> What Obama thinks Snowden "deserves" is irrelevant.
Sort of. Obama has the ability to pardon Snowden, if he felt strongly about it.
Sort of. Obama has the ability to pardon Snowden, if he felt strongly about it.
I can't think of a way to pardon Snowden without sending that kind of message - you can't say, "Only do this if you're really sure what's happening is super bad."
So yeah, he could pardon Snowden, but the consequences could be ruinous to the US, even if it is "The Right Thing" to do.
/sarcasm
Ellsberg's leaking of the Pentagon Papers led to charges, that were later dropped, and we didn't see some huge number of whistleblowers.
So I assert your claim is a poor one. History has not shown that granting a pardon to a whistleblower has led to inappropriate leaking, and the chilling effect of not doing it when appropriate (or deciding it's not appropriate when it clearly was, such as now), is not worth the trade off.
They are still in the Snowden case as well.
Also, to declare that history cannot help in the analysis of a problem in the present is to admit defeat. To fully understand the present, the only real tool you have is history.
No, a pardon received by one person is not a promise of pardons to anyone else. A pardon is an exception, not a rule.
Lynching of black people in the Jim Crow South were often attributed officially to "unknown parties of a mob" even when there was clear photographic evidence of white ringleaders. White murderers knew that the fiction of official non-recognition was not a rule, yet the reality of the precedent thus set led to many other mob lynchings.
All of this is to say that even though a pardon is not a rule and should be recognized as such, that only helps matters if every potential future leaker sees it as an exception and not a new precedent.
Some types of classified data leaks are more equal than others. The same is true of violations of any criminal law. That's why the pardon power exists (and, in part, why jury nullification is important) -- because no law can ever perfectly account for all edge cases.
> Lynching of black people in the Jim Crow South were often attributed officially to "unknown parties of a mob" even when there was clear photographic evidence of white ringleaders.
That repeated pattern of false portrayals to put a public face on a decision not to prosecute is very different than a pardon that does not deny that a crime was committed, and does not falsely assert ambiguity in the identity of the responsible party, etc.
A pardon sends a very mixed message here, precisely because Snowden has crafted a very mixed message.
The US gov. is applying double standards.
Seems to be widespread today in so called "free western countries".
The thing that government can do to prevent that from occurring is to demonstrate actual whistleblower protection schemes, and correct flaws when exposed.
edited grammar
EDIT: my meaning is that if the Justice Dept. wants to nail him, they will have options regardless.