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Edward Snowden On Trump Administration's Recent Arrest of an Alleged Journalistic Source (freedom.press)
Snowden writes: Winner is accused of serving as a journalistic source for a leading American news outlet about a matter of critical public importance. For this act, she has been charged with violating the Espionage Act -- a World War I era law meant for spies -- which explicitly forbids the jury from hearing why the defendant acted, and bars them from deciding whether the outcome was to the public's benefit. This often-condemned law provides no space to distinguish the extraordinary disclosure of inappropriately classified information in the public interest -- whistleblowing -- from the malicious disclosure of secrets to foreign governments by those motivated by a specific intent to harm to their countrymen. The prosecution of any journalistic source without due consideration by the jury as to the harm or benefit of the journalistic activity is a fundamental threat to the free press. As long as a law like this remains on the books in a country that values fair trials, it must be resisted. No matter one's opinions on the propriety of the charges against her, we should all agree Winner should be released on bail pending trial. Even if you take all the government allegations as true, it's clear she is neither a threat to public safety nor a flight risk. To hold a citizen incommunicado and indefinitely while awaiting trial for the alleged crime of serving as a journalistic source should outrage us all.
$DIETY, how I miss the quiet, towering intellectualism and sure, deft, thoughtful competence of the George W. Bush administration.
Whether or not material *is* classified is irrelevant - what matters is if it *should* be classified.
If the Government conducted oh let's say involuntary medical trials on blacks, and classified it, would you then say - hey, it's classified, how DARE you release it, all Governments MUST have classified information to function?
Of course not.
Your comment about Snowden being in Russia is staggeringly inappropriate. He is there because he has nowhere else to go, and that's because the USA cancelled his passport - because he released information of their appalling behaviour.
The action - mass survellience (and until Snowden came along, secret mass survillience) - is wrong, because the the vast majority of the people being watched, having their privacy violated, have done and will never do anything wrong. It is a violation of the principle that everyone two parties do together must be voluntary and well-informed, except in self-defence. It is the same principle which makes involuntary medical experimentation wrong.
What she leaked was certainly not whistle blowing. A report that states people were spear phished by a foreign government is nearly a daily event for many of us, and I don't even work in DOD any longer where it was multiple times a day. This was dumping data for purely political purposes, not presenting wrong doing and cover up. Snowden and Manning both could be claimed as whistle blowers.
As to the claim that this should be in front of a jury I would agree if, and only if, the jury members all had the correct clearance and could be trusted outside of court with information learned in the case. Evidence in these types of trials will contain at least some classified material/methods. It must be established "how" they tracked down the 6 sources and narrowed down to one.
For those who cry "1st Amendment", the 1st does not protect you from consequences. Hell, the founders of the US lived knowing that at any moment the King of England would lop their heads off if given the chance.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Not sure this qualifies as whistle blowing. It certainly does qualify as violation of her security clearance and there are legal consequences for that. Everyone with a clearance knows this. Everyone that works with people with a clearance knows this.
Serious crusaders have never had any problem facing the consequences of their actions.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
He is right. Snowden is not a disinterested party, but he is still right.
Actually, he is quite wrong, starting with his initial representation of the matter.
No. She was not charged with espionage for being a journalistic source, she was charged with espionage for releasing classified material. She could have been a journalistic source all day every day for ten years and been untouched by the Espionage Act, if she had not deliberately mishandled classified material. That, and not "acting as a journalistic source", is the act for which she is charged.
The problem with the excuse that it was "inappropriately classified" is that Winner did not have the authority to reclassify it, and did not have the background necessary to know if it was properly classified or not.
What is it these days? Some people cry "treason" when an authorized representative of the US government tells another government intel about a common enemy, and excuses when an unauthorized flunky releases actual classified material.