Time to Pardon Edward Snowden?

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/blogs/pardon-edward-snowden/

by freddyym • 6 years ago

215 121 6 years ago

Kednicma• 6 years ago

This administration won't do it, simply because Russia has more leverage over Snowden's cultural influence while he's unpardoned and in exile. The next administration won't do it, because Biden was in Obama's administration during Snowden's original actions.

We need to examine the situation not from whether enough time has elapsed to make the wounds heal over, but from whether our government is ready to admit its past mistakes and learn from them.

justasking12345• 6 years ago

How can you assume that next administration willn't be of Trump's but Biden's ?

Supermancho4• 6 years ago

It doesn't matter. That's the point being made. I think the sentiment that Biden (or any other Democrat) will not act because of some associated guilt or support of past Democrat decisions, idiotic. He will not get pardoned because the media (and public at large) don't think it's an issue that is more motivating than other hot-button issues. If there's enough public support, I would be more ready to believe the needle will move under a D than an R.

nwsm• 6 years ago

Because that scenario is irrelevant to the conversation

082349872349872• 6 years ago

One of the rationales for the Ministry of Truth in 1984 was that the government could always do the right thing: as soon as it learned, it needn't take the difficult step of admitting past mistakes, but could instead merely correct them.

trident1000• 6 years ago

The reason he will never be pardoned has nothing to do with if his leaks were merited or not merited (they clearly were as the activities of the govt were proven illegal). Its because then you green light a govt leaker in critical programs you open pandoras box for govt secrets spilling out and you can lose control. Keeping employees/contractors in fear that they will never stop chasing you is a good way to stop people from doing this.

DennisP• 6 years ago

If the precedent is that you have a green light if and only if the government is committing a crime, that seems reasonable to me. Otherwise we're giving government agencies a green light to keep committing crimes.

avmich• 6 years ago

Keeping employees/contractors in fear that they will never stop chasing you is a good way to stop people from doing this.

This is contradicting to the idea of government existing for people and serving people.

If government uses fear to reduce accountability, it needs to be changed.

dustingetz• 6 years ago

"it needs to be changed", as in, someone else should change it but not you

(I am merely pointing out the paradox of inaction. Enacting change is a lot of work, so one must first decide to contribute actual work, then figure out what actual work needs to be done, then do the work and measure the result. Work = force * displacement and if nothing is displaced, no work has been achieved. Rosa Parks wanted change so she did the work. Snowden wanted change so he did the work.)

tshaddox4• 6 years ago

It does contradict that idea, but that idea has long been a farce, so contradictions are not surprising.

lawnchair_larry• 6 years ago

Not if you believe that the people want the government to protect them and they are ok with these programs if they enable the government to do that.

AnIdiotOnTheNet• 6 years ago

I think time has shown that even the people whom the government supposedly exists to serve don't want it to do that. They actively seek to elect and support wannabe dictators, as long as they are dictating things that hurt people they don't like.

jbay8087• 6 years ago

If you only "never stop chasing them" when they reveal legal activities, that mechanism still works fine, and still provides an important check against the government attempting to do illegal activities in secret, including rogue government agencies doing things that they aren't allowed to do by other branches of government.

What if the CIA were wiretapping the president, or the supreme court? Well, that would be illegal wouldn't it? Wouldn't you want a whistleblower to feel like they could safely expose it?

By and large, it's the government that decides what's legal and what's not. Even the Constitution can be amended with enough support. So exposing illegal government activities means you're exposing that a part of the government was doing something that it wasn't empowered to do, by the government. There are multiple branches of government for a reason. When the government is doing something illegal, it means an office of the government has either made a serious legal error, or gone rogue and disregarded its legal responsibilities.

That's a serious problem right?

GekkePrutser3• 6 years ago

What if the CIA were wiretapping the president, or the supreme court? Well, that would be illegal wouldn't it? Wouldn't you want a whistleblower to feel like they could safely expose it?

Yeah you're basically describing Watergate here. And I don't think anyone objected to that being made public. Well except for Nixon :D

IMO Whistleblowing has a place in society as a safeguard against the abuse of power.

HashingtheCode3• 6 years ago

If Assange isn't being pardoned for the nonsensical "crime" of exposing war crimes by the US Government, there is no chance that Snowden will be pardoned. Snowden willingly stole state secrets whereas Assange only published.

Still, when you consider that Snowden is living in Russia, essentially free, and Assange is in a 3.5x2m cell, I don't think Snowden has anything to worry about, except that the royalties from his book will be taken away....but he has his freedom.

https://www.npr.org/2020/10/01/919261319/court-rules-edward-...

chiefalchemist• 6 years ago

As I understand it, the USA isn't after Assange for publishing, mainly because other (friends of the state?) entities have done similar (e.g., NY Times). Assange is being charged with conspiracy to steal said secrets. That is, he was a participant in the "theft." Uncle Sans case isn't focused on the publishing.

Again, as I understand it (which I believe is based on other comments from previous threads on HN).

cryptica• 6 years ago

They should both be pardoned. They committed no crime. The public has the right to know what their governments are doing using their money.

HashingtheCode3• 6 years ago

They have committed no crime

Not true. Assange hasn't committed a crime but Snowden has committed a crime of theft from the NSA; unlawfully retaining a National Security Agency (NSA) documents containing information classified at the TOP SECRET/SENSITIVE COMPARTMENTED INFORMATION (TS/SCI) level.

Let me clarify. What he did in exposing PRISM was fantastic, the people had a right to know, absolutely, but, the act in itself was still stealing. It's no different to any other theft. When you work for a company and you steal, you can be prosecuted.

We can argue from two points; moral and legal. Morally he did the right thing. Legally he did not.

The difference between Assange and Snowden is vast. Assange is a published of information, no different to The Guardian. He did not steal the data he published. Snowden did, as did Chelsea Manning when he stole the known as Cable Gate.

The point in the article is that the OP thinks Snowden should receive a pardon. My point, is that Assange hasn't even been pardoned for his supposed crime of publishing. If Assange hasn't been pardoned for a lesser crime, then what hope does Snowden have of being pardoned for an actual crime of data theft from the NSA?

Another lady stole data from the NSA. SHe is now facing prosecution and 10 years.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/west-virginia-woman-admits-wi...

bobwall• 6 years ago

He sort of has his freedom, if you consider life within Putin's Russia containing freedom.

sgt• 6 years ago

In Putin Russia, freedom has you!

HashingtheCode3• 6 years ago

As far as we know, he is free to travel through all of Russia. That's a lot of freedom

ChicagoDave• 6 years ago

Snowden didn’t just expose national wiretapping. He also exposed international spying capabilities that endangered our people and our allies. If he had not crossed that second line, he’d just be a legitimate whistleblower, but he decided to actively harm the U.S. intelligence community and they will never allow a pardon.

I’d lay odds if he ever steps foot in an unprotected setting, a slip on a banana peel and a fatal head injury wouldn’t shock me.

He’s a traitor. I’m as liberal as it gets and even I think he went too far.

pravda• 6 years ago

Nah. He's a hero.

LatteLazy3• 6 years ago

He couldn't expose one without the other could he?

cloverich• 6 years ago

I remember him specifically saying he thought spying on allies was wrong, and even a key component of his decision. Whether you agree this is the deciding point for crime / not crime, it is certainly a division between blowing whistle on domestic spying and everything else.

lern_too_spel7• 6 years ago

Why not? 99% of the things Greenwald et al published from his leaks were perfectly legal, and that was just a small subset of the total documents Snowden leaked. Why not just expose the illegal phone metadata program? If he had done that, he would easily qualify as a whistleblower.

jbay8087• 6 years ago

International spying on your allies, including corporate espionage against countries like Germany. That angered your allies much more than it endangered them. Whistleblowers like Snowden are the mechanism that keeps that spying from happening in the first place.

Edit -- And yes, this harmed America by undermining the trust that those countries had in it. But to be clear, it wasn't Snowden's disclosure that broke that trust, it was the spying. It's hubris to think that if not for Snowden it would never have been discovered, and the longer it went on, the more harm that would have been done between America and its allies when it eventually got found out. So by revealing it early, Snowden really minimized the damage, rather than causing it.

tw042• 6 years ago

I feel like people forget that leading up to the Iraq war, France and Germany were aligned with Russia and very much against US interests. They were a frenemy at best.

I'm not saying it's right - we were in the wrong on Iraq and that was obvious before it started. But just like the US has had a HARD turn towards fascism, there's nothing stopping that from occurring to our allies as well. I'd argue it's dereliction of duty if you aren't spying on your allies, they're spying on us.

What you DO with the information gathered, in my opinion, is what determines whether you're violating your ally's trust.

slg2• 6 years ago

But it wasn't just our allies. Snowden revealed details about NSA spying on Syria during their civil war. That is the exact type of thing that our spy agencies should be doing. If you object to that, you object to the entire nature of intelligence gathering. That is a perfectly acceptable stance to have, but it obviously isn't one that is held by the US's or most nation's government and therefore they wouldn't want to tacitly endorse it by issuing a pardon.

Supermancho4• 6 years ago

International spying on your allies, including corporate espionage against countries like Germany.

I expect the US to be spying on ALL nations, not just enemy-of-the-week or communist ones.

ThrowawayR22• 6 years ago

"And yes, this harmed America by undermining the trust that those countries had in it"

That seems unlikely. At the international level, it's well understood that alliances aren't permanent as de Gaulle's famous quote "[Nations have] no friends, only interests." illustrates. For example, Russia, Japan, and the US were allies during the First World War but were on opposing sides in the Second.

sb057• 6 years ago

He also exposed international spying capabilities that endangered our people and our allies.

Really, like what?

WrtCdEvrydy• 6 years ago

There is a part of the leaks that talks about how the US was spying on a new terrorist group... which made it more difficult to spy on them and ended up becoming what became ISIS.

Snowden didn't expose it but the newspaper he coordinated with (the guardian) ended up not correctly redacting that portion.

I don't have an opinion on whether this is a bad thing or a good thing.

mcculley• 6 years ago

Opinions differ on this. We should have a very public trial and put all of the evidence out there for a jury to evaluate. We have a duty to history.

blindm• 6 years ago

but he decided to actively harm the U.S. intelligence community and they will never allow a pardon

This notion of 'harm' is bandied about all the time. If anything, he improved their capabilities, since now they are bolstered against insider threats going forward.

b1476• 6 years ago

Didn’t he give the information to journalists to make the decision about what needs to be redacted? Can you provide a source for the information that he endangered peoples lives?

cirno• 6 years ago

I’m as liberal as it gets and even I think he went too far.

Apparently you're not because I couldn't disagree more.

yupyup54133• 6 years ago

I was just going to say the same thing.

salimmadjd• 6 years ago

Three bipartisan legislations were introduced yesterday related to this.

https://mobile.twitter.com/_nalexander/status/13124054429251...

jessaustin2• 6 years ago

I was so glad I had the opportunity to vote for her.

realjohng• 6 years ago

Edward Snowden is an American patriot. He followed his conscience and acted in good faith to defend the constitutional rights of the American people.

georgeplusplus4• 6 years ago

Disagree. I think he’s a tool of Russia and got paid to tarnish America and diplomacy worldwide.

snypher• 6 years ago

diplomacy

chrisco2552• 6 years ago

He simply tarnished certain federal bureaucracies, not America at large.

ahelwer• 6 years ago

If the reality of what we are doing to our citizens tarnishes our reputation, then we shouldn't be doing it.

londons_explore• 6 years ago

Wouldn't he have flown straight to Moscow if that was his plan from the start?

pengaru3• 6 years ago

It sounds like you're confusing Assange and Snowden.

OkGoDoIt• 6 years ago

The American government tarnished itself, Snowden just revealed it to us all (at great personal sacrifice). I consider him a patriot.

pydry• 6 years ago

"But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them [you] they are being attacked [by Russia], and denounce the pacifists [Snowden] for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."

- Herman Goering [with additions]

Nothing much changes.

gkoberger• 6 years ago

I agree him being in Russia currently isn't a good look... but I don't think he was a Russian asset. To me, he always seemed like a really good person who followed his conscience.

I think where he messed up was he got help from Assange when he was at his neediest, took it, and ended up in Moscow.

runamok4• 6 years ago

The fact that the secret program he leaked was ultimately determined to be unlawful says he is vindicated and should be pardoned.

"A National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance program has been ruled unlawful, seven years after it was exposed by whistleblower Edward Snowden."

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54013527

GekkePrutser3• 6 years ago

And those of the rest of the world. Especially those of us in X eyes countries.

nip1802• 6 years ago

Hey may have defended the rights of people in the rest of the world, but only American citizens have rights protected by the US constitution.

2OEH8eoCRo0• 6 years ago

Disagree. I think he's a coward.

seppin4• 6 years ago

98% of what he stole and leaked had nothing to do with domestic surveillance on the American people.

Tepix• 6 years ago

Half way into that article it suddenly opened another window and loaded another seemingly unrelated article. A way to get more page imoressions?

627467• 6 years ago

Say Biden wins the election. I'm curious to see how his administration would handle this situation considering that Snowden revelations happened dead in the middle of Biden's second vice-presidency and they had plenty of time to be considerate, and handle this situation appropriately.

dirtnugget• 6 years ago

he fled immediately to Russia

He did not flee to Russia. He got stuck there on transit to Ecuador because his passport was allegedly cancelled. He came from Hong Kong. Read his book.

seppin4• 6 years ago

So he just got lucky in that his stopover was in one of the few countries on Earth that wouldn't extradite him? What a coincidence.

Is that why he was at the Russian consulate in HK a few days before, and in constant contact with the lawyer from Wikileaks (a Russian Intel cutout)?

Come on.

doopy1• 6 years ago

You would need to convict him first.

stjohnswarts• 6 years ago

that's not how pardons have to work. You can be pardoned post conviction or preemptively. I'm glad I could update you on that. See Abraham Lincoln's and Gerald Ford's pardons in particular.

Time to Pardon Edward Snowden?

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