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Comment by kajecounterhack | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

>> 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.

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.

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.

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

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