As of right now, none of the presidential candidates have even come close to supporting Edward Snowden. In fact, candidates have called him a traitor, a spy, and stated that he's committed treason. The facts are Snowden broke the law, but in turn, exposed illegal government activity to the American people. So did Snowden actually do something illegal or commit treason? That's where the 'which came first, the chicken or egg' argument comes into play, but it seems as if all of the presidential candidates have stated the chicken clearly committed treason.

Maybe I'm not surprised that none of the candidates have spoken in favor of Snowden, but I just thought that if there was someone who would stand up for him, it would be Bernie Sanders. When asked about the issue, Sanders has stated "I think Snowden played a very important role in educating the American public... he did break the law, and I think there should be a penalty to that." But Sanders also has stated that he would shut down the NSA and was one of the very few who voted against the Patriot Act. And just recently, Sanders tweeted out:'In my view, the NSA is out of control and operating in an unconstitutional manner.'

It just doesn't make sense to me. Sanders supports the outcome of what Snowden brought to light, but doesn't agree with the methods of how the information was made public. Maybe if Sanders supported Snowden, it would hurt him in the election, so maybe this isn't a huge issue for him right now. Maybe his campaign views Snowden as a can of worms, as he is only one person. But Sanders doesn't have a history of sitting down when issues are not politically expedient. In fact, Bernie Sanders' stance on Snowden is with the majority of Americans who would prosecute Snowden, according to recent polls. And Sanders is already better than most candidates when it comes to the issue of government surveillance, the NSA, and privacy.

However, if Sanders continues on his path of standing up for ideas when it's in the infancy of popular opinion, he would come out in support of Snowden. There aren't many issues on which I disagree with Bernie Sanders, but to use his own words, his stance on Snowden is just not good enough.

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Why Won't Bernie Sanders Support Edward Snowden?

Edward Snowden is weighing in again on the FBIs claim that only Apple can unlock an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters.

Respectfully, thats horsest, Snowden said at the Blueprint for Democracy Conference organized by Common Cause, The Hill reports. The former government contractor, who infamously leaked National Security Agency documents and now lives in Russia to avoid charges, appeared via Google hangout and said the FBI has known of methods since the 90s that would allow it to access to the information its seeking.

FBI investigators have asked Apple to unlock the encrypted iPhone of Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the shooters in the attack that killed 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif., in December. Apple has said that providing the government with such means would make other iPhones vulnerable and is fighting a federal magistrates order to assist the FBI.

The global technological consensus is against the FBI, Snowden followed up on Twitter later, linking to an ACLU post that claims the FBI can easily work around existing iPhone security measures.

[The Hill]

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Edward Snowden Dismisses FBI Claim in Apple iPhone Battle

Edward Snowden, speaking via a video link at the Blueprint for a Great Democracy conference, held in Washington DC on March 8.

By Stan Schroeder2016-03-09 15:31:09 UTC

Chalk in another prominent name joining the FBI vs. Apple debate: Edward Snowden.

Commenting on the ongoing kerfuffle between the Cupertino giant and the U.S. government, in which Apple refuses to help the FBI unlock an iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters, Snowden called one of FBI's claims "horseshit."

Talking via video stream at the Common Causes Blueprint for a Great Democracy conference, which takes place in Washington, D.C., March 8-9, the NSA whistleblower mentioned the ongoing FBI vs. Apple case as a good example of a method to protect your data from government's reach that actually works. He then goes on to dispute one of FBI's key claims in the case.

The FBI says Apple has the exclusive technical means to get into this phone," said Snowden.Respectfully, thats horseshit.

You can hear Snowden's commentsfor yourself, if you can endure the poor audio quality, in the video below (at 30:05).

Snowden later commented on Twitter as well, providing one example of why he thinks the FBI's claim is incorrect. It's an article by ACLU Technology FellowDaniel Kahn Gillmor, arguing that the FBI can easily defeat the iPhone's auto-erase feature.

One of FBI's claims is that it cannot test passcodes on the iPhone as it could trigger Apple's auto-erase protection mechanism, which erases all the data on the phone after a number of failed passcode attempts. Gillmor, however, claims (and Snowden agrees) that the FBI could relatively easily desolder the flash memory chip from the iPhone's motherboard, copy its data and then later replace it in case the auto-erase feature kicks in.

We've seen other, more or less technically feasible proposals on how the FBI could defeat the iPhone's security without Apple's help. Most experts seem to agree that it's possible, but very difficult.

Snowden is the last in line of prominent figures in the IT community expressing their views on the legal battle between the FBI and Apple.Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, sided with Apple, as did Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, who recently called the entire case "lame."

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Unlike the Green Partys Jill Stein, not one Republican or Democratic nominee has voiced any support for the NSA whistleblower or shown any willingness to allow him to return to the U.S. as a free man.

Despite Snowdens important revelations about the NSAs illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens, not one major presidential candidate has been willing to voice his or her support for him. (Photo: Tony Webster/CC)

WASHINGTON No matter who wins the 2016 election, the United States will likely continue its efforts to capture and prosecute National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Despite the important revelations that Snowden shared with the world about the NSAs illegal surveillance of every U.S. citizen as well as world leaders and foreign nationals, not one major presidential candidate has been willing to voice his or her support for Snowdens actions or express any willingness to allow him to return to the U.S. as a free man.

Green Party candidate Jill Stein is the lone exception. She called Snowden a hero in a July 2015 interview with Ontheissues.org, a website which compiles candidates political views.

Despite his campaign positioning the senator from Vermont as an outsider, Sanders views on the whistleblower are decidedly mainstream. At the Oct. 14 Democratic debate, Sanders praised Snowden for his important role in educating the American public, but added: He did break the law, and I think there should be a penalty to that.

At the same debate, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton strongly criticized Snowden, saying he should have invoked all of the protections of being a whistleblower instead of taking his revelations to the media. John Cassidy, a staff writer for The New Yorker, reported that Clinton was referring to the 1998 Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act. In 2013, Cassidy noted, the ACLUs senior policy counsel, Michael German, referred to the act as no more than a trap designed to send whistleblowers like Snowden to jail if they act on their conscience.

Watch Democratic presendtial candidates debate theUS Patriot Act, NSA, and Snowden:

This guys a bad guy. There is still a thing called execution. -Donald Trump

Also in 2013, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas expressed his cautious support for Snowden, telling conservative media outlet The Blaze, If it is the case that the federal government is seizing millions of personal records about law-abiding citizens then I think Mr. Snowden has done a considerable public service by bringing it to light. However, under pressure from other candidates, Cruz abruptly changed his position early this year. It is now clear that Snowden is a traitor, and he should be tried for treason, he said on Jan. 13, adding that, his actions materially aided terrorists and enemies of the United States a statement almost identical to similar ones made by Clinton and other current or former White House officials.

Likewise, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida accused Snowden of treason in 2013 and echoed those sentiments at the Jan. 14 debate, and in June 2015, Ohio Gov. John Kasich also called the whistleblower a traitor while simultaneously praising the Snowden-inspired NSA reform efforts of Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky.

While the demand that Snowden return home to face trial may seem like a reasonable one, many analysts have agreed with Kevin Zeese, an activist and political organizer from Popular Resistance, who wrote in 2014 for Truthout that Snowden would be prosecuted in a phony Kangaroo court where the deck would be stacked against him and the process would be unfair.

The idea that Snowdens leaks aided terrorists has also been widely debunked. A 2014 report from global intelligence analysts at Flashpoint noted: Well prior to Edward Snowden, online jihadists were already aware that law enforcement and intelligence agencies were attempting to monitor them.

On Oct. 15, 2015, Evan Greer, campaign director for Internet-advocacy group Fight For The Future, lamented in a Huffington Post editorial that Sanders stance on Snowden proves he doesnt want a revolution. And much of her characterization of Sanders response could easily apply to any candidate in the two major parties:

Instead of calling for stronger legal protections for whistleblowers, or offering to pardon Snowden if elected, [Sanders] called for the former NSA contractor to come home and face trial in a country with a dodgy record of imprisoning and prosecuting whistleblowers, dissidents, activists and journalists.

By contrast, Stein would like to see Snowden not just freed of facing legal charges, but hired by the U.S. government. She told OnTheIssues.org:

Charges should not be brought against him, and he should return with hero status he could improve our national security if he were working for us.

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Only One Presidential Candidate Supports Edward Snowden, And ...

Edward Snowden, the whistleblower whose NSA revelations sparked a debate on mass surveillance, has waded into the arguments over the FBIs attempt to force Apple to help it unlock the iPhone 5C of one of the San Bernardino shooters.

Related: Is the FBI v Apple PR war even about encryption?

The FBI says that only Apple can deactivate certain passcode protections on the iPhone, which will allow law enforcement to guess the passcode by using brute-force.

Talking via video link from Moscow to the Common Cause Blueprint for a Great Democracy conference, Snowden said: The FBI says Apple has the exclusive technical means to unlock the phone. Respectfully, thats bullshit.

Snowden then went on to tweet his support for an American Civil Liberties Union report saying that the FBIs claims in the case are fraudulent.

Meanwhile, Microsoft founder Bill Gates said in a discussion on Reddit: I think there needs to be a discussion about when the government should be able to gather information. What if we had never had wiretapping? Also the government needs to talk openly about safeguards.

Gates refused to be drawn on one side or the other of the debate, despite seemingly supporting the FBI and then backtracking. Microsoft later filed an amicus brief backing Apple against the FBI.

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak also spoke out against the FBI on the Conan OBrien show on Monday, saying: I side with Apple on this one. [The FBI] picked the lamest case you ever could.

Wozniak added: Verizon turned over all the phone records and SMS messages. So they want to take this other phone that the two didnt destroy, which was a work phone. Its so lame and worthless to expect theres something on it and to get Apple to expose it.

Apples clash with the FBI comes to a head in California this month when the two will meet in federal court to debate whether the smartphone manufacturer should be required to weaken security settings on the iPhone of the shooter.

The governments case was dealt a potential setback when Magistrate Judge James Orenstein ruled against the government on 29 February in a different phone-unlocking case, which the government is currently appealing.

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Snowden: FBI's claim it can't unlock the San Bernardino ...

"We moved to Germany, because we did not feel comfortable in the U.S.," Stone said on March 6, speaking before an audience at the Sun Valley Film Festival in Idaho, in a Q&A moderated by The Hollywood Reporter's Stephen Galloway. "We felt like we were at risk here. We didn't know what the NSA might do, so we ended up in Munich, which was a beautiful experience."

Even there, problems arose with companies that had connections to the U.S., he said: "The American subsidiary says, 'You can't get involved with this; we don't want our name on it.' So BMW couldn't even help us in any way in Germany."

While in Sun Valley, the three-time Oscar winner held a private screening of "Snowden" for an invited audience of around two dozen. Those who attended the screening, at the former home of Ernest Hemingway, included actress Melissa Leo, who plays documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras.

Guests were required to sign non-disclosure agreements, but that did not prevent three of them from speaking to this reporter. All praised the work in progress. "What he did that's so brilliant is, he gave this kid's whole back story, so you really like him," said one audience member.

When Stone (whose films include "Platoon," "Born on the Fourth of July" and "Wall Street") was first approached to make the movie, he hesitated. He had been working on another controversial subject, about the last few years in the life of Martin Luther King Jr., and did not immediately wish to tackle something that incendiary again.

"Glenn Greenwald (the journalist who worked with Poitras to break the Snowden story) asked me some advice, and I just wanted to stay away from controversy," he said. "I didn't want this. Be that as it may, a couple of months later, the Russian lawyer for Snowden contacts me via my producer. The Russian lawyer told me to come to Russia and wanted me to meet him. One thing led to another, and basically I got hooked."

Joseph Gordon-Levitt talks meeting Edward Snowden: "He believed it was the right thing to do"

In Moscow, Stone met multiple times with Snowden, who has been living in exile in Russia since evading the U.S. government's attempts to arrest him for espionage. "He's articulate, smart, very much the same," he said. "I've been seeing him off and on for a year -- actually, more than that. I saw him last week or two weeks ago to show him the final film."

He added, "He is consistent: He believes so thoroughly in reform of the Internet that he has devoted himself to this cause. ... Because of the Russian hours, he stays up all night. He's a night owl, and he's always in touch (with the outside world), and he's working on some kind of constitution for the Internet with other people. So he's very busy.

"And he stays in that 70 percent-computer world. He's on another planet that way. His sense of humor has gotten bigger, his tolerance. He's not really in Russia in his mind -- he's in some planetary position up there. And Lindsay Mills, the woman he's loved for 10 years -- really, it's a serious affair -- has moved there to be with him."

Spending time with Snowden, and researching what happened to him, Stone said, "It's an amazing story. Here's a young man, 30 years old at that time, and he does something that's so powerful. Who at 30 years old would do that, sacrificing his life in that way? We met with him many times in Moscow, and we did a lot more research, and we went ahead." He added, "I think he's a historical figure of great consequence."

Joseph Gordon-Levitt to donate his 'Snowden' acting fee to ACLU project

Despite the director's involvement in the movie, which stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Snowden and Shailene Woodley as Mills, "No studio would support it," he said. "It was extremely difficult to finance, extremely difficult to cast. We were doing another one of these numbers I had done before, where pre-production is paid for by essentially the producer and myself, where you're living on a credit card."

Eventually, financing came through from France and Germany. "The contracts were signed, like eight days before we started," he noted. "It's a very strange thing to do (a story about) an American man, and not be able to finance this movie in America. And that's very disturbing, if you think about its implications on any subject that is not overtly pro-American.

"They say we have freedom of expression, but thought is financed, and thought is controlled, and the media is controlled. This country is very tight on that, and there's no criticism allowed at a certain level. You can make movies about civil rights leaders who are dead, but it's not easy to make one about a current man."

"Snowden" opens in the U.S. on September 16.

2015 The Hollywood Reporter. All rights reserved.

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Image: Mashable Composite, Barton Gellman/The Washington Post/Getty Images, Rick Madonik/Toronto Star/Getty Images

To bring attention to the issues of censorship and Internet surveillance, Edward Snowden, Pussy Riot and Ai Weiwei are teaming up with AdBlock and Amnesty International to launch an online protest campaign. The campaign is starting Friday at 4 p.m., exclusively visible to AdBlock users, and will run through Saturday, March 12, coinciding with World Day against Cyber Censorship.

Amnesty International is an organization that campaigns against abuses of human rights including free speech. AdBlock is a Internet browser extension that removes advertisements from webpages.

All of the quotes in the campaign images are from people who have been silenced by governments around the world for one reason or another. In its release, Amnesty International wrote that governments are seeking more control over online content and are actively looking to increase means of surveillance and censorship.

One of the campaign ads that will show up to AdBlock users, featuring words from Pussy Riot.

Image: AdBlock/Amnesty International

In the last year, Denmark, Finland, France, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Poland and Switzerland have sought new intelligence bills that will increase their ability to spy on communications in these countries and beyond, Amnesty International wrote. China and Kuwait passed laws criminalising or restricting certain online expression.

The campaign also lines up with the recent Apple vs. FBI debates regarding the U.S. government wanting Apple to create a backdoor into iPhones to use in criminal and national security investigations. Amnesty International is urging Internet companies to side with security and privacy, and not succumb to government pressure to allow surveillance.

An ad featuring Ai Weiwei, a Chinese contemporary artist and activist.

Image: AdBlock/Amnesty International

The world was too lax about protecting privacy and free speech on the internet, Amnesty International secretary general Salil Shetty wrote. We now need a radically new approach to protecting online rights to fight back against government restrictions on online freedoms.

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This article originally published at Space.com here

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This interviewwas recorded as part of RadioLoveFest, produced by WNYC and BAM. It's an excerpt from a long, live discussionheld at BAM in Brooklyn on March 11, 2016, where Brian interviewed Edward Snowden and journalist/filmmaker Laura Poitras.Click here to listen to the full 90 minutes.

Edward Snowden has said that he would come back to the United States if he could face a fair trial, but so far the prospect seems unlikely.

"They said you cannot use a public interest defense. You cannot say the word whistle-blower," And as Snowden sees it this is the definition of unfair: "This of course is the fundamental basis of an unfair trial. If you can't present a defense it's not a trial. It's an extended booking process."

But he did get one morsel of consolation:"When I asked I the government to guarantee that a public interest argument would be available, they responded with a letter that said I would not be tortured."

On March 11th, Brian interviewed filmmakerLaura Poitrasand former intelligence officerEdward Snowden(via Google Hangouts) on the BAM stage for RadioLoveFest. In this excerpt Snowden responds to critics whoclaim he does not deserve clemency(or the title of whistle-blower) because he leaked not just domestic metadata programs, but instances of spying onon foreign governments and foreign individuals.

Snowden shook off thecriticismwith a stance of his own:

"It's important that we elevate and primarily focus on the rights of American citizens, but it's also important that we don't forget, 95 percent of the world's population lives beyond our own borders. And they do have rights, too. And even though we may focus first on the rights of our own country, that does not mean that we should disregard the rights of everyone else."

And Edward Snowden looks toward the future:

"I never chose to be in Russia and I would prefer to be in my own country, but if I can't make it homeI will continue to work very much in the same way that I have [...] What happens to me is not as important,I simply serve as the mechanism of disclosure."

Host Brian Lehrer leads the conversation about what matters most now in local and national politics, our own communities and our lives. Produced by WNYC.

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Edward Snowden Responds to Critics - The Brian Lehrer Show - WNYC

Edward Snowden addresses LibrePlanet via video conference

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By Jon Gold

Network World | Mar 19, 2016 2:07 PM PT

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden opened the Free Software Foundation's LibrePlanet 2016 conference on Saturday with a discussion of free software, privacy and security, speaking via video conference from Russia.

Snowden credited free software for his ability to help disclose the U.S. government's far-reaching surveillance projects drawing one of several enthusiastic rounds of applause from the crowd in an MIT lecture hall.

+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Pwn2Own contest highlights renewed hacker focus on kernel issues + Apple engineers could walk away from FBIs iPhone demands

"What happened in 2013 couldn't have happened without free software," he said, particularly citing projects like Tor, Tails (a highly secure Linux distribution) and Debian.

Snowden argued that free software's transparency and openness are cornerstones to preserving user privacy in the connected age. It isn't that all commercial products are bad, nor that all corporations are evil he singled out Apple's ongoing spat with the FBI as an example of a corporation trying to stand up for its users merely that citizens should not have to rely on them to uphold the right to privacy.

"I didn't use Microsoft machines when I was in my operational phase, because I couldn't trust them," Snowden stated. "Not because I knew that there was a particular back door or anything like that, but because I couldn't be sure."

Private data, these days, only stays private at the sufferance of the major tech companies that administer devices and services, he argued. Given the increasing centrality of smartphones and social networks and the myriad of other digital communication methods to modern life, simply trusting that those tech companies will protect their users' privacy is insufficient.

Relying on corporations to protect private data is bad enough in a vacuum but Snowden pointed out that many tech giants have already proven more than willing to hand over user data to a government they rely on for licensing and a favorable regulatory climate.

He particularly singled out service providers as being complicit in overreaching government surveillance.

"We can't control telecom partners," Snowden stated. "We're very vulnerable to them."

However, protecting privacy is gaining mindshare, he added. Increasingly, a digital

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Slide: 1 / of 2 .

Caption: Christian Charisius/AP

Slide: 2 / of 2 .

Caption: Document from the Lavabit case mistakenly made public by the government showing Edward Snowden's email address was the target of the 2013 investigation.

Its been one of the worst-kept secrets for years: the identity of the person the government was investigating in 2013 when it served the secure email firm Lavabit with a court order demanding help spying on a particular customer.

Ladar Levison, owner of the now defunct email service, has been forbidden since then, under threat of contempt and possibly jail time, from identifying who the government was investigating. In court documents from the case unsealed in late 2013, all information that could identify the customer was redacted.

But federal authorities recently screwed up and revealed the secret themselves when they published a cache of case documents but failed to redact one identifying piece of information about the target: his email address, Ed_Snowden@lavabit.com. With that, the very authorities holding the threat of jail time over Levisons head if he said anything have confirmed what everyone had long ago presumed: that the target account was Snowdens.

The documents were posted on March 4 to the federal court system known as Pacer as part of Levisons long battle for transparency in the case that ruined his business. They were spotted this week by the transparency site Cryptome and published online.

Heres a quick recap of that case: On June 28, 2013, shortly after newspapers published the first NSA leaks from Snowden, FBI agents showed up at Levisons door in Texas and served him with a pen register order requiring him to give the government metadata for the email activity of one customers account.

The case was initially sealed and the public didnt learn about it and the fight over Levisons customer until after he had shuttered his email service in defiance of the government. But even after he closed Lavabit and there was no hope of the government obtaining information about the account that it had been seeking, the target was never identified. When some of the documents in the case were finally unsealed in redacted form in October 2013, however, the unredacted parts left little doubt that the Lavabit case was about Snowden, who was known to be using a Lavabit account in the spring of 2013 when his first NSA leaks were published and when he was hiding in a safe house in Hong Kong. It was still an educated guess, however.

Cut to now. With the Lavabit case long ended, Levison has kept fighting to get more of the documents unsealed and unredacted. Hes been using money raised by supporters back in 2013 to fund the fight for transparency. He filed a motion in December asking an appeals court to unseal documents and vacate a non-disclosure order that has silenced him about the target. It turns out he was a little more successful in that latter request than he thought he waswith a little help from a government error. After a hearing earlier this year, a court denied his motion to unseal and vacate but ordered US attorneys in the case to re-release all previously filed pleadings, transcripts, and orders with everything unredacted except the identity of the subscriber and the subscribers email address. After some negotiation, the government got the court to agree to let it redact other information as well that might harm its investigation into the target.

Then the government messed up. When the documents were re-posted to Pacer this month, Snowdens Lavabit email address was left unredacted in plain sight in an August 2013 document.

When asked for comment, Levisons lawyer Jesse Binnall told WIRED in an email that due to the letter and spirit of the courts January 7, 2016 order, Lavabit has no further comment on the unredacted email address.

Binnall is referencing the January 2016 order in which the court denied Levisons motion to unseal records and vacate the non-disclosure order in the case.

WIRED spoke with Levison, prior to his learning that the government had made the redaction error, about his struggle to obtain transparency. Three years later, I still cannot tell you who they were after. I keep getting asked the question, and I cant answer.

Now, it appears he doesnt have to. The government has answered for him.

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A Government Error Just Revealed Snowden Was the Target in ...