• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

A deal for Snowden?

Bob001

Penultimate Amazing
B
Joined
Dec 21, 2006
Messages
16,613
Location
US of A
There is a developing feeling that Edward Snowden should or could be offered a plea-bargain or maybe even a pass in exchange for returning all secret material still in his possession.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/02/opinion/edward-snowden-whistle-blower.html?_r=0

1/ What would be a reasonable deal?

2/ If he returned to the U.S. and resolved his legal issues, what kind of life could he lead? Could he find a job, walk down the street safely, maybe go on speaking tours? Personally, I think that even if the President pardoned him -- fat chance! -- he'd be crazy to ever come back here.
 
1. The protections of Obama's whistleblower act should be extended to him, but only for the disclosures he made about abuses of power by the NSA against American citizens in the "dragnet" operations. He should return any stolen materials still in his possession. He should do some prison time, a year or two.

2. His release of classified material pertaining to U.S. spying on other nation-states should fall under different, much harsher punitive standards, if convicted. This is his real problem, and makes his return to U.S. soil unwise, as you point out.

I was impressed that the NYT ran the editorial. Apparently not everyone considers Snowden an unmitigated traitor. There are ethical nuances in his actions which need to be examined and sorted out.
 
Last edited:
I thought he already shared all the documents, and it was the media staggering releases.

BenBurch said:
The good he did could have been done without hurting other people.
Click to expand...

Could it? I asked this before and no one answered.
 
BenBurch said:
The good he did could have been done without hurting other people.
Click to expand...

Which people were harmed?

How would you have accomplished it, if you'd been in his position, and had wanted to ensure that the perceived abuses were brought to light?
 
I think he is a hero...who should voluntarily face a trial and likely spend 30 years in jail.

In life, we face many duties, burdens of obligation, we are born into or sign up to. In Japanese, it is the concept of giri. And Snowden made a choice to fulfill one of those obligations, but shirking the other. That is a great thing. But he needs to step forward and complete his obligation to the other.
 
babycondor said:
Which people were harmed?

How would you have accomplished it, if you'd been in his position, and had wanted to ensure that the perceived abuses were brought to light?
Click to expand...

People - we'll learn that when the government has him on the dock.

I'd have leaked just the important stuff. On my own. Very Publicly. And taken the consequences.
 
Evo Morales was forced to make an emergency landing in Vienna. I guess you could call that a person that was hurt. Bit unfair though to blame Snowden for that. Or Greenwalds spouse who was arrested at Heathrow for "terrism".

But I am certain the "People" who "Have been hurt" are just as valid as the "50 terrism plots that have been foiled because of since the inception of the program"
 
Last edited:
BenBurch said:
People - we'll learn that when the government has him on the dock.

I'd have leaked just the important stuff. On my own. Very Publicly. And taken the consequences.
Click to expand...

From the things I read from him so far, it sounds as though he was quite paranoid about the NSA silencing him and/or those he reached out to.

The U.S. intelligence community, he wrote, “will most certainly kill you if they think you are the single point of failure that could stop this disclosure and make them the sole owner of this information.”

I did not believe that literally, but I knew he had reason to fear.
Click to expand...

Linky.

Edward Snowden, the source of National Security Agency leaks, has insisted that he decided to become a whistleblower and flee America because he had no faith in the internal reporting mechanisms of the US government, which he believed would have destroyed him and buried his message for ever.

One of the main criticisms levelled at Snowden by the Obama administration has been that he should have taken up an official complaint within the NSA, rather than travelling to Hong Kong to share his concerns about the agency’s data dragnet with the Guardian and other news organisations. But in an interview with the New York Times, Snowden has dismissed that option as implausible.

“The system does not work,” he said, pointing to the paradox that “you have to report wrongdoing to those most responsible for it.” If he had tried to sound the alarm internally, he would have “been discredited and ruined” and the substance of his warnings “would have been buried forever”.
Click to expand...

Linky.

But as for publically:

Greenwald said he and Poitras locked Snowden in a room in Hong Kong for six hours after they arrived to meet him in order to “relentlessly interrogate him,” and to make sure that they were not being set up, or that the documents were not fake. Greenwald said the two were also anxious to ensure that Snowden, just 29 at the time, grasped the permanent impact on his future of exposing state secrets—and of insisting to the journalists that they publish his name. “We spent the bulk of that first week making sure he really understood what the implications were of revealing himself,” Greenwald said.
Click to expand...

Linky.

Anyway, I don't believe him being cowardly would make the act any more or less criminal.
 
Last edited:
magellan said:
Evo Morales was forced to make an emergency landing in Vienna. I guess you could call that a person that was hurt. Bit unfair though to blame Snowden for that. Or Greenwalds spouse who was arrested at Heathrow for "terrism".
Click to expand...

I was not aware he was arrested. Please tell me where he is incarcerated and/or pending trial?
 
BobTheCoward said:
I think he is a hero...who should voluntarily face a trial and likely spend 30 years in jail.

In life, we face many duties, burdens of obligation, we are born into or sign up to. In Japanese, it is the concept of giri. And Snowden made a choice to fulfill one of those obligations, but shirking the other. That is a great thing. But he needs to step forward and complete his obligation to the other.
Click to expand...

No one is obligated to voluntarily suffer unjust consequences if they can avoid it. What you're advocating wouldn't be noble, it would just be stupid.
 
If the government is offering this deal then that means the government, at least, thinks he still has harmful information.

I find the implications of that to be pretty interesting.
 
Robrob said:
I was not aware he was arrested. Please tell me where he is incarcerated and/or pending trial?
Click to expand...

The main difference between an arrest and a detention is the degree of suspicion law enforcement has.
(The other is that a detention is short, and usually performed on site)

Other than that: Cute!
 
Travis said:
If the government is offering this deal then that means the government, at least, thinks he still has harmful information.

I find the implications of that to be pretty interesting.
Click to expand...

I don't think that's it. Nobody has offered him a deal yet. But a lot of people in Congress, and top people at big technology firms, now understand that Snowden exposed a serious problem that needs to be addressed, and it would not have been exposed without him. Their initial hostility, and their zeal to drag him into custody, has largely evaporated. At the same time, he is a maverick and he undoubtedly broke the law in a big way. They don't want to set a precedent that might encourage other gov't employees or contractors to do something similar.

It's kind of a tricky problem.
 
Charlie Wilkes said:
They don't want to set a precedent that might encourage other gov't employees or contractors to do something similar.

It's kind of a tricky problem.
Click to expand...

Why shouldn't they want people to expose government wrongdoing? I mean, besides the obvious.
 
cornsail said:
No one is obligated to voluntarily suffer unjust consequences if they can avoid it. What you're advocating wouldn't be noble, it would just be stupid.
Click to expand...

Can we agree we are debating value judgements?

Because I do feel we are obligated, I don't feel its unjust, and I do feel its wrong to try and avoid it.
 
I've said it before and I'll say it again: what the population finds important and what the NSA finds important are completely two different things - and that's a big reason why there is such a discontinuity between the two cultures.

Snowden supporters see his actions in the context of domestic surveillance, and since it is quite a controversial program, they see a "Snowden bargain" under this light. How could someone be prosecuted for raising awareness on something so important for so many people?

The intelligence and security community see everything else he disclosed as way more important. All the things that have absolutely nothing to do with domestic surveillance, but that Snowden happily and eagerly shared with the world.

For the citizens, the domestic surveillance is a first step toward a police state. For the NSA, it's just a mean to a end, a mission that was given to them by politicians even if it is ultimately foreign to many traditional practices of the organisation, and more importantly, something they would readily end if there is a genuine political will to do so.

On the other hand, the citizens don't see the importance and the value of all the things Snowden disclosed. For them it's an afterthought compared to the domestic surveillance scandal, while for the NSA, it is by far the most damaging stuff. Snowden created the biggest intelligence crisis in the history of the US. The damage he caused could be evaluated in the billions. This is not an exaggeration.

Snowden will NEVER be pardoned for the disclosure he made regarding the US foreign intelligence operations. NEVER. Some people may not understand why, but that's precisely because they see the problem with their citizen's eyes, and not the intelligence professionals. Had Snowden only disclose information about domestic surveillance, the situation would be far different. Unfortunately for everybody, he went far, far, far, far beyond that.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom