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The New York Times Pushes For Clemency For Snowden
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "The Editorial Board of the New York Times has weighed in on the criminal charges facing Edward Snowden and writes that 'Snowden deserves better than a life of permanent exile, fear and flight..' 'He may have committed a crime to do so, but he has done his country a great service. It is time for the United States to offer Mr. Snowden a plea bargain or some form of clemency that would allow him to return home, face at least substantially reduced punishment in light of his role as a whistle-blower, and have the hope of a life advocating for greater privacy and far stronger oversight of the runaway intelligence community.' The president said in August that Snowden should come home to face charges in court and suggested that if Snowden had wanted to avoid criminal charges he could have simply told his superiors about the abuses, acting, in other words, as a whistle-blower. In fact, notes the editorial board, the executive order regarding whistleblowers did not apply to contractors, only to intelligence employees, rendering its protections useless to Snowden. More important, Snowden told The Washington Post that he did report his misgivings to two superiors at the agency, showing them the volume of data collected by the NSA, and that they took no action. 'Snowden was clearly justified in believing that the only way to blow the whistle on this kind of intelligence-gathering was to expose it to the public and let the resulting furor do the work his superiors would not. ... When someone reveals that government officials have routinely and deliberately broken the law, that person should not face life in prison at the hands of the same government,' concludes the editorial. 'President Obama should tell his aides to begin finding a way to end Mr. Snowden's vilification and give him an incentive to return home.'"
For all those morons calling Snowden a traitor: consider this scenario.
Reviewing circumstances of that Petraeus scandal in the light of Snowden's revelations, it's pretty clear that NSA knew about CIA director affair, and more importantly kept the fact to itself (if, of course it wasn't a parallel construction by FBI, which is easy for them to check)
Now what we have? We have that NSA had dirt on a top CIA official, a popular political figure, with very probable presidential candidacy on the horizon. And what it did with that info? It kept it's chips to itself to cash-in at the most opportune moment! And the whole infrastructure at the NSA is built in such a way (intentionally!) that unless NSA wants to, nobody can say with absolute certainty what they knew and when they knew that.
In my books that is a direct threat to the republic.
You know, I almost would have agreed with this view; but all in all I have to disagree. The entire world should be having this debate, not just the U.S. Countries that are raging about it will have that much more pressure to practice what they preach. Hence why Putin recently sypathized with the NSA's position. He doesn't want to be accused of double standards when the heat is on his own government later There is indeed justification for spying on Russia and China; since they are spying on us after all, but the foreign spying is out of control as well. Why are we tapping Angela Merkel's phone, for instance? What is the purpose in that? Why can't our government get over the fact that the cold war ended over 20 years ago? Not only that, but wouldn't the NSA be more effective at it's job if it focused on targets that are actually justified, instead of spying on everyone and everything just because they can?