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President Obama Says He Can't Pardon Snowden (arstechnica.com)
Joe Mullin, writing for Ars Technica:A campaign to pardon NSA leaker Edward Snowden, launched in combination with a fawning Oliver Stone film about him, hasn't made any headway. The request spurred the entire membership of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, 13 Republicans and nine Democrats, to send a letter to President Barack Obama urging against a pardon. "He is a criminal," they stated flatly. Obama weighed in on the matter on Friday. During his European tour, he was interviewed by Der Spiegel -- the largest newspaper in Germany, a country where Snowden is particularly popular. After discussing a wide range of issues, he was asked: Are you going to pardon Edward Snowden? Obama replied: "I can't pardon somebody who hasn't gone before a court and presented themselves, so that's not something that I would comment on at this point." He continued: I think that Mr. Snowden raised some legitimate concerns. How he did it was something that did not follow the procedures and practices of our intelligence community. If everybody took the approach that I make my own decisions about these issues, then it would be very hard to have an organized government or any kind of national security system. At the point at which Mr. Snowden wants to present himself before the legal authorities and make his arguments or have his lawyers make his arguments, then I think those issues come into play. Until that time, what I've tried to suggest -- both to the American people, but also to the world -- is that we do have to balance this issue of privacy and security.
President Ford pardoned Nixon for the watergate scandal, and Nixon never stepped inside a court for his misdeeds.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
How he did it was something that did not follow the procedures and practices of our intelligence community.
Because that worked out so well for William Binney and Thomas Drake: in an unannounced, armed, early morning raid, a dozen agents armed with rifles appeared at his house, one of whom entered the bathroom and pointed his gun at Binney, who was taking a shower. The FBI confiscated a desktop computer, disks, and personal and business records.[14] The NSA revoked his security clearance, forcing him to close a business he ran with former colleagues at a loss of a reported $300,000 in annual income. The FBI raided the homes of Wiebe and Loomis, as well as House Intelligence Committee staffer Diane Roark, the same morning. Several months later the Bureau raided the home of then still active NSA executive Thomas Andrews Drake who had also contacted DoD IG, but anonymously with confidentiality assured.
Point is: when even at the very top levels of government the Constitution is completely ignored, there can be no rule of law, so laws in this situation are not relevant. If you want your underlings to follow "procedures and practices", best you lead by example, and not ignore both the spirit and the letter of the foundational document of the nation.
Also, as TFA notes, it is absolutely untrue that he cannot pardon Mr Snowden if he so wishes.
1. Snowden did attempt to go through proper channels. The big ignore..
2. He had no whistleblower protections in place.
3. If he had surrendered, he would have been subjected to torture and punishment without trial. FISA court..
4. This is like the only thing that congress has agreed with Obama on in both terms.. That in itself should be a red flag..
5. With guarantees for fairness, he would have faced a court. Couldn't get those guarantees.
Have you fscked your local propeller head today?
Please provide documentary evidence to support this claim. Thanks.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
If everybody took the approach that [they make their] own decisions about these issues, then it would be very hard to have an organized government or any kind of national security system.
The "if I let everyone do xyz then it wouldn't work, and I'm therefor never allowing ANY xyz" argument is a classic strawman.
If everybody in the world became mayor of a town then we'd starve to death because nobody would be producing food... YET we selectively allow people to become mayor all the time.
Snowden did not make arbitrary decisions about something mundane to make a buck... he made a very careful, thoughtful decision, expressly for the public good and NOT for any kind of personal profit (in fact it has cost him dearly, even if he were to get pardoned today, which apparently he won't). Shame on Obama for sound-biting it as though pardoning Snowden would lead to a public clamor for all people who make any decision about anything.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
"Prediction". It's literally there in the "Comment Subject:" field of your reply.
Then how about he commutes the sentence of Chelsea Manning - someone who went before a military court instead of running, who's already served more time than any other whistleblower in our nation's history?
http://www.politico.com/story/...
Why is this modded down?
This is what I hate about the political correctness that anything against Clinton (or Obama) is kneejerked down by people who aren't even looking at what the post said.
I was coming here to say the exact same thing, this probably has more to do with Hillary than it does Snowden, through subtext, than it does Snowden outright. I am sure it applies to Snowden, but Obama may be sending a signal to Clinton that no pardon is coming.
AND if Clinton has done nothing wrong, what does she need with a Pardon?
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
When you say "I can't pardon someone..." that doesn't necessarily mean you are prohibited by law. It can also mean you have a moral or practical objection that prevents you from pardoning the person.
Just because Slashdot is heavily Snowden-sympathetic doesn't mean we should be deliberately misunderstanding the position of people opposed to pardoning him. You cannot have national security if individual people outside the chain of command decide to buck the classification system. We need better whistleblowing systems and better oversight, but you can't have every college grad deciding he knows better than everyone else. Because while sometimes he does, other times he gets lots of people killed over something stupid.
Exactly. Obama knows full well the difference between what he can legally do, and what he can justify (to himself and to the nation) doing.
Snowden broke the law. There is no avoiding that fact. He may have done it for moral reasons, but he still broke the law and didn't even attempt to go down any of several legitimate roads of objection available within our national security framework for so-called 'whistle-blowing.'
If Obama were to outright pardon him for his crimes, he would be implicitly condoning those actions and inviting chaos.
Now, if Snowden were to turn himself in, and be formally convicted and sentenced in court it would be a different matter. At that point the President could use the power of pardon to commute his sentence on moral grounds without actually condoning or encouraging the original crime.