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Comment by diminoten | Hacker News Reader

Ignoring ethics for a moment (heh), one has to consider the ramifications a pardon such as that would send. That's tacit endorsement from the president of the US for everyone who thinks wrongdoings are going on to come out and tell the world, regardless of the chain-of-command, regardless of any oaths these people have taken - it's basically carte blanch permission for people in the government to start leaking privileged information.

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.

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Right. Much better to send the message that even if the disclosure proves warranted, even if we end up agreeing that reforms are needed, even if it's clear that the 'appropriate channels' are broken, if you disclose we'll hound and pursue you to the ends of the earth.

/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.

I don't think history can help us here, as 1960/1970 was a fundamentally different time than now. It's infinitely easier to proliferate information to the population, and there are no barriers to doing so now, whereas the newspapers were gatekeepers of public dissemination when Ellsberg did what he did.

the newspapers were gatekeepers of public dissemination when Ellsberg did what he did

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.

> it's basically carte blanch permission for people in the government to start leaking privileged information.

No, a pardon received by one person is not a promise of pardons to anyone else. A pardon is an exception, not a rule.

People will still think they're going to get pardoned, even if you're right and it's just "an exception".

Yeah, it would suck to send potential whistleblowers the message that it's "OK" to reveal governmental abuse.

The concern is with precedence, and the idea that sets in that some types of classified data leaks are "more equal" than others.

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.

> The concern is with precedence, and the idea that sets in that some types of classified data leaks are "more equal" than others.

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.

But given that the pardon involves a wide swath of classified data disclosures, only a minority of which have any obvious "American civil liberties!" tie, how do our hypothetical future leaker determine that a pardon might be appropriate for him, while a hypothetical future spy determines that a pardon would not be granted in their case (especially if they leak something of public import simultaneously)?

A pardon sends a very mixed message here, precisely because Snowden has crafted a very mixed message.

Pardons are purely discretionary acts of Presidents, not applications of legal principles that any reasonable person can expect to be applied in future cases; absent a pattern by multiple Presidents, no sane person would see a past pardon as a reliable precedent—at most it's a source of hope that if a similar political situation is created as a result of the act that there might conceivably be a similar result.

President Regan pardoned Mark Felt, aka Deep Throat. It can be done, just not in the era of 'Hope and Change™'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Felt

Just to be clear, he took an oath to defend the constitution and he appears to be one of very few people actually doing that.

You mean Snowden? When did he take this oath?

But other people (in some federal organisations) where pardoned for tormenting people and other felonies. So, as your statement holds: In the US tormenting and breaking basic human rights will be tolerated also in the future?

The US gov. is applying double standards.

Seems to be widespread today in so called "free western countries".

>...it's basically carte blanch permission for people in the government to start leaking privileged information.

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

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