Trump might pardon Edward Snowden

[brucejoel99]

Yeah, this is either purely political (i.e. somebody probably told him "This could help you with younger voters!") or pardoning him would just be his unsophisticated middle finger at the IC, since they don't like Snowden & he's pissed off with them for not backing down on the fact that Russia is interfering with elections to help him win (presumably, his child-like, zero-sum brain thinks that this would hurt them, & they're his enemy, so this means winning).

Either way, I personally wanna see it happen, not least because it's so contrary to everything about Trump's position on whistleblowers (though it'd remain consistent with Trump's position on doing the opposite of everything Obama did).

[brucejoel99]

Snowden is a traitor to the United States. What happened to aMeRiCA fIrSt?

You shouldnt be allowed to maintain citizenship after this post

Imagine wanting people to lose citizenship because you disagree with them

Go f**k yourself

But you just said Snowden was a traitor because you disagree with him...

He’s a traitor because he stole and released classified information.

No. Treason is narrowly defined in the Constitution in Article III, Section 3: "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court."

Focusing on the emphasized point (since Edward Snowden seemingly doesn't plan on levying war against the U.S. anytime soon & the evidentiary standard seems pretty easy to meet), we need to know what qualifies as aid & comfort: the clause has generally been interpreted pretty narrowly to mean that a defendant has knowingly aided specific enemies in specific ways, i.e. "I'm gonna hand over these secret documents about the Manhattan Project to this man who I know is a Nazi spy." If you just hand over information to somebody who then turns out to be a spy, you can't be committing treason (depending on what you hand over & to whom, you could certainly be brought up on other charges, but not treason). Revealing information to the public, with the thought that an enemy or would-be terrorist might read The Guardian just doesn't meet the standard of knowingly aiding the enemy. Anything published anywhere could be read by the enemy. If you can be aiding the enemy for disclosing information to a journalist who publishes it, how can the journalist not be held accountable too? If the act which is treasonous is its publication, how is the journalist protected from the responsibility of knowing in advance who'll specifically read their story?

The reason why treason has been so narrowly defined in American law is because of experience with the way that the Crown used treason as a catch-all for anybody doing anything that they didn't like &/or went against their interests in some way. Publish a pamphlet the Crown disapproves of? Treason, & so on & so forth. American law narrowly defined treason to only cover specific acts of intentional betrayal to specific, enumerable enemies, not broad sweeping categories of things that the US does not approve of.

So, no: Edward Snowden is not "a traitor because he stole and released classified information."

Moving on:

He violated the Espionage act. I don’t think he’s a bad person because of what he discovered. That was obviously horrible and wrong. But most normal people would submit a whistleblower report if they wittinessed wrongdoing, not steal from government computers. If he had gone through the proper channels I and many other users here would have no problem with him. The issue isn’t his goals, its his methods.

But there weren't any "proper channels" for him to go through. Our country's whistleblower laws - which normally allow people to avoid punishment for revealing government information if they can show that they did so for the purpose of the public good - explicitly exclude intelligence agencies. Had he not been a national security employee, his actions would've been covered by the Whistleblower Protection Act & thus wouldn't have been a crime at all, but under the Espionage Act he's charged with having violated, he can't even raise a public interest defense at trial, even though he clearly leaked for public benefit rather than personal gain (not only did he not sell secrets to a foreign power, but - as you concede - the programs he discovered were "obviously horrible and wrong").

If after being made aware of this, you still have an issue with his methods (even though - again - he did the only thing that he could do to inform the public about what you yourself concede was "obviously horrible and wrong"), then I don't know what to tell you. But 7 years on from his leaks, it's clear that he didn't act in a way deserving of such a draconian & anachronistic punishment that he faces were he to return home in the status quo.

[brucejoel99]

Snowden is a traitor to the United States. What happened to aMeRiCA fIrSt?

You shouldnt be allowed to maintain citizenship after this post

Imagine wanting people to lose citizenship because you disagree with them

Go f**k yourself

But you just said Snowden was a traitor because you disagree with him...

He’s a traitor because he stole and released classified information.

No. Treason is narrowly defined in the Constitution in Article III, Section 3: "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court."

Focusing on the emphasized point (since Edward Snowden seemingly doesn't plan on levying war against the U.S. anytime soon & the evidentiary standard seems pretty easy to meet), we need to know what qualifies as aid & comfort: the clause has generally been interpreted pretty narrowly to mean that a defendant has knowingly aided specific enemies in specific ways, i.e. "I'm gonna hand over these secret documents about the Manhattan Project to this man who I know is a Nazi spy." If you just hand over information to somebody who then turns out to be a spy, you can't be committing treason (depending on what you hand over & to whom, you could certainly be brought up on other charges, but not treason). Revealing information to the public, with the thought that an enemy or would-be terrorist might read The Guardian just doesn't meet the standard of knowingly aiding the enemy. Anything published anywhere could be read by the enemy. If you can be aiding the enemy for disclosing information to a journalist who publishes it, how can the journalist not be held accountable too? If the act which is treasonous is its publication, how is the journalist protected from the responsibility of knowing in advance who'll specifically read their story?

The reason why treason has been so narrowly defined in American law is because of experience with the way that the Crown used treason as a catch-all for anybody doing anything that they didn't like &/or went against their interests in some way. Publish a pamphlet the Crown disapproves of? Treason, & so on & so forth. American law narrowly defined treason to only cover specific acts of intentional betrayal to specific, enumerable enemies, not broad sweeping categories of things that the US does not approve of.

So, no: Edward Snowden is not "a traitor because he stole and released classified information."

Moving on:

He violated the Espionage act. I don’t think he’s a bad person because of what he discovered. That was obviously horrible and wrong. But most normal people would submit a whistleblower report if they wittinessed wrongdoing, not steal from government computers. If he had gone through the proper channels I and many other users here would have no problem with him. The issue isn’t his goals, its his methods.

But there weren't any "proper channels" for him to go through. Our country's whistleblower laws - which normally allow people to avoid punishment for revealing government information if they can show that they did so for the purpose of the public good - explicitly exclude intelligence agencies. Had he not been a national security employee, his actions would've been covered by the Whistleblower Protection Act & thus wouldn't have been a crime at all, but under the Espionage Act he's charged with having violated, he can't even raise a public interest defense at trial, even though he clearly leaked for public benefit rather than personal gain (not only did he not sell secrets to a foreign power, but - as you concede - the programs he discovered were "obviously horrible and wrong").

If after being made aware of this, you still have an issue with his methods (even though - again - he did the only thing that he could do to inform the public about what you yourself concede was "obviously horrible and wrong"), then I don't know what to tell you. But 7 years on from his leaks, it's clear that he didn't act in a way deserving of such a draconian & anachronistic punishment that he faces were he to return home in the status quo.

To say that he had no alternatives is not necessarily true. He could have resigned and written a memo, or reported what he knew to Congress, (given that it was controlled by Republicans at the time, I doubt he would have been ignored). The fact that he would go so far as to commit a criminal offense in order to achieve his goal is what is the issue.

"Writ[ing] a memo" or "report[ing] what he knew to Congress," regardless of its political makeup, would've still constituted a criminal offense. It simply isn't credible to say that Snowden could've done what he did without breaking the law, not when we know that the normal instruments of oversight & judicial review were (& remain) broken.

Also, yes Snowden’s activities don't necessarily meet the legal and constitutional standard  for treason. And perhaps I was too harsh in saying so, but his behavior was a clear betrayal of the US. First, the vast majority of the documents he released was about surveillance relating to foreign intelligence operations, spying on Americans was a small part of it, by doing so he endangered US troops around the world, and put national security at risk. Second, immediately after he did what he did, his first action was to flee the country and go to Hong Kong. He gave the information to foreign, Chinese based journalists.  After this he went to hide in Russia, he asked for asylum and has been their ever since. He is basically a defector to Russia, an adversary of the United States.

Snowden & the journalists he worked with vetted all of the documents to make sure that none would endanger the lives of any troops &/or damage national security. Tellingly, there has neither been anything the Armed Forces have pointed to & said "Snowden's leak killed these soldiers" nor any single concrete example the Intelligence Community has been able to point to concerning how national security was harmed as a result of the Snowden leak.

Of course you can say that “why wouldn’t he seek asylum, the US wants him in jail”. But if Snowden was a true hero, a true patriot, who really believed in what he was doing, he would face the consequences of his actions. But he didn’t. He ran away. Which goes to show that he’s a coward, not a hero, not a patriot.

Snowden has said repeatedly that he would come back & face trial if he were simply allowed to defend himself as a whistleblower in court, because - remember - the law as promulgated in the status quo doesn't allow national security employees to benefit the public by revealing genuinely illegal operations of the government for the sole reason that they're a national security employee. If just wanting a fair trial makes somebody a "coward" as opposed to a "hero" & a "patriot" (even though there should be nothing more patriotic than wanting to uphold the basic tenets of our justice system), then sure: quite the coward, indeed.