Edward Snowden NBC News

Is the Fourth Amendment dead? Edward Snowden seems to think so.

In an interview with NBC News that aired Wednesday night, the NSA whistleblower who leaked sensitive government documents through the media, said the amendment that prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures "as it was written no longer exists." Specifically, Snowden accused the US government of deciding in secret and without any public debate to separate the search and seizure aspects of the amendment.

"All of your private records," Snowden told NBC's Brian Williams. "All of your private communications, all of your transactions, all of your associations, who you talk to, who you love, what you buy, what you read, all of these things can be seized and then held by the government and then searched later for any reason, hardly without any justification, without any reason, without any real oversight, without any real accountability for those who do wrong."

As a result, Snowden said, the Fourth Amendment now no longer holds the same meaning it once held.

Snowden became famous or infamous, depending on one's perspective, after leaking documents from the National Security Agency that detailed government surveillance both in the US and abroad. The documents revealed an NSA program for the bulk collection of the phone records of Americans, a revelation that prompted concern and criticism from everyone from ordinary citizens to those in Congress. Since leaking the documents, Snowden has been in the crosshairs of the US government and is currently in asylum in Russia.

Further sharing his beliefs on government spying, Snowden told NBC that "now we have a system of pervasive, pre-criminal surveillance where the government wants to watch what you're doing just to see what you're up to, to see what you're thinking, even behind closed doors."

During the full interview, Snowden also spoke out about other issues, including his motivation for leaking the documents, his view of himself as a patriot, and his desire to return to the United States. And despite his dour opinion of the state of the Fourth Amendment, Snowden appeared encouraged by what he called the changes that have occurred in societies around the world since he leaked the classified files.

"A robust public debate," he said. "We're seeing new protections in the United States and abroad for our rights to make sure that they're no longer violated."

Snowden has certainly emerged as a controversial figure in the seemingly endless debate pitting security against privacy. Some have labeled him a patriot, others a traitor. A sampling of tweets gathered in the wake of the NBC interview found that as of 6 a.m. PT Thursday, 59 percent of Twitter users consider him a patriot, while 41 percent see him as a traitor.

Do you think Snowden is a patriot, a traitor, or something else? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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Edward Snowden: 'Fourth Amendment no longer exists' - CNET

Edward Snowden talked to the Guardian on Monday via a video link from Moscow. Screenshot/The Guardian

Edward Snowden has set out the case for Barack Obama granting him a pardon before the US president leaves office in January, arguing that the disclosure of the scale of surveillance by US and British intelligence agencies was not only morally right but had left citizens better off.

The US whistleblowers comments, made in an interview with the Guardian, came as supporters, including his US lawyer, stepped up a campaign for a presidential pardon. Snowden is wanted in the US, where he is accused of violating the Espionage Act and faces at least 30 years in jail.

Speaking on Monday via a video link from Moscow, where he is in exile, Snowden said any evaluation of the consequences of his leak of tens of thousands of National Security Agency and GCHQ documents in 2013 would show clearly that people had benefited.

Yes, there are laws on the books that say one thing, but that is perhaps why the pardon power exists for the exceptions, for the things that may seem unlawful in letters on a page but when we look at them morally, when we look at them ethically, when we look at the results, it seems these were necessary things, these were vital things, he said.

A scene from the trailer for "Snowden." Open Road Films

I think when people look at the calculations of benefit, it is clear that in the wake of 2013 the laws of our nation changed. The [US] Congress, the courts and the president all changed their policies as a result of these disclosures. At the same time there has never been any public evidence that any individual came to harm as a result.

Although US presidents have granted some surprising pardons when leaving office, the chances of Obama doing so seem remote, even though before he entered the White House he was a constitutional lawyer who often made the case for privacy and had warned about the dangers of mass surveillance.

Obamas former attorney general Eric Holder, however, gave an unexpected boost to the campaign for a pardon in May when he said Snowden had performed a public service.

The campaign could receive a further lift from Oliver Stones film, Snowden, scheduled for release in the US on Friday.

Over the weekend the director said he hoped the film would help shift opinion behind the whistleblower, and added his voice to the plea for a pardon.

Ahead of general release, the film will be shown in 700 cinemas across the US on Wednesday, with plans for Stone and Snowden to join in a discussion afterwards via a video link.

Edward Snowden talks to the Guardian's Ewen MacAskill. Screenshot/The Guardian

In his wide-ranging interview, Snowden insisted the net public benefit of the NSA leak was clear. If not for these disclosures, if not for these revelations, we would be worse off, he said.

In Hong Kong in June 2013, when he had passed his documents to journalists, Snowden displayed an almost unnatural calm, as if resigned to his fate. On Monday he said that at that time he expected a dark end in which he was either killed or jailed in the US.

More than three years on, he appears cheerful and relaxed. He has avoided the fate of fellow whistleblower Chelsea Manning, who is in solitary confinement in the US. Snowden is free to communicate with supporters and chats online late into the night.

One of Edward Snowden's tweets. _

His 2.3 million followers on Twitter give him a huge platform to express his views.

He works on tools to try to help journalists.

He is not restricted to Moscow and has travelled around Russia, and his family in the US have been to visit him.

But Snowden still wants to return to the US and seems confident, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, that it will happen. In the fullness of time, I think I will end up back home, he said.

Once the officials, who felt like they had to protect the programmes, their positions, their careers, have left government and we start looking at things from a more historical perspective, it will be pretty clear that this war on whistleblowers does not serve the interests of the United States; rather it harms them.

Right now it seems unlikely that Obama will pardon Snowden. Etienne Oliveau/Getty Images

Snowden attracts lots of conspiracy theories. Early on, he was accused of being a spy for China and then a Russian spy. In August a cryptic tweet followed by an unusual absence prompted speculation that he was dead. He said he had simply gone on holiday.

There had also been rumours that his partner, Lindsay Mills, had left him, which would have been embarrassing as their romance occupies a large part of the Stone film. Snowden said she is with me and we are very happy.

His revelations resulted in a global debate and modest legislative changes. More significant, perhaps, is that surveillance and the impact of technological change has seeped into popular culture, in films such as the latest Jason Bourne and television series, such as the Good Wife.

Snowden also welcomed a renaissance of scepticism on the part of at least some journalists when confronted by anonymous briefings by officials not backed by evidence.

He warned three years ago of the danger that one day there might be a president who abused the system. The warning failed to gain much traction, given that Obamas presidency seemed relatively benign. But it resonates more today, in the wake of Donald Trumps response to the Russian hacking of the Democratic party: that he wished he had the power to hack into Hillary Clintons emails.

Snowden's chances for a pardon under Clinton or Trump seem even slimmer. Rob Ludacer

If Obama, as seems likely, declines to pardon Snowden, his chances under either Clinton or Trump would seem to be even slimmer. He described the 2016 presidential race as unprecedented in terms of the sort of authoritarian policies that are being put forward.

Unfortunately, many candidates in the political mainstream today, even pundits and commentators who arent running for office, believe we have to be able to do anything, no matter what, as long as there is some benefit to be had in doing so. But that is the logic of a police state.

He is even less impressed by the British prime minister, referring to Theresa May as a a sort of Darth Vader in the United Kingdom, whose surveillance bill is an egregious violation of human rights, that goes far further than any law proposed in the western world.

Snowden was initially berated by opponents for failing to criticise the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, but he has become increasingly vocal.

It is a potentially risky move, given his application for an extension of asylum is up for renewal next year, so why do it?

Vladimir Putin.Dennis Grombkowski/Getty Images

Well, it would not be the first time I have taken a risk for something I believe in, he said. This is a complex situation. Russia is not my area of focus. It is not my area of expertise. I dont speak Russian in a fluent manner that I could really participate in and influence policy. But when something happens that I believe is clearly a violation of the right thing, I believe we should stand up and say something about it.

My priority always has to be my own country rather than Russia. I would like to help reform the human rights situation in Russia but I will never be well placed to do so relative to actual Russian activists themselves.

Might he end up as part of a US-Russian prisoner exchange, with Putin possibly more amenable to the idea if Trump was in power? There has always been the possibility that any government could say, Well, it does not really matter whether it is a violation of human rights, it does not really matter whether it is a violation of law, it will be beneficial to use this individual as a bargaining chip. This is not exclusive to me. This happens to activists around the world every day.

He said he saw the Stone film as a mechanism for getting people to talk about surveillance, though he felt uncomfortable with other people telling his story.

Snowden has toyed with writing his memoirs but has not made much progress. There are at least three books about him on the way; an extensively researched one by the Washington Posts Bart Gellman and two others thought to be hostile.

Asked if he was the source for the Panama Papers the comments by the source sound like Snowden he laughed. He praised the biggest data leak in history, adding that he would normally be happy to cloak other whistleblowers by neither denying nor confirming he was a source. But he would make an exception in the case of the Panama Papers. I would not claim any credit for that.

For someone who has spent his life trying to keep out of the public eye, he has now appeared in a Hollywood movie and an Oscar-winning documentary, and several plays, including Privacy, which just ended a run in New York and in which he has a part alongside Daniel Radcliffe.

It was an alarming experience for me. I am not an actor. I have been told I am not very good at it. But you know if I can, I can try and maybe it will help, I will give it my best shot.

For Snowden, his campaign for a pardon, even if forlorn, offers a chance to highlight his plight, and he expressed thanks to all those who were backing it. He also said he hoped that after the fuss of the movie he could finally fade into the background. I really hope it is over, he said. That would be the greatest gift anyone could give me.

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EDWARD SNOWDEN: Obama should grant me a pardon - Business Insider

First Look Media announced Wednesday that it was shutting down access to whistleblower Edward Snowdens massive trove of leaked National Security Agency documents.

Over the past several years, The Intercept, which is owned by First Look Media, has maintained a research team to handle the large number of documents provided by Snowden to Intercept journalists Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald.

But in an email to staff Wednesday evening, First Look CEO Michael Bloom said that as other major news outlets had ceased reporting on it years ago, The Intercept had decided to focus on other editorial priorities after expending five years combing through the archive.

The Intercept is proud of its reporting on the Snowden archive, and we are thankful to Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald for making it available to us, Bloom wrote.

He added: It is our hope that Glenn and Laura are able to find a new partnersuch as an academic institution or research facilitythat will continue to report on and publish the documents in the archive consistent with the public interest.

First Look Medias decision to shut down the archives puts an end to the companys original vision of using The Intercept as a means to report on the NSA documents. In its original mission statement, Poitras, Greenwald, and Jeremy Scahill wrote that the initial mission of the site was, in the short-term, to provide a platform and an editorial structure in which to aggressively report on the disclosures provided to us by our source, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Wednesdays decisioncoupled with an announcement that First Look would lay off 4 percent of its staffwas not received well by many Intercept staffers, including Poitras.

In a series of internal memos, Poitras admonished First Look Media for its decision to shut down its archives, and lay off several researchers who had maintained them.

In a note to the First Look board of directors obtained by The Daily Beast, Poitras called on the board to review the decision to eliminate the archives, and criticized the companys decision to keep her in the dark about their plans until this week.

This decision and the way it was handled would be a disservice to our source, the risks weve all taken, and most importantly, to the public for whom Edward Snowden blew the whistle, she wrote.

In a separate memo to Bloom that was sent to many of the companys staffers, Poitras wrote that she was sickened by the decision to eliminate the research team and shut down the Snowden archive.

Your emails attempt to paper over these firings is not appropriate when the company is presented with such devastating news, she said.

Late Thursday evening, Greenwald tweeted that both he and Poitras had full copies of the archives, and had been searching for a partner to continue research.

Over the past several years, The Intercept has published several major stories based on information in the archives, which include millions of files, many of which include sensitive internal U.S. national-security secrets and trade practices. Other major media companies also have access to large portions of the archive, which yielded Pulitzer Prize-winning scoops for The Guardian and The Washington Post.

In a 2016 post, Greenwald laid out the sites vision for how best to report on materials in the archive.

From the time we began reporting on the archive provided to us in Hong Kong by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, we sought to fulfill his two principal requests for how the materials should be handled: that they be released in conjunction with careful reporting that puts the documents in context and makes them digestible to the public, and that the welfare and reputations of innocent people be safeguarded, Greenwald wrote in a 2016 post.

As time has gone on, The Intercept has sought out new ways to get documents from the archive into the hands of the public, consistent with the public interest as originally conceived.

Continued here:
The Intercept Shuts Down Access to Snowden Trove

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Feb. 10, 2017, 11:01 PM GMT/ UpdatedFeb. 11, 2017, 3:09 PM GMT

By Cynthia McFadden and William Arkin

U.S. intelligence has collected information that Russia is considering turning over Edward Snowden as a "gift" to President Donald Trump who has called the NSA leaker a "spy" and a "traitor" who deserves to be executed.

That's according to a senior U.S. official who has analyzed a series of highly sensitive intelligence reports detailing Russian deliberations and who says a Snowden handover is one of various ploys to "curry favor" with Trump. A second source in the intelligence community confirms the intelligence about the Russian conversations and notes it has been gathered since the inauguration.

Snowden's ACLU lawyer, Ben Wizner, told NBC News they are unaware of any plans that would send him back to the United States.

"Team Snowden has received no such signals and has no new reason for concern," Wizner said.

Snowden responded to NBCs report on Twitter and said it shows that he did not work with the Russian government.

"Finally: irrefutable evidence that I never cooperated with Russian intel, Snowden said. No country trades away spies, as the rest would fear they're next."

Snowden's Russian lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, reacted to the report with dismay.

"There are no reasons to extradite Edward Snowden to the U.S.," Kucherena said, according to TASS, the state-owned news agency. "This is some kind of speculation coming from so-called US special service sources. I think this topic was and remains on the political plane in the U.S., but it's American special services that are puppeteering this story with sporadic information plants."

"There is not the slightest reason to raise or discuss this topic in Russia," Kucherena said.

Russia, he said, does not sell people. "The Snowden issue cannot be a bargaining chip on any level, neither political nor economic," he said, according to the news agency.

Former deputy national security adviser Juan Zarate urged the Trump administration to be cautious in accepting any Snowden offer from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"For Russia, this would be a win-win. They've already extracted what they needed from Edward Snowden in terms of information and they've certainly used him to beat the United States over the head in terms of its surveillance and cyber activity," Zarate said.

"It would signal warmer relations and some desire for greater cooperation with the new administration, but it would also no doubt stoke controversies and cases in the U.S. around the role of surveillance, the role of the U.S. intelligence community, and the future of privacy and civil liberties in an American context.

"All of that would perhaps be music to the ears of Putin."

The White House had no comment, but the Justice Department told NBC News it would welcome the return of Snowden, who currently faces federal charges that carry a minimum of 30 years in prison. Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said talk about returning Snowden is "nonsense."

If he were returned to American soil, Snowden a divisive figure in America who is seen by some as a hero and others as treasonous would face an administration that has condemned him in the strongest terms.

"I think hes a total traitor and I would deal with him harshly," Trump said in July. "And if I were president, Putin would give him over." In October 2013, Trump tweeted: "Snowden is a spy who should be executed."

CIA Director Mike Pompeo has also called for Snowden to face American justice. "I think the proper outcome would be that he would be given a death sentence," Pompeo said last February.

Related: Congress Calls Edward Snowden a Liar in New Report

Snowden was working as a contractor at a National Security Agency facility in Hawaii when he began stealing top-secret documents that he gave to journalists in 2013, exposing details of U.S. domestic surveillance programs.

After Snowden fled to Hong Kong and was charged with violating the U.S. Espionage Act, he ended up in Russia. Moscow granted him refuge and officials say his residency permit was recently extended until 2020.

Related: Snowden's Lawyer Says He Can Apply for Russian Passport in a Year

In an interview streamed on Twitter in December, Snowden said being forced to return to the U.S. would be a human-rights violation but would also put to rest to accusations that he is a Russian spy.

"A lot of people have asked me: Is there going to be some kind of deal where Trump says, 'Hey look, give this guy to me as some kind of present'? Will I be sent back to the U.S., where Ill be facing a show trial?" Snowden said.

"Is this going to happen? I dont know. Could it happen? Sure. Am I worried about it? Not really, because heres the thing: I am very comfortable with the decisions that Ive made. I know I did the right thing."

More than 1 million people signed a White House petition calling for then-President Obama to pardon Snowden. Snowden himself did not file an application and tweeted that Army leaker Chelsea Manning should get clemency ahead of him. Obama commuted Mannings sentence but took no action on Snowden.

Snowden's Russian lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, told the state-run news agency last month that his client would like to return to the United States with no criminal charges hanging over his head.

"We hope very much that the new U.S. president would show some weighted approach to the issue and make the one and only correct decision to stop prosecution against Edward Snowden," Kucherena said.

Zarate said there is no way to predict if Putin will deliver Snowden or when.

"I think this is one of those rare cases where the stakes are so high, the diplomatic implications so deep, that anything can happen," he said.

"So this could be a secret diplomatic deal made in the dead of night, or it could be a weeks-in-formation deal with lawyers on all sides," he said.

"I think at the end of the day, Moscow holds the cards here."

Cynthia McFadden is the senior legal and investigative correspondent for NBC News.

More:
Russia Considers Returning Snowden to U.S. to 'Curry Favor ...

Should we just stop talking about any form of amnesty for Edward Snowden, because he swore an oath and broke it? In a piece for Slate titled Why Snowden Wont (And Shouldnt) Get Clemency, Fred Kaplan mentions my suggestion, in a piece for the site, that Jimmy Carters pardoning of Vietnam draft dodgers offers a useful parallel when thinking of the legal situation of Edward Snowden. Kaplan writes:

This suggestion is mind-boggling on several levels. Among other things, Snowden signed an oath, as a condition of his employment as an NSA contractor, not to disclose classified information, and knew the penalties for violating the oath. The young men who evaded the draft, either by fleeing to Canada or serving jail terms, did so in order to avoid taking an oath to fight a war that they opposeda war that was over, and widely reviled, by the time that Carter pardoned them.

There are no such extenuating circumstances favoring forgiveness of Snowden.

This is an odd and flawed argumentlogically and legally, but also historically and factually. The errors illustrate how we tend to misremember the past, and misjudge its passions when comparing them to our own.

There is also the question of why an oath matters, in a different way than a serious federal law like the Selective Service Actbut first the facts.

To begin with, did Snowden sign an oathnot to disclose classified information? He says that he did not, and that does not appear to have been contradicted. Snowden told the Washington Posts Barton Gellman that the document he signed, as what Kaplan calls a condition of his employment, was Standard Form 312, a contract in which the signatory says he will accept the terms, rather than swearing to them. By signing it, Snowden agreed that he was aware that there were federal laws against disclosing classified information. But the penalties for violating agreement alone are civil: for example, the government can go after any book royalties he might get for publishing secrets.

Snowden had taken an oaththe Oath of Office, or appointment affidavit, given to all federal employees [Note: to clarify, this would have been when he was an employee earlier, for the C.I.A.]:

I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

Now, some would argue (and it would have to be an argument, not an elision) that he violated this oath in revealing what he did; Snowden told Gellman that the revelations were how he kept itprotecting the Constitution from the officials at the N.S.A., which was assaulting it. Either way this is just not an oath, on the face of it, about disclosing classified information.

What about the draft dodgers? Kaplan considers it an extenuating factor that they acted before taking an oath to join the military. Legally speaking, this is circular: the criminal act in draft-dodging was refusing to join the military. How could it be extenuated by the fact that it took place? In any event, except when talking about, say, mail fraud, the notion that the comparative severity of crimes can be measured by the number of papers signed beforehand is a strange one (murderers dont usually sign non-murder agreements). Still, as it happens, a lot of dodgers did put their names on a lot of documents along the way. Some tried every trick in the book to get a deferment, including submitting false statements. Even before being examined by a draft board, they would have had to fill out Form 100, a questionnaire to help determine their draft classification. This is no civil contract; the signature line mentions criminal penalties, and there are bonus warnings for anyone seeking conscientious objector status. In that sense, it is more stringent than Form 312. (If by oath Kaplan just means a harshly worded document, they both count.) Young men tried to evade the draft by, among other things, lying on this form. Some were prosecuted for doing so, and then some were pardoned for the act.

Carters pardon was broad: you didnt have to show that youd opposed the war. Not everybody who tried to get out of the draft was motivated by principle, though draft resistance was integral to the movement to end the war. (And I do think, lest this be misconstrued, was a just cause deserving a pardon.)

Theres still the question of oaths. Did all of the young men we, as a country, forgave manage to avoid taking an oath, as Kaplan writes? Soldiers do take an oath, to support and defend the Constitution and obey their officers. (Snowden would have taken this during his brief time in the military.) What about deserters, who broke it?

Carters pardon did not include deserters. But deserters had a chance under an even earlier clemency offer, which President Ford extended for a several months starting in September, 1974when the war was not entirely over, and some Americans and more Vietnamese were still dying. It had conditions, as any deal with Snowden certainly would; those who hadnt served time in prison had to work in public-service jobs, for example in a hospital, for two years. (Sports-historical footnote: the chairman of the clemency board was Charles Goodell, whose son Roger is now commissioner of the N.F.L.) Still, there was mercy.

In other words, the historical reality appears to be pretty much the opposite of what Kaplan writes: Snowden, as far as one can tell, didnt take an oath not to disclose classified information, and some Vietnam-era deserters who received clemency did take and violate their own oath.

Introducing the plan, Ford spoke of his hope that it would be a step toward a calmer and cooler appreciation of our individual rights and responsibilities. That is as a pretty clear statement of what we can also hope to get from the Snowden case.

Fords clemency offer came a month after hed pardoned Nixona man of many oaths. A Times story from 1974 quoted Ford as saying, at a press conference, Well, the only connection between those two cases is the effort that I made in the one to heal the wounds involving charges against Mr. Nixon and my honest and conscientious effort to heal the wounds for those who had deserted military service or dodged the draft.

Those wounds were still unhealed during the Carter Presidency, and, decades later, some never have closed up. Kaplan writes that the war was, by 1977, widely reviled, but so, in many quarters, were draft evaders. Whether Bill Clinton and George Bush had legally avoided being sent overseas was still a contentious issue in both mens Presidencies. What if, at the time, we were still jailing and hunting down fugitive draft evaders? We are missing something about the history and use of pardons and amnesties, here and abroad, if we act as though they only come into play after all the fight has gone out of an issue.

Bushs father pardoned half a dozen officials (and oath-of-office takers) for crimes related to the Iran-Contra scandal, among them Caspar Weinberger, the former Secretary of Defense, for the promise-based crime of perjury. Not all amnesties and pardons are good for the countrytacit ones, like those for torture in the war on terror, can preclude necessary debate. But its a fantasy to say that no one in America has ever been allowed to avoid going to jail for a serious crime when it is seen as best for the country (and sometimes when it is not). As Ive written before, the government could further its own practical interests by means of an amnesty, pardon, or plea bargain, toothere are ways Snowden could help. Similarly, Snowdens presence in Russia, of all places, is seen as a dirty affront. We might, then, want to get him out of there, which is what he appears to want, too. (Joe Nocera has a good column on the case for Brazil.)

Kaplan says that some of what Snowden revealed isnt useful for Americans to know; the extent to which that is so (and is harmful) is debatable. But Kaplan oddly includes on his list things like the worldwide collection of cell-location data, which has entangled and violated the rights of Americans. (He also errs in writing that the revelations dont involve any documents detailing the cyber-operations of any other countries, something Britains GCHQ would be surprised to hear.) Nevertheless, there is no question at this point that the usefulness has been great, as even the President would concede.

That brings us back to a slight mystery: the dispositive quality of oathiness. Why is the idea that Snowden took a particular oath so often brought up as an argument against some deal that would allow him to come back to America and stay out of prison? Its not really about his legal jeopardy. Of course Snowden broke lawsthats why were even having a conversation about amnesty. If he hadnt, he wouldnt need it. Saying that its ridiculous to talk about amnesty when hes committed serious crimes is like saying theres no point in talking about divorce because someone is married.

Bringing up the oath point is really meant as a commentary on Snowdens character. It is itself an oath, in another sensean interjection, an outburst of anger. There are a lot of people in the government, and public, who are simply dismayed by Snowdens actions, and by everything about him, down to his glasses and haircut. The oath he swore was supposed to be humbling, and he is presumptuous. The discussions about him become choked with rageeven as the conversation he alone started and made possible becomes ever louder and clearer.

Photograph by AP.

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Did Edward Snowden Break His Oath? | The New Yorker

MOVIES

5:35 PM PDT 10/10/2014bySeth Abramovitch, Chris O'Falt

A second National Security Agency whistleblower exists within the ranks of government intelligence.

That bombshell comes toward the end ofCitizenfour,a new documentary from filmmaker Laura Poitras about NSAinformantEdward Snowden that had its world premiere on Friday at the New York Film Festival.

In the key scene, journalist Glenn Greenwald visits Snowden at a hotel room in Moscow. Fearing they are being taped, Greenwald communicates with Snowden via pen and paper.

While some of the exchanges are blurred for the camera, it becomes clear that Greenwald wants to convey that another government whistleblower higher in rank than Snowden has come forward.

The revelation clearly shocks Snowden, whose mouth drops open when he reads the details of the informant's leak.

Also revealed by Greenwald is the fact that 1.2 million individuals are currently on a U.S. government watch-list. Among them is Poitras herself.

And the surprises don't end there. Near the end of the film, which received a rousing standing ovation, it is revealed thatLindsay Mills,Snowden'sdancer girlfriend of 10 years, has been living with Snowden in Moscow.

When Poitras went to Moscow in July to show Snowden an early cut of the film, she shot footage of the two cooking dinner together, which appears in the final cut.

Snowdenfled to Russia after the U.S. government revoked his passport and put pressure on other governments not to grant him asylum.

After spending 39 days in a Moscow airport, Snowden was granted a one-year asylum from President Vladimir Putin. He is now in the country on a three-year residency permit.

Poitras took the stage at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall following the screening, flanked by Greenwald, with whom she partnered on a pair of explosive stories inThe Guardian and Washington Post aboutSnowden'ssurveillance disclosures in June 2014.

Also joining them was Jeremy Scahill, their partner on the website The Intercept, and Snowden's father and stepmother. Snowden's father thanked Poitras for having made Citizenfour, which he deemed a "wonderful piece of work."

Poitras kept her comments following the screening to a minimum, and thanked her crew and Snowden. Instead it was Greenwald and Scahillwho did most of the talking, with Scahillat one point describingPoitrasas "the most bad-ass director alive, period."

Before the screening, Poitras told The Hollywood Reporter that she will never forget the moment when Snowden -- who was so young Greenwald initially doubted his authenticity -- said he was willing to go on the record with his allegations.

"One of the most intense moments was when Snowden told us his identity would not remain anonymous, and I knew that somebody was really, really putting their life on the line," Poitrassaid.

Oct. 13, 2:19 p.m. A previous version of this story stated that Greenwald revealed 1.2 million Americans were present on the watchlist. THR regrets the error.

Read the original:
NYFF: Edward Snowden Doc 'Citizenfour' Reveals Existence of ...

In 2013, computer expert and former CIA systems administrator, Edward Snowden released confidential government documents to the press about the existence of government surveillance programs. According to many legal experts, and the U.S. government, his actions violated the Espionage Act of 1917, which identified the leak of state secrets as an act of treason. Yet despite the fact that he broke the law, Snowden argued that he had a moral obligation to act. He gave a justification for his whistleblowing by stating that he had a duty to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them. According to Snowden, the governments violation of privacy had to be exposed regardless of legality.

Many agreed with Snowden. Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability Project defended his actions as ethical, arguing that he acted from a sense of public good. Radack said, Snowden may have violated a secrecy agreement, which is not a loyalty oath but a contract, and a less important one than the social contract a democracy has with its citizenry. Others argued that even if he was legally culpable, he was not ethically culpable because the law itself was unjust and unconstitutional.

The Attorney General of the United States, Eric Holder, did not find Snowdens rationale convincing. Holder stated, He broke the law. He caused harm to our national security and I think that he has to be held accountable for his actions.

Journalists were conflicted about the ethical implications of Snowdens actions. The editorial board of The New York Times stated, He may have committed a crimebut he has done his country a great service. In an Op-ed in the same newspaper, Ed Morrissey argued that Snowden was not a hero, but a criminal: by leaking information about the behavior rather than reporting it through legal channels, Snowden chose to break the law. According to Morrissey, Snowden should be prosecuted for his actions, arguing that his actions broke a law intended to keep legitimate national-security data and assets safe from our enemies; it is intended to keep Americans safe.safe.

1. What values are in conflict in this case? What harm did Snowden cause? What benefits did his actions bring?

2. Do you agree that Snowdens actions were ethically justified even if legally prohibited? Why or why not? Make an argument by weighing the competing values in this case.

3. If you were in Snowdens position, what would you have done and why?

4. Would you change your position if you knew that Snowdens leak would lead to a loss of life among CIA operatives? What about if it would save lives?

5. Is there a circumstance in which you think whistleblowing would be ethically ideal? How about ethically prohibited?

Causing harm explores the different types of harm that may be caused to people or groups and the potential reasons we may have for justifying these harms.

Continued here:
Edward Snowden: Traitor or Hero? - Ethics Unwrapped

Edward Snowden, a twenty-nine-year-old former C.I.A. employee and current government contractor, has leaked news of National Security Agency programs that collect vast amounts of information about the telephone calls made by millions of Americans, as well as e-mails and other files of foreign targets and their American connections. For this, some, including my colleague John Cassidy, are hailing him as a hero and a whistle-blower. He is neither. He is, rather, a grandiose narcissist who deserves to be in prison.

Snowden provided information to the Washington Post and the Guardian, which also posted a video interview with him. In it, he describes himself as appalled by the government he served:

The N.S.A. has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your e-mails or your wifes phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your e-mails, passwords, phone records, credit cards.

I dont want to live in a society that does these sort of things I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under.

What, one wonders, did Snowden think the N.S.A. did? Any marginally attentive citizen, much less N.S.A. employee or contractor, knows that the entire mission of the agency is to intercept electronic communications. Perhaps he thought that the N.S.A. operated only outside the United States; in that case, he hadnt been paying very close attention. In any event, Snowden decided that he does not want to live in a society that intercepts private communications. His latter-day conversion is dubious.

And what of his decision to leak the documents? Doing so was, as he more or less acknowledges, a crime. Any government employee or contractor is warned repeatedly that the unauthorized disclosure of classified information is a crime. But Snowden, apparently, was answering to a higher calling. When you see everything you realize that some of these things are abusive, he said. The awareness of wrongdoing builds up. There was not one morning when I woke up. It was a natural process. These were legally authorized programs; in the case of Verizon Businesss phone records, Snowden certainly knew this, because he leaked the very court order that approved the continuation of the project. So he wasnt blowing the whistle on anything illegal; he was exposing something that failed to meet his own standards of propriety. The question, of course, is whether the government can function when all of its employees (and contractors) can take it upon themselves to sabotage the programs they dont like. Thats what Snowden has done.

What makes leak cases difficult is that some leakingsome interaction between reporters and sources who have access to classified informationis normal, even indispensable, in a society with a free press. Its not easy to draw the line between those kinds of healthy encounters and the wholesale, reckless dumping of classified information by the likes of Snowden or Bradley Manning. Indeed, Snowden was so irresponsible in what he gave the Guardian and the Post that even these institutions thought some of it should not be disseminated to the public. The Post decided to publish only four of the forty-one slides that Snowden provided. Its exercise of judgment suggests the absence of Snowdens.

Snowden fled to Hong Kong when he knew publication of his leaks was imminent. In his interview, he said he went there because they have a spirited commitment to free speech and the right of political dissent. This may be true, in some limited way, but the overriding fact is that Hong Kong is part of China, which is, as Snowden knows, a stalwart adversary of the United States in intelligence matters. (Evan Osnos has more on that.) Snowden is now at the mercy of the Chinese leaders who run Hong Kong. As a result, all of Snowdens secrets may wind up in the hands of the Chinese governmentwhich has no commitment at all to free speech or the right to political dissent. And that makes Snowden a hero?

The American government, and its democracy, are flawed institutions. But our system offers legal options to disgruntled government employees and contractors. They can take advantage of federal whistle-blower laws; they can bring their complaints to Congress; they can try to protest within the institutions where they work. But Snowden did none of this. Instead, in an act that speaks more to his ego than his conscience, he threw the secrets he knew up in the airand trusted, somehow, that good would come of it. We all now have to hope that hes right.

Photograph by Paolo Pellegrin/Magnum.

See the rest here:
Edward Snowden Is No Hero | The New Yorker

You can see the outlines of a coherent hypothesis in How America Lost Its Secrets. Perhaps Snowden was planted at the N.S.A. by either Russia or China, or by both. Perhaps while he was there he worked with other, as yet undetected, insiders who were also serving foreign powers. Perhaps in Hong Kong he put himself into the care of Chinese handlers who debriefed him extensively during the nearly two weeks between his arrival and his self-outing. Perhaps the same thing happened in Moscow during the first 37 days after he landed there, when he seems to have been hiding somewhere inside the airport security perimeter. Perhaps his reward for, in effect, defecting has been the odd protected life in Russia that celebrated spies like Kim Philby and Guy Burgess previously enjoyed. Perhaps his media-abetted role as a whistle-blower was merely a counterintuitive (because it was so public) new form of cover.

Epstein proves none of this. How America Lost Its Secrets is an impressively fluffy and golden-brown wobbly souffl of speculation, full of anonymous sourcing and suppositional language like it seems plausible to believe or it doesnt take a great stretch of the imagination to conclude. Epsteins first book, Inquest, published more than 50 years ago, featured another mysterious young man who spent time in Moscow, Lee Harvey Oswald. This book has a greatest-hits feeling, because it touches on several of Epsteins long-running preoccupations: Russia; the movie and media businesses; the gullibility of liberals; and, especially, the world of penetration, exfiltration, false flags and other aspects of counterintelligence. The spirit of James Jesus Angleton, the C.I.A.s mole-obsessed counterintelligence chief during the peak years of the Cold War and evidently a mentor to Epstein (hes mentioned several times), hovers over these pages.

Sometimes it seems as if Epstein so much enjoys exploring the twists and turns in Snowdens story his encounter with Snowdens mysterious lawyer in Moscow, Anatoly Kucherena, is especially memorable that he doesnt have an overwhelming need to settle the questions he raises. The sentence from The Wall Street Journal quoted above appears almost verbatim in the book, but its immediately followed by this: These severe accusations generated much heat but little light. They were not accompanied by any evidence showing that Snowden had acted in concert with any foreign power in stealing the files or, for that matter, that he was not acting out of his own personal convictions, no matter how misguided they might have been. But then Epstein spends many more pages considering, and not dismissing, the very same severe accusations, and ends by saying that Snowdens theft of state secrets ... had evolved, deliberately or not, but necessarily, into a mission of disclosing key national secrets to a foreign power.

This is Epsteins primary conclusion: Even if the American public was a partial beneficiary of Snowdens revelations, the main beneficiary was Russia, which to his mind couldnt possibly have failed to take possession of all the material Snowden took from the N.S.A. Whatever caveats he uses and whatever hard evidence he hasnt found, Epstein clearly wants to leave readers with the impression that Snowden remains in Russia as a result of a deal exchanging his information for its protection. He repeatedly hints that he has reason to be more certain about his conclusion than hes able to say in print.

Snowden, Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, and their immediate circle of allies come from a radically libertarian hacker culture that, most of the time, doesnt believe there should be an N.S.A. at all, whether or not it remains within the confines of its legal charter. Epstein, conversely, is a strong supporter of the agencys official mission of communication intercepts, which he sees as an essential element in the United States ability to participate in the game of nations. To him one of the lessons of the Snowden case is that the agencys reliance on private contractors like Snowden instead of career employees has made it dangerously vulnerable to security breaches.

Link:
Is Edward Snowden a Spy? A New Book Calls Him One ...

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While the whistleblower Edward Snowden, who revealed the National Security Agencys mass spying, was still stuck in Moscows Sheremetyevo airport, he received support from an unexpected quarter. Four leaders of Solidarity, the workers movement in Poland that upended that countrys totalitarian Communist regime in the 1980s, issued an open letter demanding that their government give Snowden sanctuary from the global manhunt being conducted by the United States. The signers were Barbara Labuda, Jzef Pinior, Zbigniew Bujak and Wadysaw Frasyniuk, all of whom had the experience of being stalked by their government when they went underground during the period of martial law that began in 1981. Edward Snowden did not kill anyone, did not kidnap or attack or maim anyone, they wrote. And yet, he is hunted and cornered like a terrorist. Why? Because he revealed an inconvenient truth about the activities of the authorities of his country. He revealed to the world that the American government systematically controls the behavior of millions of his [fellow] citizens through mass registering and listening to their telephone, Skype, Facebook, email and chat activities. Snowdens revelations uncovered an ugly face of the American administration.

And they voiced their expectation that the European Parliament will recognize the value of his act and will extend over him the protections of European democratic institutions, which were created in order to defend and enlarge civic freedoms and human rights.

Around the same time, in the West, a word familiar from the not so distant pastdissidentbegan to be attached to Snowden and other whistleblowers, like Julian Assange of WikiLeaks and Chelsea Manning, who soon received her ruthless sentence of thirty-five years for disclosing classified documents. In The New York Times, for instance, John Broder and Scott Shane wrote: In 2006, when Edward J. Snowden joined the thousands of computer virtuosos going to work for Americas spy agencies, there were no recent examples of insiders going public as dissidents. The use of the word is striking, because it was last widely employed to name those who, in the face of seemingly hopeless odds, had resisted the totalitarian rule of the Soviet Union and its client governmentsin other words, people like the four Solidarity leaders who signed the letter in support of Snowden. Used this way, the word carried the implication that the US government might be that sort of oppressive power, or is perhaps on its way to becoming one. As support for Snowden grew globally and the Obama administration widened its campaign to capture him, that picture of Snowdens situation became so broadly accepted that the White House felt impelled to challenge it explicitly. Obamas press secretary, Jay Carney, asserted, He is not a human rights activist. He is not a dissident.

Or to translate: We are no Soviet Union.

And certainly, the four Poles, of all people, are as fully aware as any sensible person of the abyss of difference that separates the Obama administration from, say, the regime of Joseph Stalin, slayer of tens of millions of his own people. And yet it is chillingly true at the same time that the US government has gone further than any previous governmentnot excluding Stalinsin setting up machinery that satisfies certain tendencies that are in the genetic code of totalitarianism. One is the ambition to invade personal privacy without check or possibility of individual protection. This was impossible in the era of mere phone wiretapping, before the recent explosion of electronic communicationsbefore the cellphones that disclose the whereabouts of their owners, the personal computers with their masses of personal data and easily penetrated defenses, the e-mails that flow through readily tapped cables and servers, the biometrics, the street-corner surveillance cameras. But now, to borrow the name of an intelligence program from the Bush years, Total Information Awareness is technologically within reach. The Bush and Obama administrations have taken giant strides in this direction. That China and Russiaand Britain, and many other countrieshave done the same is hardly comforting to the humble individual under the eye of the universal spying apparatus.

A second totalitarian tendency has been the ambition to control the entire globea goal built into fascist as well as communist ideologies of the early twentieth century. In Hannah Arendts words, Evidence that totalitarian governments aspire to conquer the globe and bring all countries on earth under their domination can be found repeatedly in Nazi and Bolshevik literature. Neither achieved it, or even came close. But now, in the limited arena of information, a sort of shadow or rudiment of this ambition is near realization by the sole superpower, the United States. Much attention has been paid to Americans loss of privacy rights, but relatively overlooked in the debate over the governments surveillance activities (at least in the United States) has been that all foreign communicationsincluding those occurring in the lands of close allies, such as Germanyare fair game and are being swept into the US data banks.

The extent of the US global reach over information was mirrored in Snowdens fate. Astonishingly, almost no fully democratic country would have him. (The conspicuous exception was Bolivia, whose president suffered the indignity of a forced diversion and landing of his plane when he was suspected of carrying Snowden to safety.) Almost all others, including Poland, bowed to US pressure, actual or potential, to refuse Snowden protection. The Polish letter writers were scandalized by this spectacle. The fact that only dictatorial governments agreed to give him shelter shames the democratic states, they wrote. Our democracies discredit themselves with their indifference and cowardice in this matter.

What happened to Snowden in Moscow diagramed the new global reality. He wanted to leave Russia, but the State Department, in an act of highly dubious legality, stripped him of his passport, leaving himfor purposes of travel, at leaststateless. Suddenly, he was welcome nowhere in the great wide world, which shrank down to a single point: the transit lounge at Sheremetyevo. Then, having by its own action trapped him in Russia, the administration mocked and reviled him for remaining in an authoritarian country. Only in unfree countries was Edward Snowden welcome. What we are pleased to call the free world had become a giant prison for a hero of freedom.

Open letter by leaders of Polands solidarity movement in defense of Edward Snowden.

Read this article:
Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning, the New Dissidents?