Trump might pardon Edward Snowden

[Saint Milei]

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. 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.

Most people are also mentally handicapped. Thinking a sane person would actually trust a corrupt government which has a history of overthrowing regimes, assassinating foreigners, waging illegal wars, and spying/oppressing its own people is absurd.

[Saint Milei]

This dude straight up said report abuse to the people knowingly abusing the fking system. Jesus.

[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.

[WD]

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.

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.

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.

[GoTfan]

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.

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.

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.

Would he get a fair trial? I doubt it.

If he'd done it under Trump, you'd be lauding him as a national hero. Instead, because it makes Obama look bad, he's worse than Hitler.

[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.

[Fuzzy Bear]

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.

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.

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.

Would he get a fair trial? I doubt it.

If he'd done it under Trump, you'd be lauding him as a national hero. Instead, because it makes Obama look bad, he's worse than Hitler.

I've not really made up my mind on this issue.  But there's more than a little truth to the above post.

[WD]

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.

Fair enough, you do make some good points. Hopefully we can agree to disagree.

[SWE]

Of course Snowden's a traitor. That's what makes him good.

[Woody]

Of course Snowden's a traitor. That's what makes him good.

Dude... Snowden exposed the deep state & IC/James Clapper and their psychotic plans. If anything, he is a hero.

[jaymichaud]

He should be pardoned obviously but some folk are going overboard with this "American hero" stuff lol.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

The idea that Snowden should have availed himself of the very same legal system that decided that warrantless data-gathering was constitutional, and that this would have somehow resulted in a decent outcome, is just... lol. He ran for the same reason that African-Americans run away from the police-- he didn't expect to be treated fairly, which was a safe assumption under the circumstances.

Couldn't he have contacted someone on the intelligence committee who might be sympathetic like Ron Wyden or Mark Udall?

[I’m not Stu]

This is a political stunt by Trump. Trump won't pardon him.

[Person Man]

This is a political stunt by Trump. Trump won't pardon him.

He even said he would "think about" environmentalism in January 17.

[politics_king]

I support Edward Snowden being pardoned.

[emailking]

The idea that Snowden should have availed himself of the very same legal system that decided that warrantless data-gathering was constitutional, and that this would have somehow resulted in a decent outcome, is just... lol. He ran for the same reason that African-Americans run away from the police-- he didn't expect to be treated fairly, which was a safe assumption under the circumstances.

Couldn't he have contacted someone on the intelligence committee who might be sympathetic like Ron Wyden or Mark Udall?

Probably would have been better for him but that would still be illegal.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

The idea that Snowden should have availed himself of the very same legal system that decided that warrantless data-gathering was constitutional, and that this would have somehow resulted in a decent outcome, is just... lol. He ran for the same reason that African-Americans run away from the police-- he didn't expect to be treated fairly, which was a safe assumption under the circumstances.

Couldn't he have contacted someone on the intelligence committee who might be sympathetic like Ron Wyden or Mark Udall?

Probably would have been better for him but that would still be illegal.

really?!  if so, that needs to change.

how can we have checks & balances if the executive can keep big secrets like this from the legislature under threat of punishment for the discloser ?

[Horus]

I support Edward Snowden being pardoned.

Same, but this just isn't an important issue for me. If this were a normal year maybe it would make my chance of voting Trump go from 0 to 1%.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

Of course Snowden's a traitor. That's what makes him good.

WTF Now people are good *just because* they are traitors to the United States?

[Person Man]

Of course Snowden's a traitor. That's what makes him good.

WTF Now people are good *just because* they are traitors to the United States?

That's what I don't understand. We shouldn't be "sticking it to the man" just for the sake of "sticking it to the man". That's why agitators for change have been struggling.

[Sir Mohamed]

I don't think Snowden should be pardoned. While the material he leaked revealed a serious of wrongdoings with US and allied intelligence pratices, this kind of approach is the wrong one. The answer to overreach in the Intel community is more and better congressional oversight rather than leaking classified information. If latter is generally legitimized, I see several problems going forward. We're speaking of classified information here, that could very well put the lives of our men and women in uniform in jeopardy and aide enemies of the free world. How can any single employee of the Intel community make a thorough decision about what items to publish? I don't want these single individuals, who often are of lower ranks and were not elected to anything, make decisions about what information is being leaked or not.

Snowden should instead of getting a "pardon & chapter closed" return to the US and get a fair trial before a federal court, in which he can present his case while Justice Dept does the opposite. In case a jury finds him guilty, she should face some punishment, though I believe decades in prison is a bit too harsh.

[Person Man]

If I had my way, I think he should be given a couple of years in prison but then be given a job or some sort of arrangement where we can enforce our laws, express our gratitude, and use his expertise.

[Saint Milei]

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54013527

A National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance program has been ruled unlawful, seven years after it was exposed by whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The surveillance of millions of Americans' telephone records first came to light in 2013.
Now, the US Court of Appeals has ruled intelligence leaders who publicly defended the program lied.
He currently lives in exile in Moscow but, last year, expressed his wish to return to the US, where he faces espionage charges over his decision to go public.
“I never imagined that I would live to see our courts condemn the NSA’s activities as unlawful and in the same ruling credit me for exposing them,” Mr Snowden said.
"And yet that day has arrived," he added.
Top US intelligence officials had publicly insisted the NSA had never knowingly collected data from private phone records, until Mr Snowden exposed evidence to the contrary in 2013.
Following the revelation, officials said the NSA's surveillance program had played a crucial role in fighting domestic terrorism, including the convictions of Basaaly Saeed Moalin, Ahmed Nasir Taalil Mohamud, Mohamed Mohamud, and Issa Doreh, of San Diego, for providing aid to al-Shabab militants in Somalia.
But, on Wednesday, the Court of Appeals said the claims were "inconsistent with the contents of the classified records" and the program had violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
The ruling will not affect the 2013 convictions.
“Today’s ruling is a victory for our privacy rights,” the American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement.
"It makes plain that the NSA’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone records violated the Constitution.”