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Home Front: WoT

Snowden 'justified,' deserves lighter punishment -NYT editorial

2014-01-03

[Al Ahram] The US government should grant former NSA contractor Edward Snowden clemency or a plea bargain given the public value of revelations over the National Security Agency's vast spying programs, the New York Times
...which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize...
editorial board said on Thursday.

In its lead editorial, the newspaper said Americans now more fully understand how widely their phone calls, emails and other information are tracked. Information provided to journalists by Snowden has also prompted needed legal review of the intelligence gathering and led a presidential panel to call for a major overhaul of the agency, it said.

"Considering the enormous value of the information he has revealed, and the abuses he has exposed, Mr. Snowden deserves better than a life of permanent exile, fear and flight. He may have committed a crime to do so, but he has done his country a great service," the New York Times' editorial board wrote.

The Guardian, a British newspaper that along with The Washington Post received Snowden's leaked documents, also called for President Barack Obama
I've now been in 57 states -- I think one left to go...
to pardon Snowden in its own editorial published on Wednesday.

Posted by:Fred

#8 Your right Rambler... And who knows what else he gave our enemies... Things that can't be mentioned or talked about. Things that can (or already have) get people killed.

Posted by: CrazyFool 2014-01-03 20:52

#7 My problem with Snowden is that he not only exposed things like domestic spying, he exposed EVERYTHING the NSA does - listening in on foreigh leaders, etc. etc. That is the reason the NSA exists. It is not to spy on Americans on American soil.

If he were really a patriot, he could have just taken stuff that showed the illegal stuff going on. Instead, he took everything he could get his grubby little paws on and released it. Manning did the same thing.

Posted by: Rambler in Virginia 2014-01-03 18:53

#6 I'm with Snowden. This capacity will be abused. It won't buy us anything but grief.

Posted by: gorb 2014-01-03 18:29

#5 My opinion is that what Snowden did was necessary, in some ways patriotic, and in some ways a very good thing exposing the questionable and extra-constitutional domestic spying by the NSA and other tentacles of the domestic government. But it also completely broke the law. He knew the consequences. Part of being a true patriot is to man up, and potentially take the penalties on himself. This would be a standing example to the would-be tyrants in government that We The People are willing to do things regardless of the cost (bonus points is that he makes himself into a legit case for clemency after serving some time, with support from the left and the right and even the libertarians).

That being said, the constitutional argument should be made at any trial to fully spotlight the domestic spying and the unconstitutionality of it, if his lawyers are worth a damn, making it a similar argument to, say, Rosa Parks. That would work to reduce (mitigate) the penalties, but only if they can make the case that he truly was out to do this for only the right reasons (which I rather doubt were completely the reasons, given the exposure of external operations as well s domestic ones, and handing the classified data to hostile powers)

N.b. this is unlike that a-hole Manning who was completely sabotaging legitimate action committed in the defense of the nation against foreign enemies.

Posted by: OldSpook 2014-01-03 17:56

#4 The "Pentagon Papers", all over again.

Posted by: Pappy 2014-01-03 10:52

#3 So the end justifies the means? Then we can replace all those complicated laws, trials, and attorneys with, "He needed killin'."

Posted by: Bobby 2014-01-03 08:02

#2 McClatchyDC Aricle of July, 2013.

What we are really talking about here is a globalized system that prevents any form of electronic communication from taking place without it being stored and monitored by the National Security Agency, Greenwald said in a webcast to the Socialism Conference in Chicago. It means theyre storing every call and have the capability to listen to them at any time.

Posted by: Besoeker 2014-01-03 06:45

#1 I like to think of myself as a reasonable man ( I'm not but I like to think I am )...so ANYTHING the NYT wants I ......just on general principles ,wouldn't give it to them.

Even if I didn't need it myself, I still wouldn't give it to them.

I can't really get over the nagging suspicion that Snowden is a "citizen of the world " and not really an American.( For some reason )
. WE have nothing to gain from giving HIM anything. Screw him, hope he likes the snow in Moscow. Buy himself some cardboard shoes and some Vodka and he's set.

Posted by: Spereting Tingle4064 2014-01-03 06:31

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