Snowden Seeks International Help Against US Espionage Charges

An anonymous reader writes "Edward Snowden is calling for international help to persuade the U.S. to drop its espionage charges against him. Snowden said he would like to testify before the U.S. Congress about National Security Agency surveillance and may be willing to help German officials investigate alleged U.S. spying in Germany. Snowden is quoted as saying that the U.S. government 'continues to treat dissent as defection, and seeks to criminalize political speech with felony charges that provide no defense.' He continues, 'I am confident that with the support of the international community, the government of the United States will abandon this harmful behavior.'"

Comments

Re:You go, girl!

[bobbied]

Snowden should be commended for standing up to a government who has been 'caught with it's hand in the cookie jar', engaging in illegal and immoral espionage of its own people.

Really? There are some *really* legal arguments that say what they are doing is NOT illegal, immoral or unethical.

Does the NSA have the *ability* to do illegal monitoring of it's own people? Sure does. But we are FAR from having proof that they have routinely monitored citizens within the borders of the USA illegally. You can put on your tinfoil hat and claim they do, but that puts you in the same class as the nutcases that think Apollo lunar landings where faked. Just remember that absolutely NOBODY has a credible claim of being wrongly prosecuted on illegally gathered evidence. Until you have such, you have no argument, at least for monitoring INSIDE the USA.

Now before you go off confused, remember that OUTSIDE the USA is legally fair game for monitoring by the NSA. They can, and DO routinely monitor things that move, create sound, radiate energy, reflect light etc. The USA courts have found that constitutional protections DO NOT EXIST on foreign soil (i.e. outside sovereign US territory) and certainly do NOT apply to non-US citizens despite how "self evident" the constitutional rights may be. The US Constitution does not apply to other countries or peoples, unless they choose to adopt it themselves. Where there is *some* legal protection for USA citizens on foreign soil, the NSA can legally monitor whatever they choose without having to get a USA court order or search warrant. If that evidence could be used to charge you with a crime, is somewhat grey legal ground, but they can collect it.

Before you go out and start claiming the NSA can't break international law or the laws of the countries they monitor in, stop and ask yourself if it matters? I for one don't care if the NSA breaks some other country's laws. Other countries are free to defend their soil and laws as they see fit and are free to conduct surveillance as they choose, so the USA is free to defend itself and gather information as we choose. I'm not bound by the laws of France (unless I'm IN France) and the French are not bound by US law, unless they are in the US, so what the NSA does on foreign soil is not subject to Constitutional restrictions.

So if you want to say the NSA "got caught", fine with me, but we have zero evidence that they are doing anything illegal on a routine basis within the USA and outside the USA anything goes. All we have is a bunch of hearsay, assumptions and conspiracy theories fed by little real evidence provided by somebody with obviously selfish motives. (Who is also a traitor of the first order, despite his claims otherwise.)