Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: What Does Edward Snowden Deserve?
Nerval's Lobster writes "U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder made government whistleblower Edward Snowden a very peculiar offer last week: plead guilty, and the U.S. government would consider how to handle his criminal case. That seems an inverted way of doing things—in the United States, the discussions (if not the trial) usually come before the guilty plea—but Holder's statement hints yet again at the conundrum facing the government when it comes to Snowden, a former subcontractor for the National Security Agency (NSA) who leaked secrets about that group's intelligence operations to a number of newspapers, most notably The Guardian. It's unlikely that the U.S. government would ever consider giving full clemency to Snowden, but now it seems that various officials are willing to offer something other than locking him in a deep, dark cell and throwing away the key. If Snowden ever risked coming back to the United States (or if he was forced to return, thanks to the Russians kicking him out and no other country willing to give him asylum), and you were Holder and Obama, what sort of deal would you try to strike with everybody's favorite secrets-leaker?"
Snowden committed crimes. For the rule of law, he should be tried and sentenced to the prescribed penalty for those crimes.
I'm glad we know what he told us. But you can't not prosecute people who undoubtedly did commit crimes because you agree with their stated motives.
Not a 'criminal', simply a 'traitor' - a traitor can have good motives (good enough for him), but we-all used to shoot a lot of 'em.
Um, well ... this is going to be rather unpopular, but ...
What Snowden did to expose the NSA's crimes against American citizens is worthy of recognition. What he did by exposing the NSA's actions against other countries is treasonous. It is the NSA's job to spy on the rest of the world. No one likes that the US, or any other country, spies on the rest of the world but it is a fact of life.