in relation to my stating that you do not know what you are talking about in this regard: “that is all I will say” and why I chose those specific words. I strongly recommend you closely consider the following, which is the last thing I will type on this: I am unable to comment on anything else dealing with this.
Sasha
The president has absolute authority over military sentences. Richard Nixon commuted Lt. Calley’s sentence from life to essentially nothing for the My Lai Massacre. Where it gets fuzzy, I think, is state level charges and sentences.
Cacti
@Sasha:
The President has no authority to pardon state-level offenses.
Frankensteinbeck
Personally, what pissed me off about Snowden was the relentless misrepresentation of his leaks, making them out as far more sinister than the mostly bland actual content.
@Adam L Silverman:
And if you want to erase that because you’re too close to your boundaries, we’ll understand.
Omnes Omnibus
@Anne Laurie: I would be interested in seeing a citation for that. The power to pardon is one of the holdovers from the powers of a monarch that appear in the Constitution. It is a pretty damned broad power.
Davebo
@Anne Laurie: Should I really be charged under the current “child rape laws” just because I state them in quotes?
Seriously Anne.
Miss Bianca
I’d like to think Edward Snowden would end up face-down in a rhymes-with-fuck-it full of water, myself. But maybe I just have a problem with “heroes” who act like cowards.
hovercraft
@Cacti:
I’m all for whistle blowers, but this cavalier attitude that everything should be out in the open, no matter what is stupid. We have a right to know what our government is doing, but there are limits. Something like the drone program being secret is stupid, because if some death ray comes out of the sky and kills people no matter how remote the location of the strike, people will talk about death raining down from the sky. Do we need to know what kind of technology is being used, no, but that there is a new program that can be used to kill people yes. The stealing of information is in of itself not the part that bugs me, it’s the exposure of details of the programs, and the exposure of personnel information. And if you decide to become a whistle blower, you accept a certain amount of risk, you are choosing to break the law for what you believe to be the common good. You may be protected by whistle blower protections, but you may not. You do not run away to an adversarial nation and remain there beyond the reach of your countries laws. If these two jackasses truly believe the causes you purport to believe in you face the music. Chelsea’s treatment has been overly harsh, but she endangered many lives. She at least stood up for what she believes in and is facing the consequences. I would be willing to listen to the pros and cons of pardoning her, Snowden and that other POS never.
Major Major Major Major
@Anne Laurie: good thing Snowden never actually had very many of America’s secrets!
Omnes Omnibus
@Cacti: Correct.
Adam L Silverman
@Frankensteinbeck: I know the boundaries, and what I was alluding to has been reported on in the news media anyway. That said I went ahead and deleted it. You all have fun here, I’m punching out of this post.
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus: I’d go for that before I’d go for a pardon for Snowden.
Cacti
Here’s my suggestion:
Agree not to charge Eddie under the Espionage Act, but only if he agrees that Glenn Greenwald will be his sole legal representation for trial and subsequent appeal. :-)
Anne Laurie
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks.
Davebo
For what it’s worth, Snowden would most certainly get a fair trial should he choose to accept one. He’ll have a legal defense fund that would make OJ”s look paltry and surely the best legal team money can buy.
That will never happen in my opinion because he’s not only guilty but expended a lot of energy himself proving it.
Carlo Graziani
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: I’ll see your $0.02, and raise another $0.02:
In the first place, it is obviously not necessary to be a lawyer, or even have legal training to “reveal criminality”.
Moreover a more accurate description of what Snowden saw, and revealed, was not “criminality” but rather “lawlessness”. Our National Security state makes its own secret law to serve its secret purposes, subject to secret interpretations made by secret interagency committees, adjudicated by secret courts that issue secret decisions. Nothing even remotely like a check on securocratic power exists. As a consequence, it became legal to, say, store metadata from every communication made by any person — whether or not a US citizen — not based on any real public discussion of whether this was a good idea, or of the privacy tradeoffs, but simply because the NSA achieved the capability and wanted to, the DOJ said “Eh, sure”, and the FISA court simply swung its rubber stamp arm.
This is what Snowden saw: consequential decisions, that endanger the liberty of Americans in real, indisputable ways, being made privately, without scrutiny or discussion, protected by secrecy, limited only by technical capability. That’s why I’m personally grateful to the guy: I feel that he was spying on my behalf as a citizen, against the clearest and most present danger to our liberties, the National Security secret state.
Finally, the Espionage Act is a scandal and a menace, and treating it as just another statute to be mindful of trivializes the extreme danger that it presents in this age of perpetual war and governance by National Security secret committees. People who care about liberty should concern theirselves with its abolition, not with securing compliance.
OK, maybe $0.06.
Anne Laurie
@Major Major Major Major:
On this, I think, we can all agree!
Frankensteinbeck
@Adam L Silverman:
Roger. Go with our deepest respect.
Gin & Tonic
@Peale:
And, as Cacti pointed out above, none of those would *continue to provide* protection if he were not useful to them. Putin may be many things, but he is not sentimental. Just as soon as Eddie can no longer pay the rent, he has no value.
geg6
I could not possibly disagree more. He should stand trial. If he’s such a hero, he’ll be acquitted by a jury of his peers. Make the case on a court of law. Otherwise, he’s nothing but a coward. Fuck him. Hope he rots in Moscow. Pardoning him him would lower the president in my eyes.
catclub
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Except those like Citibank, JP Morgan, Wells fargo
Major Major Major Major
@catclub: Dick Cheney, Colin Powell…
Lyrebird
@hovercraft: Hear, hear. When I first heard about WikiLeaks, a lot of the press coverage I read (maybe mostly RawStory?) was so positive, partly from people who want US policy in the near and far east to change. Lots of changes are worth considering, but I did not hear anyone then showing any concern out loud about blowing cover — I mean that not only for Americans, but people in other willing to give the US info, in countries where being too friendly to the US could have very bad consequences. Worse than Valerie Plame needing to change careers, which I thought was bad enough…
Miss Bianca
@Carlo Graziani: Yeah…right. Whatever I may think about the Espionage Act and the state of national security surveillance in this country, I don’t feel like lionizing Snowden. If he doesn’t feel like standing trial, he can rot in Russia and pickle his liver in vodka till he dies.
Davebo
@Gin & Tonic: The cost of maintaining Snowdan is beyond trivial compared to the value he brings, even if he doesn’t provide anything.
He can and most likely will live out his days under Putin or his successor’s protection in a comfortable lifestyle because it is by far the cheapest way to spit in the eye of the US.
Mary G
I’m with most people here. I admire Chelsea Manning for admitting what she did, expressing some remorse, and staying to stand trial. She’s even gotten the government to agree to pay for her surgery, which must be encouraging to other transsexuals who are fighting insurance companies or whatever.
Snowdon strikes me as a reddit dudebro who did what he did for attention and admiration rather than conscience. I could be wrong, it’s not knowable. My instincts tell me he knows the president wouldn’t pardon him, but Trump’s taking up too much attention, so he’s bringing this up to get his name back in the papers.
geg6
@Anne Laurie:
Please explain, exactly, what publicity upside this provides to Obama and his legacy? I can’t wrap my mind around how this benefits his reputation. It would be a major black mark against him with me and I’ve defended almost everything he’s done, even if reluctantly. I’d lose a lot of respect for him and I’d hate to see his presidency, one I worked my heart out for twice, end so ignominiously.
Damien
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize how much context gets lost when information is free to be everywhere and anywhere. When there’s a flood of facts barreling down, it’s easy to have to pick and choose what actually goes in your brain, then suddenly someone describes a narrative to you that incorporates all the pieces, and boom: what should be clear becomes your own personal Rorschach test.
Snowden helped no one by intentionally stripping the context himself when it’s inevitable anyway.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Carlo Graziani: I understand your sincerity, but I believe it is misplaced.
I take it you’ve never worried about being killed by the police for having a broken tail light. :-(
Hyperbole doesn’t serve the debate very well, IMO.
If you believe the reporting, Snowden got access to a bunch of sensitive information by lying (“I need your password”) and by breaking his oath. He took a mountain of sensitive information, information that he could not possibly fully understand based on his position at BAH, and decided – on his own – that the government should not have or be doing what he thinks it was doing. As Obama said, we cannot have a functioning government that allows even well-meaning (but it’s not at all clear to me that he was well-meaning) people to decide – on their own – to release classified information without legal consequences.
He knew the legal channels to use if he wanted to be a genuine whistle-blower. He could have done so and faced the consequences and asked for protection against prosecution and retaliation. Maybe he tried and was told that he was wrong. I’m sure that happens. But instead of still working within the system, he decided to steal a bunch of stuff and flee to China then Russia.
I would maybe feel that he was misguided if he filled up some thumb drives and sent them to the House and Senate leadership and oversight committees and then called a press conference. But at least I would feel that he had the actual courage to stand up for his interpretation of what was happening. I feel nothing for him for the way he did it in actuality.
FWIW. YMMV.
Cheers,
Scott.
amk
@srv: Yeah, it really sux that wingnutz like you have to stand up (falsely) for him and fake support him, doesn’t it?
Dadadadadadada
@SiubhanDuinne: Any person charged with a crime under US law is eligible to be pardoned by the Chief Executive in charge of enforcing that law. So state charges/convictions can be voided by a governor, and federal charges by the president. Assange broke federal espionage laws, so he’s eligible to be pardoned, citizen or no.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
In what way, what did Snowdon produce that measures up to say the Pentagon Papers?
Davebo
@srv:
Friends don’t let Friends post comments on the internet while shit faced.
Obviously, you have no friends.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Cacti:
I think that violates the Constitutional prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment for both Snowden and the jury.
justawriter
Didn’t we pardon the guy that outed Valerie Plame? What was his name? Cheney? Something like that.
Carlo Graziani
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: My fear, which I do not believe is in any sense hyperbolic, stems from attempting to answer the question “what would someone like J Edgar Hoover, or Richard Nixon, be capable of accomplishing, had they access to current surveillance capabilities and the current freedom from meaningful oversight, and how much of our democracy would survive that event?”
I think any sensible answer to that question includes the words “police state”.
I also think that if you feel you are relieved from the burden of answering that question by the “benign” nature of the Obama administration — which I would regard as frankly delusional since Obama agrees with his surveillance-obsessed securocrats, they being the last hundred people he talked to on the matter, and he being incapable of forming an opinion that isn’t an average of the opinions around him — then you should at least consider what might happen if a President Trump should get his hands on the surveillance tools available to the Executive, and normalized by Obama. Hoover would seem playful by comparison.
Chris
Fuck him. Let the Russians keep him until the day he croaks, and then let them dump his ashes in whatever sewer they left Philby, Burgess and Maclean’s in.
BobbyK
Wow, just wow. Snowden is a hero who deserves a medal. All you people on here attacking him are no better than the republicans you so smugly assert yourselves better than.
Omnes Omnibus
@justawriter: No. Scooter Libby who worked for Cheney fell on his sword and took an obstruction of justice conviction to keep Cheney clean. Bush commuted his sentence, but did not pardon him – this caused some friction between Bush and Cheney.
schrodinger's cat
I just had an epiphany, Snowden is Martha. I wonder who his Clark is.
Omnes Omnibus
@BobbyK: Give me an argument rather than an assertion. Please. I am deeply uncomfortable with government surveillance policy, but it seems to me that he took and disclosed (and to people who really do not have our best interests in mind) a lot more than info about his, your, and my concern.
Miss Bianca
@Carlo Graziani: I think the point Scott was making is that certain of our citizens are already living in a police state. If you’re getting a gun stuck in your face if you’re being pulled over for a routine traffic stop, you’re living the nightmare already. Sounds like your biggest worries about threats to your life, liberty and pursuit of happiness must be largely theoretical, at this point. If your biggest concern is what the *NSA* might be doing under a Trump administration, may I respectfully suggest that there are bigger, more immediate problems facing your fellow citizens.
WarMunchkin
Snowden is a hero, full stop. Apparently the lot of you chose to forget the Bush presidency and what it wrought, which, you know, fair enough actually.
That said, Obama has been pretty clear that he thinks Snowden is a criminal, as does Hillary, as does the vast majority of the Democratic and Republican parties, so Snowden-defenders are in a distinct and vanishing minority. Eric Holder said that Snowden has provided a public service but should still (presumably) be sentenced.
I don’t get the people who can’t tell the difference between Assange and Snowden – that’s fucked up. You don’t need to have read a 30 volume treatise on espionage law to discern the difference between the two – I think that’s motivated by a tribal desire to treat them the same. One leaked documents to journalists, other put personal data on web for the whole world to see.
ruemara
LOL. I guess that Russian couch is uncomfortable. No.
Mnemosyne
@Carlo Graziani:
As both Scott and Miss Bianca have already pointed out, a certain segment of the American population is already living in a police state based on the color of their skin. I am less worried about a hypothetical police state of the future and more worried about reversing the police state that already exists.
A cop in West Virginia was fired for not shooting a suspect who turned out to have an unloaded weapon. The police state you fear is already here, but you seem to be blind to it.
Omnes Omnibus
@WarMunchkin: Convince me. See above.
EBT
I support pardoning Manning as much as I support not pardoning Snowden.
Villago Delenda Est
@srv: HODOR!
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: @Carlo Graziani: Yeah, my privilege as a middle to upper-middle class, straight, white guy lets me get concerned about this issue. Because other people have other issues to deal with. Snowden took a bunch of shit other than that dealing with domestic surveillance (most of which anyone paying attention to the issue already knew). Why did he take the unrelated info? To whom did he give it? In return for what? What resources is he living on in Russia? Just a few questions I have. Do you have answers? If so, I may have more questions.
Will R
@Anne Laurie: I think you’re right about Snowden. I’m not happy about how he fled to Russia to escape accountability but I consider what he did whistle-blowing and that his actions may be seen more favorably in 10-20 years as we mature on civil liberties in the digital age.
Now as for Assange… let’s just say I wouldn’t shed a tear. He’s trying to get a madman elected as President. That’s the work of an enemy to our democracy.
Chris
@Mnemosyne:
Yep.
The sad truth of our little decentralized states’ rights utopia is that we’re far more likely to come to a sticky end because of what the highly visible Officer Friendly down the street does in broad daylight, than because of what the scary and mysterious Man In Black from Washington does in the shadows.
Villago Delenda Est
@BobbyK: No, he is not. His choices of where to flee tell us all we need to know about him. He’s no hero. If he had stayed in this country and faced trial, and his “revelations” were not so selective, he MIGHT have been regarded as a whistle-blower.
Omnes Omnibus
@Will R: He didn’t just expose lawbreaking. He took a lot of other shit with him.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
I am in the camp that is skeptical that Putin gave shelter to Snowden out of the goodness of his heart. Sure, it’s possible, but is it likely?
Andrew Johnston
What always pissed me off about the Snowden worship, and a few people above brought this up, is all of the false information floating around among the techbros. The actual metadata harvesting program was so boring and complex that it was never going to catch on without someone sexying it up, so you had everyone from the Greenwald self-aggrandizement brigade to the mass media to the motherfucking Daily Show claiming that the NSA had tapped everyone’s phone. It was false, and every time someone with technical knowledge would try to explain the finer points, the usual suspects (some of whom graced this thread with their presence, I see) popped up to scream “APOLOGIST!”
They’re all full of shit. This wasn’t a campaign driven by interest in securing privacy rights, it was driven by a bunch of people wanting to feel morally superior. I’m positive about this, because there were numerous issues that cropped up in the past eight years that few of them felt deserved comment. Here’s the thing – President Obama has a real obsession with data analysis as a solution to the world’s ills, and to that end many Obama Administration policies had some sort of data harvesting element. CCSS was the one everyone complained about, but there was also a big data element in the ACA, something I only know about it because I worked with it for a while. Some of these programs were far more intrusive than anything the NSA even tried to do. Serious Carlo, you think a few metadata points are an existential risk to your rights? Look up all the information they tried to catalog on schoolchildren and who was going to be handling it.
The problem with those issues is not that they were irrelevant, it’s that they weren’t exciting. The Snowden bullshit gave all these idiots a chance to live out some techno-thriller fantasy. Fourth graders and Medicare patients didn’t provide the same self-righteous thrill.
Will R
@Omnes Omnibus: Yes, I don’t think he deserves a pardon for the other stuff but exposing the law-breaking was a public service.
Death Panel Truck
@Anne Laurie: I’m all for Snowden doing as many TED talks as he wants.
As long as they’re from prison.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Carlo Graziani:
If you believe that reincarnated Hoover or Nixon would not be controlled by law, then the law doesn’t matter – right?
I do not believe that the three-letter-agencies have “freedom from meaningful oversight”.
If Congress passes laws that authorizes the NSA to collect signals intelligence outside the USA – meaning every photon that crosses the border can legally be intercepted by the NSA and other agencies, then that law controls what the NSA can legally do, no?
The main trouble I have with the argument you present is that I do not accept that the NSA “makes its own secret laws” and I do not believe that there is some conspiratorial “deep state” (as some call it) in the government that is wanting to collect every scrap of information about me and everyone I care about.
The NSA and the other intelligence agencies is staffed by normal people. They don’t want to be spied on by some huge government bureaucracy, either. They have a budget and people who work there have annual reviews (like normal people) where they have to say what they did during the year. If they’re spying on their neighbors for kicks, they’re not doing their jobs.
If people in power pass bad laws, then we need to vote them out for people who will fix the law. If the people in the NSA and in the other agencies are breaking the laws, then they need to be prosecuted.
Based on the minimal changes to the laws as a result of the Snowden’s “revelations” it seems that most of our representatives in Congress did not think that major changes were needed (compared to, say, the Church Committee reforms).
That’s it for me. ‘night!
Cheers,
Scott.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Also, too, I think that government surveillance is an important thing to discuss and monitor, but worrying about preventing a possible future “police state” when people are being shot to death by our current police in real time seems a little disconnected from reality, to say the least. Let’s multitask.
ETA: In case I’m not being clear, I agree with you.
Omnes Omnibus
@Will R: Okay. Real whistle-blowing is a real thing. I think we more or less agree. To the extent that he was whistle-blowing, he is fine. Beyond that, he is subject to prosecution.
burnspbesq
Dear Mr. Snowden,
Here’s our offer.
Show up, plead guilty, get sentenced, agree to co-operate fully in any investigation and prosecution of co-conspirators (including, but not limited to, Mr. Greenwald and Ms. Poitras), report to serve your sentence. Then, and only then, we can have a conversation about executive clemency.
Very truly yours,
Loretta Lynch
Attorney General of the United States
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: Fourth Amendment issues are everywhere. I have focused on one area, because I am better at arguing it. My background and my particular skills. I don’t deny that other Fourth Amendment issues exist.
mapaghimagisk
In the Orange Universe, this can all go away for $25K or so.
piratedan
well… if he wanted to out the US and its surveillance capabilities, methodologies and reveal the extent, I have a hard time believing that he didn’t have choices…
after all… there are whistle-blower protocols in place and a whole passel of rabid anti Obama GOPers in Congress and the Senate he could have approached…
As evidenced by their behavior over the last 8 years, I find it hard to believe that he wouldn’t have found a sympathetic champion there to keep him protected. Its not as if the GOP was beyond sacrificing any tenets or principals they held in order to make Obama look bad.
The fact that a large amount of the data that he collected had jack shit to do with any domestic surveillance.
Who he took the data to, and where they exchanged that data is also telling…
Post Snowden… the US Senate (while still in the hands of the Democrats brought this shit up for review. Obama even stated publicly, that they (Congress) have to set the limits on how much power he has with these programs. He even introduced oversight into it from what the Bushies had loosely crafted. Wyden had the ball to effect a change in the protocols and procedures used to determine what could be obtained and used.
Did they scrap it… no
Did they tweak it and add oversight… yes
Has anyone else thought about this since… not really when the next year the GOP took over and we’ve had Romper Room government since..
Does Snowden deserve a pardon? How about coming home and facing charges first and then we can discuss pardons.
Elizabeth
@BobbyK: The dude is a traitor.
He broke the law, broke his oaths, and is likely aiding and abetting one of our frenemies to destroy our democracy.
He can go fuck himself with one of Putin’s plutonium pens.
You know who isn’t a traitor? The men and women who reported on Bush’s warrantless wiretapping. Which was grossly illegal, wrong and worthy of whistleblowing. Guess what? They are all around reporting about how much they hate Clinton.
rikyrah
Snowden can come back:
In shackles to an orange jumpsuit.
Starfish
@Anne Laurie: I agree that Snowden would be less exotic if he was back here and not just some cyber-presence.
It sounds like many of the people opposing Snowden’s return cannot draw a clear distinction between him and Assange. I think that Snowden exposed the helicopter shooting of the journalists in Iraq and exposed some of the stuff having to do with the telecoms supporting the NSA in collecting everyone’s data. That allowed some people to challenge data that was being collected on them such as attorneys for people being held in Guantanamo. He is not out there trying to dump data from the Democratic party or sharing malware like Wikileaks is doing.
One interesting thing that I read recently about Russian disinformation involved including some fraudulent data in some of the very large data dumps.
The people who are not anti-Snowden are not just people on the political left. There are some pro-transparency libertarians and tech advocates who realize that if you let one country control the internet, there is not much protecting you from all countries want to control the internet.
Starfish
Kottke has a round up of various organizations that want Snowden back.
jamesjhare
@Carlo Graziani: Snowden is not a whistleblower. He is a criminal and a traitor. Whistleblowers expose illegal actions not legally-authorized intelligence gathering they don’t like. For an example of an ACTUAL whistleblower look up Mark Klein. I think you’ll be quick to understand the differences between Mr. Klein and Mr. Snowden.
Starfish
House Intelligence Committee is unhappy with Snowden.