Spy or whistleblower? Should Obama settle with Snowden?
newsweek.com
newsweek.com
Hillary's actions very likely gave secret information to America's enemies. Snowden's actions gave secret information to the public.
Hillary's intentions were to circumvent FOIA rules and break the law. Snowden's intentions were to be end unconstitutional spying and uphold the law.
If incompetence in operating unclassfied email systems on behalf of the State Department was a crime, it seems like some State IT folks would be going to jail too.
> Hillary's intentions were to circumvent FOIA rules and break the law.
One of the major findings of the FBI investigation was that she did not have criminal intent. In fact this was a major reason they recommended against prosecution.
Snowden didn't have criminal intentions either, but many people want to prosecute him to the fullest anyway. But I also believe that Hillary's lack of charges is absolutely politically motivated. Some people are more equal than others.
What he wants is an opportunity to present a whistleblower or "public interest" defense. These are affirmative defenses--you admit you committed the crime, but that you had a really good reason for doing so, which should excuse you from punishment. "Self-defense" is a well-known affirmative defense against prosecution for a violent crime.
Now imagine that your job isn't merely writing some app but literally about making or breaking world peace, and that your IT department isn't just some tired Windows admins down the hall but the entire disaster that is the same federal government that tried to launch healthcare.gov. And that at no point in your job did anyone even set you up with an official email account in the first place. What would you do?
Both of them broke the law; both of them had very good reasons for doing so. There are arguments that they made Americans less safe by their actions, but there are definitely arguments in both cases that they made Americans more safe by their actions.
And in any case, fixing the email systems for an organization this big is a messy project. There are countless employees who have the existing system set up and have workflows depending on it. There's special handling of classified information, records-keeping, and so forth. All of this will break, somehow, when you try to migrate it. I'm sure Hillary could have chosen to be the meddling exec who demands an IT overhaul to suit her needs if she really wanted to prioritize that, but it does not actually seem like that would have been better for America. (Or for her public perception, for that matter.)
Hillary's intentions were in no way to break the law. That was very clearly declared false by the FBI.
This is the problem. It's not their job to find intent but that a crime had been committed and she should have been prosecuted. There are literally THOUSANDS of examples where someone hadn't intended to commit a crime and were punished regardless of that citing the often quoted "ignorance of the law is no excuse".
Hillary knew the law. She should have known better being in her position but she chose to circumvent the rules (for a number of reasons) and as a result the law was broken.
Her escape from prosecution is nothing more than a blatant public travesty of justice.
http://i.imgur.com/NneHu1w.jpg
I don't know what the right answer is here, but I am certain that I don't find incompetence a better excuse than malfeasance.
No it is not. "nonpaper" means scrap off all sensitive data and send it nonsecure. Comey explained what she meant in this email; long version would be: "okay, remove all the sensitive information from this note so that you can lawfully send it via non-secure line; then go ahead and do it".
No intent here.
2) Other evidence showed that this particular set of talking points ended up being sent by secure fax anyway.
2) That's why I said this is what intent looks like -- I'm not making any claims about whether she did in fact break any laws. I have no way of knowing that.
In the United States there are laws regarding criminal negligence, and hypothetically speaking, if someone died as a result of her criminal negligence, it would be considered criminally negligent homicide in most states and could result in prosecution and a real prison sentence.
Would she ever be tried or found guilty of it? Based on the outcome so far, I doubt it; the powerful and connected rarely fall. But the standard does exist.
Politions' actions should be transparent, at least in a better world.
That's not at all what you're saying. The FBI isn't full of psychics, and has no ability to detect intention or read emails that have been permanently deleted.
HRC risked giving away the identities of clandestine agents.
Snowden proved that some of them committed war crimes, and that the NSA and CIA routinely betray our trust.
What the "classified documents" said were that the government is secretly violating the constitutional "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures". Innocent citizens are routinely having their e-mails and phone calls watched, and recorded in archives permanently.
The "classified information" you keep referring to is that the government is violating its own constitution.
Umm, more like it was standard operating procedure. How else do you think all the anonymously sourced articles in the NYT/WaPo/WSJ happen?
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/politics/bush-lets-us-spy-...
> Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.
Let's agree that Clinton ran a private email server and it had a high risk of being compromised.
Let's agree that Clinton turned over a subset of the emails when it was requested, under the grounds that those were personal emails which aren't related to her actions as secretary of state. Let's agree that there is no clear boundary where to draw that line, so people will argue in good faith that the line was drawn in the wrong spot.
Now, let's imagine that instead of the above scenario, not just Clinton but most of the white house positions including the secretary of state used the DNC email server explicitly to avoid freedom of information act requests. Imagine that when this came to light, the Obama administration claimed to have lost over 5 million emails. When asked to produce the backup tapes, they said, shoot! The backup tapes are corrupted.
Do you agree that that scenario would have been far worse? And how many investigations and calls for impeachment would have happened by now? How many special committees would have called?
Well, the above isn't a hypothetical. The previous administration did exactly what I described, except that they used the RNC mail server of course. All the people who are outraged (outraged!) and think that Clinton committed what amounts to an act of treason didn't say a peep back then. And unlike the perpetual train of special investigations that are brandished for political ends, that whole affair didn't result garner even one tenth the amount of press Hillary has.
Let me be clear: I'm not saying what Hillary did was OK. I'm saying that if the previous administration did something far worse and nobody got body slammed for it, why would you be surprised that Clinton got off the hook too?
You should also read the juicy contents of the Secretary of State's emails. The vast majority were of the form "Can you contact so and so and see if we can put off the meeting until later." There are very few truly top secret things that crossed her desk.
Elected Republicans, of course, acted in bad faith, as you mention. Make no mistake, however, there are many who find the lapses of both administrations disturbing for a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people".
You've got two people taking deliberate actions which could expose or at least violate handling rules for classified information. One was seeking to retain it personally persuant to her job, the other was exposing it to the world, under the guidance of his conscience and loyalty to his Constitution.
Both broke rules.
How they did so, to what ends, and to what effect are hugely different.
Drawing comparisons between Snowden and Clinton as GP did is far too muddled to really be useful, IMO.
(Disclaimers: I think Snowden should be a national hero to Americans, and is a global hero. Clinton rather grudgingly gets my nod to occupy the Oval Office, though given current contenders, that's very much a lesser evil option, with an enormous gulf between her and the greater evil not tempering the fact that she's damaged goods and quite probably not the leadership the US needs at present. She seems to be what they'll get. I rather hope that she does, actually. Trump would be a disaster for the planet, and any plausible GOP alternate would be nearly as bad. Not that the GOP have been constrained by plausibility of late.)
Also, if we're talking Snowden, you could make the argument Hillary's emails were more secure since they weren't accessible to...Snowden.
Hillary would probably be the opposite.
Adam Curtis has touched on this, in "Bitter Lake" IIRC. Recommended. (BBC video documentary -- this bit comes early on.)
When we see clear evidence that "rule of law" no longer applies, why should anybody respect the law?
The financial collapse, Clapper lying to Congress, and the Petraeus scandal (and subsequent zero punishment for any of the three) made it clear public knowledge and brought it out of the shadows into the light of day.
How so? (I would wager neither put us in danger.)
Edit: you can down vote me all you want, you know it's true http://www.ibtimes.com/clinton-foundation-donors-got-weapons...
Regardless, for better or worse Saudi Arabia is a US ally and we have a pretty long track record of selling arms to our allies. We sold the Saudis arms before HRC was in the State Department and we have continued to sell them arms after she left.
SA is an US ally maybe on paper. Remind me, from what country were most of the 9/11 hijackers? Do you think that this is a coincidence?
* Although Saudi Arabia is widely believed to be a US ally, and the US government reports that they are, it is well-known among the cabinet that they are not.
* It is further well-known among the cabinet that they are such bad allies that they as a state were responsible for the greatest act of war on US soil since Pearl Harbor.
* Hillary Clinton is so corrupt that she will use her office to sell warplanes to a country whose relationship with the US is in truth the same as Japan's in the early 1940s, and in appearance a friend.
* Somehow, despite being known to Clinton, this information is lost on the previous and future Secretaries of State, who sell warplanes to this country because they are deceived by the pretense that they are allies.
* However, it is not lost on the general public, because you have figured it out.
* Clinton entered office with the intention to be corrupt, and chose to use a private email server to hide all of her emails from the rest of the government.
* As part of that, she told the rest of her government to email her private email server, and never set up a state.gov email address.
* However, she failed to remember that records of donations to the Clinton Foundation were public, and records of who the US sells military aircraft to are also public, thereby allowing a newspaper to notice the deals via public data and not via her email records.
So, we have to imagine not only that she's corrupt, but that she is a traitor of the highest order (she's supporting a country that's secretly at war with her own) and also a complete idiot, and also that the previous and next Secretaries of State are complete idiots in a different way (but in the same way as each other). That's a much larger charge than "she has bad character".
Do you know what Wahhabism is? Do you know who's the biggest financial supporter of Wahhabism in the Middle East?
> It is further well-known among the cabinet that they are such bad allies that they as a state were responsible for the greatest act of war on US soil since Pearl Harbor.
Responsibility takes many forms. But yes, they are at least partially responsible. Google around.
> Hillary Clinton is so corrupt that she will use her office to sell warplanes to a country whose relationship with the US is in truth the same as Japan's in the early 1940s, and in appearance a friend.
It's the same mind set as say BP.
> Somehow, despite being known to Clinton, this information is lost on the previous and future Secretaries of State, who sell warplanes to this country because they are deceived by the pretense that they are allies.
The situation wasn't always like this. Furthermore, if you can provide some data on what weapons were exactly sold under the previous heads of state, that would be useful.
* However, it is not lost on the general public, because you have figured it out.
Google around. All of the things I'm saying were reported in reputable news sources.
* Clinton entered office with the intention to be corrupt, and chose to use a private email server to hide all of her emails from the rest of the government.
Well, she's been in politics for a while and she wasn't exactly not corrupt for most of her career so she didn't "enter" the office with the intention. She was always corrupt.
* As part of that, she told the rest of her government to email her private email server, and never set up a state.gov email address.
Idk how this is related? The rest of her gov't would use whatever email she provided them with?
* However, she failed to remember that records of donations to the Clinton Foundation were public, and records of who the US sells military aircraft to are also public, thereby allowing a newspaper to notice the deals via public data and not via her email records.
No, she's counting on the public not paying attention. Same as with Wall street speeches. Has she released those yet btw? It's a rhetorical question.
> So, we have to imagine not only that she's corrupt, but that she is a traitor of the highest order (she's supporting a country that's secretly at war with her own) and also a complete idiot, and also that the previous and next Secretaries of State are complete idiots in a different way (but in the same way as each other). That's a much larger charge than "she has bad character".
I think that traitor's motivation is causing damage. Her motivation is self-interest and she doesn't care about the means.
Well it was not always obvious that SA isn't exactly a US ally. On the contrary actually.
> I don't think it is at all obvious that donations + arms deal = bribes for arms deal.
So why exactly did they do it? There's a time table somewhere online which compares the dates of donation with dates of approval. Care to guess how quickly these things happened after one another?
Because we don't have many friends in the Middle East and we desperately want some help combatting IS. It's not rocket science. We have sold arms to Saudi Arabia for generations. For example, Reagan approved a large deal in the early 1980s:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US%E2%80%93Saudi_Arabia_AWACS_...
Also lol at bringing up Reagan. Does Iran Contra right a bell?
It's my understanding that there are several factors that play into the decision of allowing the sales. One such factor is for example human rights violations. You know the thing SA is not exactly doing well in.
Saudi Arabia, along with much the rest of the Middle East, owes itself to a chain of events which I'll arbitrarily start with the Roman empire, its split into east and west, the fall of first the West (410 AD), the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire, a/k/a Byzantine Empire (~330 BC - 1453 BC), when it was taken by the Ottoman Empire (1299 - 1923), whose region of control since 1683 included most of what little of the Arabian Peninsula supported what little population it had.
The US helped Saudi Arabia emerge in the first place (though some guy named Lawrence had more to do with that), the Saudis not particularly caring for the British and finding them too near (an old and perhaps wise Arab doctrine encourages making distant allies -- they're less likely to cause trouble).
Oil was found and developed beginning in the 1930s, largely with American assistance.
1945 saw the Quincy Agreement, between the US and KSA, establishing a long-term strategic alliance. The US needed oil, the house of Saud needed help developing that, money, and protection from other unhappy families (each unhappy in its own Tolstoian way). A fact which didn't preclude multiple attempts at oil embargoes against the US and Europe, including particularly over the Suez Crisis (1956) and Six Day War (1967), but coming to a head after the Yom Kippur War (1973), by which point the US had experienced peak oil extraction and various Arab states had more fully realised their pricing power.
KSA tone changed quite markedly after a visit from US finance officials in 1974, and generally tightened with disruptions in Iran, Iraq, and internally with various sects of islam.
The relationship, in a word, is distinctly complex. A mutual dependency, with fairly strong mutual levels of unhappiness at the dependency.
By the 1950s, the US was beginning to import Saudi Oil, and
If she took bribes in exchange for weapons, sure, that's a crime, but that's a different crime from improper handling of classified material, and has absolutely nothing to do with the conversation we're having, which is about Snowden, not Clinton. Stay on topic; there are already enough internet fora for non-directed ranting about which politicians people hate more, and HN isn't and should not become one of them.
There's also the fact that she kept using her BlackBerry in 2008 despite being warned that even the NSA couldn't solve the security issues (which were about unauthorized parties breaking in, not about emails escaping government record). That's consistent with her wanting devices that were convenient and worked, and pretty inconsistent with her wanting to keep emails away from government archiving: she invited the cooperation of the NSA in solving her problem (until they said they couldn't), which she wouldn't want to do if the purpose of her using the BlackBerry was to hide emails.
So - when you say "odds are", what's the evidence that causes you to favor that more complex hypothesis?
If you mean that she used a private email server, remember that Hillary Clinton was the first secretary of state to live in the era where real-time email was a thing the average (American, at least) person had. iPhone and Android both came out in 2007; Hillary became Secretary of State in 2009. We have no information was to whether Condoleezza Rice would have wanted to, say, use the Dropbox mobile app had her job continued past 2009; that app didn't exist during her tenure. No one in the history of the US government had gone as far as to use reliable email on their mobile device to get their job done, but that's because Hillary happened to be Secretary of State during the years when real-time email in your pocket became practical.
The reason Justice didn't prosecute HRC was that it was too difficult for them to pursue a narrative around "intent". Comey at FBI wasn't making that part up: the previous cases on the record for negligent, rather than deliberate, exposure were not helpful to the prosecution: for one thing, in every case on the record, the line between "negligence" and "deliberation" was pretty vague --- each prosecuted person had deliberately done things with specific, known pieces of classified information that put them at risk. For another, in each of those cases, classified documents actually leaked (usually to the person who reported them). And finally, in most of the cases, the accused were not civilians and not part of the Intelligence Community.
Three things to know about classified information in the government:
1. Ordinary people who take jobs involving classified information are taught that the penalties for mishandling it are grave, and almost invariably involve prison time.
2. That training appears to be a lie, intended to scare people into being diligent about classified information.
3. There is a long history of leniency for people outside the intelligence community who mishandle classified information. The expectation seems to be that if you take 10 people from State and search their Hotmail accounts, you're going to find stuff.
I don't believe HRC received special treatment. If she had been at State when this story broke, and had been an ordinary employee, she'd have been fired. Termination is not prosecution. At any rate: she can't be fired now: she's already gone.
http://warontherocks.com/2016/07/why-intent-not-gross-neglig...
This is and was a transparent attempt to squash Hillary's run for president. That's all. The tone of your post betrays your own naked political bias as well.
Hillary's actual decisions while SoS have a far greater effect on the US as a country than everything related to her email put together.
There are plenty of legitimate things to criticize her on, we don't need to make up nonsense. It's OT anyway.
Of course, that brings up the question - was she really breaking the law? Were others before her doing the same?
Can you imagine the nightmare that would have been politically? Hrc should have been prosecuted a long time ago.
>The U.S. allows no public interest defense to criminal charges, as many countries do, but it should be considered as a possible future reform, along with more protective whistleblower laws.
>The federal judge should then sentence Snowden according to prevailing standards for relevant criminal sanctions. It would be a public service for educational purposes if that proceeding were to be televised.
This seems like a perfectly reasonable approach, but I have the feeling that neither side would be satisfied with it. People are just too polarized on their view of him.
EDIT: And the multiple downvotes seem to prove me point. Most people here want Snowden to walk free on a full pardon yet even Snowden admits that he broke the law and deserves to face those charges in court. Meanwhile there are even more people elsewhere who feel he is a traitor that deserves the death penalty. Seemingly no one is open to compromise.
"Ellsberg was silenced before he could begin. According to Ellsberg, his "lawyer, exasperated, said he 'had never heard of a case where a defendant was not permitted to tell the jury why he did what he did.' The judge responded: well, you're hearing one now. And so it has been with every subsequent whistleblower under indictment".[21]"
It can also mean that they don't expect Snowden would get a fair (or public) trial.
However, that standard would also require numerous CIA agents to be tried and possibly hanged in Nürnberg-like trials, and for HRC to have a real possibility of 20-years-to-life in prison.
The problem is that the prevailing standard in the US would be life in prison. I imagine that eventually Snowden will wind up serving a life sentence in the underground supermax facility in Florence, Colorado whether he comes voluntarily or not - Russia will eventually use him as a bargaining chip in some trade negotiation, and that will be the end of him. I think it's wrong, but that outcome is almost inevitable at some point.
Obama will not pardon him, and I don't think either of the presumptive presidential nominees are big Snowden fans. From the government perspective, Snowden did a tremendous amount of damage, and he will eventually pay for that damage with his life.
Asylum for Snowden it's wasn't just foreign policy act, but more act for Russian elites: we provided asylum for almost #1 on US list and we he is safe. Whole regime built on rule that any loyal person in elites is safe no matter if he's murderer, pedophile or any other kind of criminal.
Just think about Magnitsky case. It's was just a bunch of criminals who wasn't even part of Russian elite, but Putin didn't betrayed them even after it was clear that would cause significantly damage to whole county economy.
So giving Snowden would sent signal to elites that they and their capitals no longer safe. It's would be deathly for regime.
"The majority of the facility is above ground. The only part that is underground is a subterranean corridor that links cellblocks to the lobby."
I'm sure it is not something he really wants to do, but it's not like his US citizenship does much for him now anyway.
That's a complete fantasy. Snowden will never be used as a bargaining chip. It would send a terrible message to people who are currently spying for Russia and might have to escape to Russia at some point (and I'm not saying that Snowden is a Russian spy.)
Don't you think that US already offered Russia a ton of deals for Snowden? They turned them down because it would severely damage Russia's reputation. It's really a non-starter. Diplomats won't even waste time trying to negotiate extradition anymore because it's pointless.
Another refrain that I hear is "if Putin is deposed and a new West-friendly government is installed, they will extradite Snowden". Again, zero chance of that happening. Even if new Russian gov becomes best friends with US, Snowden will not be extradited for the same reasons explained above.
And by the way, if the roles were reversed and some Russian leaker managed to escape to the US, there would be exactly zero chance that US would ever extradite them back to Russia. That's why Russia will never extradite him either.
>Obama will not pardon him, and I don't think either of the presumptive presidential nominees are big Snowden fans.
I completely agree with this point. There's about 1-5% chance that Obama will pardon him. Obama has prosecuted more leakers than anyone else in history. Also, pardoning Snowden would send a horrible message to potential future 'Snowdens'. Whole intelligence community would revolt if he was to get a presidential pardon.
>and he will eventually pay for that damage with his life.
Again, extremely low chance of that happening. US and Russia have a gentleman's agreement that they will not kill each others' spies and traitors who escaped.
If Snowden is ever offered a deal by DoJ, it will have to involve jail time. Say they offer him 5 years in a low-security prison, would he take it? Of course not. He is with his common law wife and will probably end up having children. A deal that hinges on him spending years in prison is not something he will ever take.
Gen Hayden believes that Snowden will forever remain in Russia and when he dies, it will be of natural causes or old age. I completely agree with him. Snowden will never set foot on US soil again.
Life in prison is losing your life - it's just a much slower execution than the traditional methods. There is no parole in the federal system; life is life.
> That's a complete fantasy.
It's not a fantasy of mine. But I do believe that governments do things for their own purposes, and could care less if one more American spends the rest of their life in prison. If and when it becomes politically convenient or necessary, they'll simply revoke his asylum and deport him.
If Snowden is ever offered a deal by DoJ, it will have to involve jail time. Say they offer him 5 years in a low-security prison, would he take it?
The DOJ would never offer a deal for 5 or even 20 years, because it would undermine the message they want to send to others contemplating similar actions. If he sets foot in the US, voluntarily or not, he's going down for life.
Addendum: People on HN tend to vastly over-estimate the importance of privacy to the American populace. It's a very niche issue in politics.
Only a complete idiot or crook would think Snowden's activities make him a spy. He is a hero. He risked his personal safety to expose the _criminal_ activities of the U.S. government. There is nothing more to the story than that.
So if you want to determine if someone is an idiot and/or crook, this question is a great test.
But I don't think Snowden thinks he did anything wrong. He wasn't even reckless -- he allowed veteran reporters to handle the punblication to mitigate unintended consequences and act as a check on his own beliefs.
So accepting punishment and allowing the US government to have the last word doesn't make sense to me.
Because if you're equating breaking the law per se with a moral transgression, I think you'll need to hunker down for a pretty tough debate.
They are violating the US constitution, the universal declaration of human rights, and are breaking innumerable laws outside of the US, gaining unauthorised access to systems and information.
It is the NSA, and their employees who have participated in carrying out these crimes, who we should be discussing punishment vs. pardon.
Snowden is simply the messenger, nothing more.
Thanks for the heads-up though.
It's no coincidence that his escape route took him through the only nations in the world that would not ask how high of the US told them to jump.
Were the Chinese and Russians able to obtain significant advantage from whatever privileged info Snowden fed them? Most likely.
Just as the America would do if the situation was reversed.
What option did Snowden have though? I certainly can't fault him for basing the seriousness of the consequences on what happened to Chelsea Manning or on Assange's situation. Truth is if the US considers you an enemy, spy, traitor etc you no longer have any rights and will be tortured.