Edward Snowden is declaring vindication. I’m still a critic, but I can’t blame him.
Seven years after the former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the mass surveillance of Americans’ telephone records, an appeals court has found the program was unlawful – and that the US intelligence leaders who publicly defended it were not telling the truth. …
Snowden, who fled to Russia in the aftermath of the 2013 disclosures and still faces US espionage charges, said on Twitter that the ruling was a vindication of his decision to go public with evidence of the National Security Agency’s domestic eavesdropping operation.
(The Guardian, September 3, 2020)
Except that his declaration of vindication is unjustified. By perfect analogy, I explained why in “Bradley Manning ‘Not Guilty,’ but Still Faces Life in Prison?” July 31, 2013:
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If Manning and Snowden had acted like true whistleblowers (i.e., by turning over their classified documents to freedom-of-information advocates in the United States), I would have championed their cause. But they chose instead to conspire with foreign agents and governments – whose mission is clearly to undermine US national security. This is why I have no sympathy for them and think they should both rot in jail. …
[W]e can’t have useful idiots (like Manning and Snowden) leaking US military and diplomatic secrets to transparency fanatics (like WikiLeak’s Julian Assange) based solely on their conscientious objection to the way military commanders are conducting US wars. For obvious reasons, such leaks (no matter how well-intentioned) are naive and untenable; especially given that Assange thinks no government is entitled to keep any secret. …
I cannot overstate how patently absurd it is that leaks by these two nincompoops are inciting so much hand-wringing. After all, nobody can deny that the government uses its surveillance programs solely to keep the American people safe.
By contrast, tech companies use their far more intrusive surveillance programs just to sell the American people stuff. Yet nobody seems the least bit concerned about that.
Of course, as soon as another 9/11 hits (and it will) most Snowden-loving, NSA critics will be questioning why the government did not do even more intrusive eavesdropping and surveillance to prevent it.
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Meanwhile, for weeks now, Trump has been teasing his intent to pardon Snowden. But his reason for doing so has nothing to do with the legality or righteousness of Snowden’s leaks.
Instead, it’s pursuant solely to his perverse mission to seize any high-profile opportunity to spite his predecessor. Barack Obama famously rejected Snowden’s plea for a presidential pardon.
Incidentally, in one of the few cases of bipartisanship during his presidency, Congress called on Obama to do so – as I duly noted in “Congress: Snowden’s a Liar and a Traitor Who Should Never Be Pardoned,” September 16, 2016. On the other hand, this court ruling gives Trump legal cover, which is conspicuously absent from so many of his executive orders and presidential pardons.
In any event, Snowden can be forgiven his heightened expectation that Trump will soon relieve him of his Kim Philby-like misery. Because, even though he found escape, he found precious little refuge in Putin’s Russia, hence “Snowden Wants In from the Cold…,” March 4, 2015.
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Bradley not guilty… Snowden’s a liar… Snowden wants in…