NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: 'I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things'

Comment

Comment by Tony Nuspl on July 3, 2013 at 2:06pm

The Guardian editorial board writes:

Snowden must be able to come in from the cold 

"This is emphatically not a cold war style national security case; it is a 21st century case about the appropriate balance between the power of the secret state and the rights of free citizens in the internet era. To charge Mr Snowden under America's first world war Espionage Act is inappropriate. We live in a different world from that. America is not at war in the traditional sense. Mr Snowden is not a spy. Nor is he a foreign agent. He is a whistleblower. ... Any charges against him should be ones to which it is possible to mount a public interest defence, of the sort that was mounted by Daniel Ellsberg in the Pentagon Papers case in the US, or in Britain by the former civil servant Clive Ponting after the Falklands war. It must be for a civilian jury to decide whether Mr Snowden's actions are more troubling and significant than the documents and practices which he has exposed."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/02/edward-snowden-...

Comment by Tony Nuspl on June 27, 2013 at 1:30am

Glenn Greenwald writes: "Listen to actual experts and patriots - people who have spent their careers inside the NSA and/or who risked their liberty for the good of the country - and the truth of Snowden's claims and the justifiability of his acts become manifest."

Thomas Drake, an NSA whistleblower who was unsuccessfully prosecuted by the Obama DOJ, writes in the Guardian that as a long-time NSA official, he saw all of the same things at the NSA that Edward Snowden is now warning Americans about. Drake calls Snowden's acts "an amazingly brave and courageous act of civil disobedience."

William Binney, the mathematician who resigned after a 30-year career as a senior NSA official in protest of post-9/11 domestic surveillance, said on Democracy Now this week that Snowden's claims about the NSA are absolutely true.

Meanwhile, Daniel Ellsberg, writing in the Guardian, wrote that "there has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward Snowden's release of NSA material – and that definitely includes the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago." He added: "Snowden did what he did because he recognized the NSA's surveillance programs for what they are: dangerous, unconstitutional activity."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/14/nsa-partisanshi... (under item 3.)

Comment by Tony Nuspl on June 13, 2013 at 3:15pm

At least 14 groups, including the Civil Human Rights Front and the League of Social Democrats, will demonstrate June 15 at the U.S. consulate in Hong Kong and the city government’s headquarters in support of Snowden, who is in the city at an undisclosed location.

“We ask the U.S. government not to seek extradition of Snowden because he isn’t an offender,” said Leung Kwok-hung, a Hong Kong lawmaker and chairman of the League of Social Democrats. “He was speaking from his conscience.”

Hong Kong Groups Plan Protest to Support Edward Snowden

By Bloomberg News - 2013-06-13

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-13/hong-kong-groups-plan-prot...