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Comment by travjones | Hacker News Reader

I think it's a shame how mainstream media suggests that Snowden is a "coward" for not "coming home to face his charges." It's clear that he released confidential docs to reporters and this would be incredibly easy to prove in court, thereby landing him in prison for the rest of his life. I don't know any sane person that would surrender to this type of treatment, considering that he wouldn't be able to defend his actions legally. Stay on the run, Ed. Thank you for releasing this information so that the American public has some idea of the degree to which we are electronically surveilled on a daily basis.

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Agreed, did you see https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/pardon-edward-snow...

> If he felt his actions were consistent with civil disobedience, then he should do what those who have taken issue with their own government do: Challenge it, speak out, engage in a constructive act of protest, and -- importantly -- accept the consequences of his actions. He should come home to the United States, and be judged by a jury of his peers -- not hide behind the cover of an authoritarian regime. Right now, he's running away from the consequences of his actions.

Ridiculous. They literally don't know what "whistleblower" means.

"Go to prison because you deserve it in our clearly unjust system" ...the gall.

Exactly! I did see the response to the petition and thought the exact same thing. The government is pretty much saying, "We know what you did was just. But you broke the law, so come back to suffer in federal prison."

"In the land of the free and the home of the brave..." Haha. Ed Snowden is brave and we are freer as Americans knowing what the government is capable of when it comes to electronic surveillance.

Are we ? The mass Internet surveillance by the u.s. gov was known well before snowden [1], albeit the specific actors were not. Post snowden I've seen public outcry lead to a destabilization of NSA meanwhile private corporations are collecting more data than ever--is this really freer?

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

Awesome point. When I used the term "freer" I was suggesting that we were freer because even laypeople now KNOW about electronic surveillance practices. But I'm not sure we are actually "free" in any sense of the word, we just know we are constantly being watched. The reality is complicated and unfortunate. Words like "free" or "freedom" will sadly never be appropriate.

Room 641A was passed off as anomaly, a one off. It was also questioned and all too easily dismissed. The magnitude of room 641a, a 'once off' and the snowden leaks are totally different.

Clapper and Alexander lying to congressional hearings too. There's no comparison.

> private corporations are collecting more data than ever

This has always been inevitable, if at some point the amount of data about ANYTHING decreases I'll surprised.

The 'freedom' that emerged from the snowden leaks was the ability to discuss and mitigate the implications of these facts without being dismissed as a crank.

I hope in case he were captured and faced a trial, it would give a sentiment of urgency for pro-Snowden people to demomstrate together in a sufficiently massive way. It probably wouldn't lessen the judgement, just show that there's controversy.

They know what whistleblower means, they just don't agree with it. Being on power and being transparent are simply not compatible on this day and age. Unless you are dutch, pretty much the exception to the rule

Not just prison, the "Espionage Act of 1917", which is he charged with, has death penalty as a possible punishment.

And it is pretty clear that he is guilty of this law. Not much room for whistleblowers in a wartime law.

Good point. I assumed prison was the most likely outcome if he came back, but you're right, it is possible that he could receive the death penalty. Granted, I doubt the government would use the death penalty to prevent him from going down as a "martyr."

People (in fact only a small section) quickly forget "martyr"s and the government could take a bet on that with confidence.

The US has promised not to seek the death penalty if he returns to face trial.

Oh well if they promised then I'm sure there's absolutely nothing to worry about.

The crimes he's charged with are actually not eligible for the death sentence and the Attorney General promised not to seek the death penalty even if future additional charges do make that possible. Not really sure what else you want.

US government officials have been caught lying countless times when it comes to "national security" issues. What gives this particular promise any credibility?

Is this "promise" legally binding? What about the next Attorney General? Or the next one?

Even if he isn't executed, he could be physically and psychologically tortured. I'm not sure if you know much about the US prison system, but this is a common and officially sanctioned practice. Many people would consider a lifetime of torture to be a worse punishment than execution.

>The crimes he's charged with are actually not eligible for the death sentence and the Attorney General promised not to seek the death penalty even if future additional charges do make that possible. Not really sure what else you want.

I don't think there's any assurance or promise the US government could offer short of a full pardon that would be sufficient. The US, especially in areas of human rights and national security, is not a trustworthy entity.

They could instead award him 300+ years in jail.

they also promised the monitoring wouldn't be used on US citizens.

There have been plenty of abuses that came to light without the person who exposed them going to jail. There have even been NSA whistleblowers that stayed in the US and didn't get prosecuted (see e.g. William Binney, who has called Snowden a traitor http://www.businessinsider.com/william-binney-and-snowden-tr...).

A little disingenuous considering in that linked article Binney states that it was more the publishing of certain content he disagreed with and not Snowden's actions.

It looks like he still strongly supports what Snowden did.

I also think Binney's case is a bit different - when you don't leak the actual documents the intelligence agencies can (and do) just lie. If not an outright lie it'll be a carefully stated misleading truth ('not in this program'). Snowden's leak is a bigger deal to the intelligence agencies because he has the actual documents and they don't know what he took which makes it hard to influence the story (since it's easier to be definitively caught).

Putting Binney in prison would have likely attracted more attention than not.

John Kerry and other people requesting Snowden to come to the US to stand trial are ignoring that what he did isn't a question of whether it was legal (it wasn't), but if it was right. You won't win a trial on principle when it's the law that's the problem.

>A little disingenuous considering in that linked article Binney states that it was more the publishing of certain content he disagreed with and not Snowden's actions.

That was a direct result of Snowden's actions. I don't see the argument that his exposing the US spying on other countries is "right", and deserves a pardon. If he had only leaked local surveillance, I'd have a weaker case.

>You won't win a trial on principle when it's the law that's the problem.

If the problem was that he disagreed with the law, in the US, the way to change laws you disagree with is through the political process. Not by breaking them then demanding a pardon.

I can understand there's an argument that the scope of the documents leaked is too broad and how someone could think trusting the selective publishing to journalists isn't good enough. I think Binney was arguing that it was the journalists responsibility not to publish materials out of scope.

That said, I suspect it's broad because it's hard to be selective internally without arousing suspicion and part of the leak was the scale of the operation itself - but that's not a great defense.

>If the problem was that he disagreed with the law, in the US, the way to change laws you disagree with is through the political process. Not by breaking them then demanding a pardon.

I think the core problem is actually deeper than this. When you have secret courts and secret interpretations of secret laws you don't have a process to change them. Part of leak was to bring this into the public view - given the incentives, politics and the existing laws surrounding the sharing of classified information I don't see another way this could have been done. Mass surveillance should minimally be a public decision - the secrecy surrounding it is dangerous.

>When you have secret courts and secret interpretations of secret laws you don't have a process to change them.

Technically there's internal whistleblowing. Besides, the fact that there are secret courts wasn't secret, so you could campaign against having those courts be secret. If there's anything being done that actually violates the law, you'd have full whistleblower protection (if you go through official channels). If it's just your disagreement with the law, you can act against that (as the EFF had been doing for years before Snowden) without breaking it.

"Not by breaking them then demanding a pardon."

You can't change the laws through the political process when disclosure of the laws is illegal.

Further, Snowden is not demanding a pardon - we are demanding Snowden be pardoned.

I addressed that elsewhere in the thread. The laws aren't secret, it's the court rulings that are secret. The fact that there's a secret court is known, though. So you could campaign against that court without leaking classified information.

Imagine a world in which Snowden resigned, then publically pushed for unclassifying all FISA court rulings, with the obvious implication (or he could even say explicitly) that he saw things there that shouldn't be secret.

He could even tell members of Congress with clearances and get them to announce it publicly in Congress, which effectively legally brings it into the public record (something like that happened with the Pentagon papers).

"I addressed that elsewhere in the thread. The laws aren't secret, it's the court rulings that are secret. The fact that there's a secret court is known, though. So you could campaign against that court without leaking classified information."

The text of the laws was public. But the NSA decided that those laws meant something radically different than what was written down.

Per my understanding, mostly that did not have involvement from the FISA court.

I think most of it did; could you give a specific program that you're thinking of?

In any event, certainly much of what he published was unambiguously legal.

Or, alternatively, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Andrews_Drake.

>> If he felt his actions were consistent with civil disobedience, then he should do what those who have taken issue with their own government do: Challenge it, speak out, engage in a constructive act of protest, and -- importantly -- accept the consequences of his actions.

basically the government (caught red handed in violation of fundamental rights of the people) insists how civil disobedience must be done where is the main point of civil disobedience is ...? In particular interesting how they're trying to insist that civil disobedience can't be without martyrdom, and thus implicitly they try to scare people away from civil disobedience. Nice.

>Right now, he's running away from the consequences of his actions.

right now he is suffering from consequences of his actions - he sacrificed his good life in the US.

As I posted in the HN thread about the petition, it's worth noting that Snowden has already been in effective exile for longer than Martin Luther King, Jr spent in jail over his entire life. What are the odds that Snowden is facing the same order of magnitude of punishment, were he to return home?

This is not to diminish the work of Dr. King but to say that the tactics he employed and decisions he made were made in a dramatically different context, where the way he could stay most involved and get the most done was to spend some time in jail. Snowden has stayed more involved from abroad than he would have been able to from where they'd have thrown him.

Ad-hominem attacks usually say more about the sender than the receiver. "Coward" in particular has historically been most often employed against conscientious objectors and others who don't want to kill strangers in someone else's war, thus risking their reputations, employment, and freedom. The people making this attack today are appealing to those who grew up with conscription (forced violent labor) who mostly either think it's normal or lack the courage to speak out. And the people/media repeating it either enthusiastically or uncritically are announcing their own positions. So ad-hominem attacks can actually be quite illuminating, though not in the way the attacker intended.

I think this is something reasonable people can disagree about.

The rule of law should apply to everyone equally. I get that Ed Snowden is a likable guy and the documents he released may even have been a force of positive change in the world, but that doesn't necessarily absolve him of having to face trial. You can't go easy on him just because you agree with his politics.

Our whistleblowing laws are woefully inadequate, but I think it's generally a good thing that random government contractors aren't allowed to unilaterally declassify national security programs because they personally don't agree with them. It's easy to imagine examples where this would lead to a very bad situation.

While he shouldn't be absolved... he shouldn't be charged with war crimes or espionage in this case. There are many other things he could be charged with allowing for a reasonable defense.

War crimes? That seems like a stretch.

He's charged with theft of gov't property, unauthorized communication of national defense information, and willful disclosure of classified intelligence. You can view the charging document here: http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/documents/world/us-vs-edwar...

What is the more appropriate charge you think should have been levied instead?

Look at section 793... IIRC that can carry the death penalty.

>The rule of law should apply to everyone equally

Then start with the little incident that happened around 2008 that did far more damage to the average American. Also, hasn't Obama admitted to smoking pot? He is currently in a far greater position to damage the US and should be thoroughly punished for his crimes. What about Clinton and her emails? And if I started listing the skeletons in the closet of Congress we would be here for weeks.

Rule of law has ALWAYS been selectively applied.

No one gets arrested for saying they've smoked pot. Its for possession usually. Theres a difference.

> The rule of law should apply to everyone equally. I get that Ed Snowden is a likable guy and the documents he released may even have been a force of positive change in the world, but that doesn't necessarily absolve him of having to face trial. You can't go easy on him just because you agree with his politics.

Its pretty clear the rule of law doesn't apply to our intelligence services. How about you work on that first before going after the little guy?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1...

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bfa9ada4-81e6-11e4-b9d0-00144feabd...

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/04/fbi-inf...

Get back to us when all that sees a court room, kay?

Ok, many members of the Bush administration ordered torture and medical experimentation on human beings, a flat out war crime.

James Clapper lied under oath to Congress.

Hillary Clinton kept classified material on a personal server at her house.

These are all serious crimes with plenty of publicly available evidence that they were committed. The people who committed them are all inside the country and easy to find, so charging and arresting them wouldn't be difficult.

So where's the outrage from all the "rule of law" folks? Why aren't these well known fugitives ever mentioned alongside Snowden?

> many members of the Bush administration ordered torture and medical experimentation on human beings

The way you phrased this made me curious, so I looked it up. I don't know if it was your intention, but the way you phrased it made it sound like they were preforming medical procedures, possibly heinous medical procedures. In fact, the experiments were collecting data[0]:

"...and crossed the line into human experimentation by collecting and analyzing data that were then used to refine harsh interrogation techniques, including sleep deprivation and waterboarding..."

Don't get me wrong, I don't agree with it, but I had visions of people having limbs attached to them, superhuman drugs injected into them, and death left and right, like some kind of V for Vendetta shit. This does not seem to be the case.

[0] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2917950/

Full report

https://s3.amazonaws.com/PHR_Reports/Experiments_in_Torture....

I think all those people should be investigated and, if there's evidence, prosecuted. I've never said differently. But Hillary Clinton's email server truly has nothing to do with Edward Snowden. She was not involved in the crimes he is alleged to have committed so it has no bearing on his case.

It does have a bearing on Edward Snowden given that we demonstrably do NOT have actual rule of law. The intelligence agencies have clearly compromised the integrity of our justice system, which ensures Snowden would not be treated fairly.

Until the system can show it's worthy of our trust by pursuing powerful people who flagrantly violate the law in the public view, there is no reasonable argument that Snowden should be subjected to its plainly unequal notion of justice.

> there is no reasonable argument that Snowden should be subjected to its plainly unequal notion of justice.

Couldn't everyone accused of any crime use that excuse?

Presumably, yes! Which is why it's so important for the law to be impartial and apply equally to everyone, especially the rich and the powerful.

The petition was for a pardon. The law allows for pardon. Issuing a pardon would in no way undermine "the rule of law".

What I wonder is where the line is for people who automatically defer to government authority in these situations. How bad do the transgressions have to be before a whistleblower is justified in coming forward through any means necessary? For many, spying on billions of innocent people in direct violation of the country's constitution isn't sufficient, so what would be? What if Snowden had instead revealed proof of plans to carry out genocide or stage a military coup? Would he still be a traitor? Would he still be expected to "face the music" and go to jail? Where's the line?

> "...in direct violation of the country's constitution..."

I'm too lazy to try and verify this myself. You seem to have information on how to verify this. Can you point me in at least a vague general direction so I can read up more on it?

Sure, here you go: https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e...

This didn't answer my question.

> "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

What was violated here? Break it down for me.

I don't follow much but I haven't noticed Snowden being shamed in media in Europe.

US media call him a coward for exposing how much effort their government puts into breaking citizens' privacy, and then GTFOing from the country? That's not a stand one can come to while having brain in the head. To have media so much aligned with government witch-hunting seems borderline Russian.

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