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Petition With Over 1 Million Signatures Urges President Obama To Pardon Snowden (cnet.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: More than 1 million people signed onto a petition asking President Barack Obama to pardon Edward Snowden, proponents of the pardon said Friday. The campaign began in September, when Snowden, his attorney Ben Wizner from the ACLU, and other privacy activists announced they would formally petition Obama for a pardon. Snowden leaked classified NSA documents detailing surveillance programs run by the U.S. and its allies to journalists in 2013, kicking off a heated debate on whether Americans should be willing to sacrifice internet privacy to help the government protect the country from terrorist attacks. Obama and White House representatives have said repeatedly that Snowden must face the charges against him and that he'll be afforded a fair trial. In the U.S., a pardon is "an expression of the president's forgiveness and ordinarily is granted in recognition of the applicant's acceptance of responsibility for the crime and established good conduct for a significant period of time after conviction or completion of sentence," according to the Office of the Pardon Attorney. It does not signify innocence. Also on Friday, David Kaye urged Obama to consider a pardon for Snowden. Kaye, the special rapporteur to the United Nations Human Rights Council on the freedom of expression, said U.S. law doesn't allow Snowden to argue that his disclosures were made for the benefit of the public. The jury would merely be asked to decide whether Snowden stole government secrets and distributed them -- something Snowden himself concedes he did. In response to the petition, Edward Snowden tweeted: "Whether or not this President ends the war on whistleblowers, you've sent a message to history: I feared no one would care. I was wrong."
Snowden embarrassed the Obama administration. As much as I think he should be pardoned and let back onto US soil, Obama won't do it. Trump certainly won't either.
Lets live in reality people.
"Well kids, you tried your best, and you failed. The lesson is, never try." -Homer Simpson
The guy deserves an apology.
And the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He, not Obama's second in command whose medal is about as warranted as Obama's Nobel Prize.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
I signed the petition. An agency of my government was breaking the public trust, lying to legislators, and breaking the law. It was Mr. Snowden's duty to report this, and it is a travesty to take away his life for defending his country against itself.
Why would you repeat such an obvious untruth? Given that this subject comes up every time any such story is published, I have a hard time believing that you have never been exposed to it before. Nevertheless it apparently needs to be explained, you can be pardoned at any time at the President's discretion, whether or not you have been convicted. Those of us who are old enough will remember when this happened to Richard Nixon.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
The guy deserves an apology.
And the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Yes, but note that Obama said, "... for the last time in my term as President ...", when honoring Joe Biden for a lifetime of public service.
I'd be happy with just a pardon for Snowden, as he deserves it, and that would allow him freedom to travel home. Withholding a pardon only prevents him from returning to the country whose citizens he was trying to protect, and forces him to remain living in a "non-ally" foreign nation.
A pardon is the only logical resolution––a lifetime of exile could alter the allegiance of any human.
Sure he can!
It's a busy time right now! Right? RIGHT?
And even so, it's simple enough to say "No.", couched in suitably political terms.
You know what I'm talking about.
At this time *EVIL RUSSIA! EVIL RUSSIA!* we don't have enough information *EVIL RUSSIA! EVIL RUSSIA!* on the situation to make us comfortable pardoning him for stealing secrets and giving them to EVIL RUSSIA!
Basically, what would have happened to him, had he come home is he would have become Bradley/Chelsea Manning Mark 2.
He'd have been dumped in a prison. Rotted for a while. Then announced that he'd decided to cut his dick off and live as a woman. Turning him into a complete laughingstock meme and totally detracting from what actually happened.
I think Snowden likes his cock and balls right where they are...
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
... (or won't) after all he hasn't been to a trial yet, just accused. That might be true or not, but he already spoke about it on November. He wont pardon him.
The problem with Snowden is that Snowden released at least two very different types of data: 1. Data that shows potentially or actually illegal domestic actions. 2. Data that shows operational details on entirely legal foreign operations. There is a good case to be made about the former, but there is absolutely no legal or moral basis for a pardon on the latter. What Snowden did was not stop at reporting likely law-breaking, but essentially depantsed the NSA WRT its operational capabilities and techniques. That would be like waving a case like some village massacre in one hand and then holding a binder in the other hand that happens to contain the operational status of every military unit in theater, along with personnel names, the whole shebang that would allow an enemy to greatly step up their game. No, for the 2nd point Snowden really has to go to prison if he comes back, and he knows it.
> Now, THEREFORE, I, GERALD R. FORD, President of the United States, pursuant to the pardon power conferred upon me by Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, have granted and by these presents do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9, 1974.
Strange, so the US forgot how the systems work too for some time, it seems.
So, yes, Obama can pardon Snowden.
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
The entire Trump administration is a perfect Bizarro world. Anti-school as sec of ed, anti-vaxxer running vaccine study, etc... I don't think it's even possible that Snowden doesn't get a pardon on Jan 22. It'll be part of the new US-Russian intelligence partnership.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Psh. A pre-emptive pardon can still be issued. A century and a half ago, SCotUS explicitly determined that except for cases of impeachment, presidential pardon power "extends to every offence known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken, or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment". Where do people get the notion that such a pardon can only be issued after a trial?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Throughout the entire Obama presidency, the administration has been absolutely paranoid about leaks and has cracked down on whistleblowers like no other administration in history.
Over the past few months, all this "Russian hacking" stuff has been dominating the mainstream media. In story after story, especially from sites like WaPo, reporters are always quoting "anonymous sources in government" or unnamed "intelligence officials" as their sources. These "sources" have obviously leaked numerous details of classified intelligence reports to the media, yet the Obama administration exhibits absolutely no concern whatsoever about these particular leaks.
If Snowden is a criminal for leaking classified information to the media, why isn't there a full scale government investigation to identify the people who are leaking this classified "Russian hacking" stuff to the media? Do we have any laws left which are enforced in a fair & uniform manner? A government which makes it a practice of enforcing laws arbitrarily is an illegitimate government.
but having someone who is against vaccines study it is more likely to be convincing if he is.
Nice theory.
The reality is that most people don't have brains that work like that.
The cognitive load required to abandon years of passionately held conspiracy theory is really high. It is so much easier to decide that the person was compromised by bribes, threats or even stupidity - that sort of rationalization is ideally suited to the logic of conspiracy that fuels the belief in the first place.
Its what happened when physics professor, MacArthur genius-grant fellow and high-profile climate change denier Richard Muller spent a year trying to disprove the existence of global warming and instead ended up proving its existence. As a result nobody changed their minds about climate change, they changed their minds about Dr Muller.
I can tell you why... Because the USA has been meddling in internal affairs of other countries for decades if not centuries. This did include toppling elected governments (Check what happened in Chile in 1973 or in Iran in 1953 for example). So a lot of people will see this 'controversy' as the USA getting a taste of their own medicine.
In the U.S., a pardon is "an expression of the president's forgiveness and ordinarily is granted in recognition of the applicant's acceptance of responsibility for the crime and established good conduct for a significant period of time after conviction or completion of sentence," according to the Office of the Pardon Attorney"
There is NOTHING in the Constitution that says anything resembling this. And the most famous pardon in recent history - Nixon - contained none of these elements. Nixon was never convicted of anything, never admitted to anything, was never sentenced, nor was there any so-called "significant period of time after conviction or completion of sentence."
And the government wonders why there's a fake news problem? They should look in the mirror - they're the source of a lot of it.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Obama has always been a part of the problem, not part of the solution. There's no way he's going to pardon anyone who attempted to undermine the system that keeps him rich.
Then again, Trump doesn't believe in his soon to be Intelligence community, so why would they need to keep their techniques secret anyway?
So, less than a third of one percent of US citizens feel so passionate about this that they clicked their mouse a couple of times. Well that's a mandate if I ever heard one, no doubt.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Those of us with memories also know that Hillary as secretary of state took credit for parts of the Arab Spring and was trying to take credit for the Libya uprising until it went south. This was so prominent at her time in the State Department that Putin even accused her of interfering in Russian affairs and organizing protests after a parliament election.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12...
If Russia was involved in the US election, it was likely retaliation for that. People who remember that don't worry that their involvement was to help trump but assume it was little more than to defeat Clinton who has been accused or similar crap.
How's life in the hypocrite lane?