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Two Years Later, White House Responds To 'Pardon Edward Snowden' Petition
An anonymous reader writes: In June of 2013, a petition was posted to Whitehouse.gov demanding that Edward Snowden receive a full pardon for his leaks about the NSA and U.S. surveillance practices. The petition swiftly passed 100,000 signatures — the point at which the White House said it would officially respond to such petitions. For two years, the administration was silent, but now they've finally responded. In short: No, Edward Snowden won't be receiving a pardon.
Lisa Monaco, the President's Advisor on Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, said, "Mr. Snowden's dangerous decision to steal and disclose classified information had severe consequences for the security of our country and the people who work day in and day out to protect it. If he felt his actions were consistent with civil disobedience, then he should do what those who have taken issue with their own government do: Challenge it, speak out, engage in a constructive act of protest, and — importantly — accept the consequences of his actions. He should come home to the United States, and be judged by a jury of his peers — not hide behind the cover of an authoritarian regime. Right now, he's running away from the consequences of his actions."
Lisa Monaco, the President's Advisor on Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, said, "Mr. Snowden's dangerous decision to steal and disclose classified information had severe consequences for the security of our country and the people who work day in and day out to protect it. If he felt his actions were consistent with civil disobedience, then he should do what those who have taken issue with their own government do: Challenge it, speak out, engage in a constructive act of protest, and — importantly — accept the consequences of his actions. He should come home to the United States, and be judged by a jury of his peers — not hide behind the cover of an authoritarian regime. Right now, he's running away from the consequences of his actions."
"and — importantly — accept the consequences of his actions." Isn't whistle blowing legally protected from retaliation?
On paper, but they've already wiped their ass with it so they don't care much.
Silly plebe. Laws only apply to the little people. Not those with wealth and power.
Instead, he indiscriminately handed sensitive national secrets over to a foreigner,
Glenn Greenwald is a "foreigner"? Since when?
And when there were whistleblowers before him who tried to report issues they saw. These people don't have the name recognition of Snowden because their reports were hushed up and the whistleblowers were accused of wrongdoing themselves. Snowden saw how "work within the official channels" went and chose a more effective method, albeit one that put him into permanent exile.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
But they do pardons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... A group of those guys set off 120 bombs in major US cities. Snowden would be treated harsher than those terrorists.
He wasn't kicked out. He resigned before he could be impeached. He was then pardoned shortly afterwards.
Under FISA he is not allowed to use wistleblowing as a defense.
Actually, it's worse than that. Two of the counts he's charged with are violations of the Espionage Act, which was intended to prevent US citizens from colluding with US enemies during World War I. Unfortunately, the law provides no room for affirmative defenses at all: if secrets were leaked, you're guilty, and the court isn't allowed to consider even the slightest sliver of the surrounding context. Did you uncover something illegal? Doesn't matter. Is this course of action the only one that would have turned up malfeasance by intelligence agencies? That can't be discussed.
The reason the Obama administration's insistence that Snowden come back to the US to "face a fair trial" is so flagrantly disingenuous is that the act that he's charged under, by virtue of its complete lack of defenses, is explicitly and intentionally designed to result in anything but a fair trial. They're inviting him home for a railroading, and it doesn't matter whether it's done in private or public: he's fucked.
You should watch citizenfour, which spends quite a bit of time on this specific issue of how inappropriate the Espionage Act is for Snowden's actions, and just how unfair is is designed to be.
and in most of the US, its borderline illegal to even MENTION JN in court. judges will kick you out, lock you up, threaten you, try to scare you. voire dire does all it can to try to reject jurors that even KNOW what JN is. and if you tell them during VD that you don't know what JN is and then later, they find out you do, you are in contempt.
its all neatly stacked up so that your CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS are not vocalized or listed or communicated to you.
"nice liberty you got there; would be a shame if something were to happen to it"
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Let us kill you.
If the crime fits....
I have a feeling that he could plea bargain a deal that returned him to the states and preserved his life if for nothing else but to avoid the public trial.
Of course, being banished to Russia, is fine too.. I don't think this administration cares one way or the other.
Public trial?
There will be no such thing.
Oh yes there would be a very public trial. Why do you need a closed trial when all the classified evidence has already been published by the accused and is in public domain? Just whip out the contract he signed when he was indoctrinated with his clearance and dig out the public records of the documents he claims to have released to the press. All you have to prove is HE released the classified information...
Why do people think he's not going to get an open trial? OR a fair one? The outcome may be obvious, but that doesn't make the trial unfair....
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
The evidence is classified, so the trial can't be public. Classified information doesn't suddenly become unclassified when it's made public. It doesn't matter if the whole world knows; these are government rules, they're not supposed to make sense.
Wrong. Martin Luther King, Jr, Rosa Parks and Susan B. Anthony did NOT go to prison. They were arrested, booked and released. MLK spent some time in a local jail, but that's not the same as being sent to prison.
A better example for Snowden would be Daniel Ellsberg, who is now seen as a hero.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You do remember that Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, right? He was under surveillance by the FBI, the NSA, and police in order to undermine his civil rights movement -- as he was killed.
A 1999 civil court case decided that government agencies were liable for participation in the conspiracy to assassinate him.
Sure, that's not proof but the fact that the guy died standing up for what he believes in kind of says that the danger was as real as it is for Snowden...
Oh a comedian, US corporations are pretty malevolent, from pharmaceuticals lying and killing people to generate extra profits, to oil companies taking cheap ass short cuts and killing people to the US military industrial complex actively promoting war for it's own sake and killing people. These psychopaths run the US government and that pretty much makes the US government as malevolent as it gets.
What the US government press really wanted to say in the press release "We were breaking laws all over the world in collusion with US corporations and mostly getting away with it, so fuck Snowden and as a warning to others who believe in honesty and justice, we will kill him and any other traitors to Psychopaths Incorporated 'er' the US Government". This is not about justice, this is about promoting the take over of the whole world by US corporations and enslavement of the worlds population. Of course psychopaths being psychopaths, it really is all about promoting global chaos because psychopaths thrive in chaos, it is quite simply who they are.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen