>The hypocrisy of running to possibly, the MOST historically abusive surveillance state has giving me serious reservations about Snowden’s loyalties over the years.
You should refrain from holding strong opinions on a subject that you did not bother to put even a bit of effort to understand.
Snowden did not run to Russia, he was on his way from Hong Kong to Ecuador and was in the international transit zone of Moscow's airport as part of a layover flight when the U.S. cancelled his passport leaving him stuck in the airport for over a month. During that time Snowden applied for asylum in several countries including Bolivia, Brazil, Austria, India, etc etc... the U.S. placed a great deal of diplomatic pressure on every single country he applied to to refuse his request and finally Russia gave him what was at the time intended to be temporary asylum so he could leave the airport and pursue asylum elsewhere. That temporary asylum is now a residency permit.
Snowden has stated he would be willing to return the U.S. to face trial if said trial would be open and transparent as well as present a public interest defense. The charge against him for violating the Espionage Act allows substantial portions of the trial to be conducted in secret, precludes the possibility of using a public interest defense, and places a great deal of restrictions on a defendant to properly argue their case.
Daniel Ellsberg, another whistleblower who was charged under the Espionage Act for releasing the Pentagon Papers has fully supported the actions of Edward Snowden has made it clear that he would have acted in the same manner given the circumstances.
Ellsberg was very fortunate that the prosecution acted with such brazen and open recklessness against him in the illegal gathering of evidence that it led the judge to dismiss all charges against him, otherwise Ellsberg would have faced 115 years in prison for what he did.
I'm a Canadian Citizen. I had to pledge my "loyalty and allegiance" to the Queen of Canada. Even though I'm a staunch republican (in the traditional sense not American - I'm anti-monarchy)
I don't base my decisions going through life on "But I pledged allegiance to the Queen, so I can/can't/should/shouldn't do that"
Citizenship is not an indication of ethics, or priorities, it's a practical requirement of being a human existing in society. To be able to live in a country without a constant nightmare of bureaucracy, you pretty much need to be a citizen. Snowden lives in Russia, not being it's citizen would be a constant headache.
> He is a Russian citizen now, swore allegiance to the country and everything.
And what would you do? You can't just keep applying residency permits forever, and desperately hoping that you'll get another 3 years. If you don't get approved for another 3 years (during that nerve-racking waiting period), you're screwed. Becoming a citizen is the best guarantee of stability after his actions, and it's not like the US or their allies are going to welcome him with open arms anytime soon.
He also is married and has two children. You aren't going to raise children on a residency permit.
Snowden is free to do what he wants. But don't take the moral high ground when you're accepting being a propaganda pawn by a country like Russia. The fact that he continues to openly mock the US on twitter, while claiming he can't comment on anything Ukraine/Russia because he's not an 'expert' on the matter shows you exactly where his priorities are.
I can totally understand why he made the decisions he made and I might have made the same decisions if I were in his situation. That doesn't change that the decisions were hypocritical and morally compromised.
This seems to be a perfect example of a moral compromise. Snowden had a stated moral that freedom from government surveillance is incredibly important. Now he swears allegiance to a country that is even oppressive when it comes to surveillance and other authoritarian practices. That is a moral compromise.
The motivation can make that compromise understandable, but it doesn't stop being a compromise. It is irrelevant whether he made it for his personal safety, the safety of his family, or just to avoid the "constant headache" other people in this thread have stated, it is still a compromise.
This requires a huge grain of salt from Snowden that he means what he says. But we know he lied a few times to journalists and withheld information.
To OP's point though, much of what Snowden took was not shared publicly, but was handed over to the Russian government. So something is not adding up when he says he is only in Russia for self-preservation when he could have had a long and successful career in the US if he had just (actually) raised his ethical complaints and just quit his job.
> Since Snowden’s arrival in Moscow, he has had, and continues to have, contact with Russian intelligence services., and in June 2016, the deputy chairman of the Russian parliament’s defense and security committee asserted that “Snowden did share intelligence” with his government.'
> Over the past three years, the Intelligence Community and the Department of Defense (DoD) have carried out separate reviews—with differing methodologies—of the contents of all 1.5 million documents Snowden removed. It is not clear which of the documents Snowden removed are in the hands of a foreign government.
The US govt is assuming they have it all
> Out of an abundance of caution, DoD therefore reviewed all 1.5 million documents to determine the maximum extent of the possible damage.
According to his Guardian interview, he claimed to have "full access to the rosters of everyone working at the NSA, the entire intelligence community, and undercover assets all around the world, the locations of every station we have, what their missions are and so forth".
Most of this information was not given to the journalists. It could be he was bluffing about what kind of access he had (was very likely). But he claimed to have much more information than he showed the journalists in Hong Kong.
FWIW (obviously taken with a grain of salt) - the intelligence community themselves at least believed and acted as if he took a bunch of classified documents with him - despite not believing him that he actually had lists of undercover assets and stations: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-33125068
We have a claim from the US government – which is clearly an unreliable source – and we have Snowden himself who says he didn't share more than he felt he had to. The GP said “he haded files to the Russians” which is a claim I still have seen no proof of.
He ran. Don't blame the US for trying to detain him.
> Snowden has stated he would be willing to return the U.S. to face trial if said trial would be open and transparent as well as present a public interest defense.
Why does he deserve special treatment?
> Daniel Ellsberg[...]has fully supported the actions of Edward Snowden
First, a fair trial is not "special treatment". Second, because every U.S. citizen is protected by the Bill of Rights. There was a non-zero chance that had Snowden not fled the country he'd be quietly moved to Gitmo and never heard from again.
I may be reading this wrong, but, it sounds like you're not in favor of the actions Snowden took. I couldn't disagree more. He tried to raise the illegal operation he was a part of to the higher-ups, through the chain-of-command, and he was ignored. The public deserves to know that the U.S. Government was blantly breaking the law and spying on everyone, everywhere, all the time.
> We already get a trial that is as fair as humanly possible so asking for a "fair" trial is ridiculous. Is every other trial unfair?
No, but every other trail is not conducted under the restrictions of the espionage act, as has already been explained in this thread. What Snowden is asking for is what most of us can expect should we find ourselves on trial.
Look at what "they" did to Manning. (And to be clear, in the case of Manning, they were rightfully jailed, IMHO). But, their treatment after the trial was brutal [1].
Snowden himself thought being Gitmo'd was a real possibility [2]
At the time when this happened, there were loud, vocal calls for violence against Snowden by people in powerful positions [3][6]
Snowden has said: "I would like to return to the United States. That is the ultimate goal. But if I'm gonna spend the rest of my life in prison, the one bottom line demand that we have to agree to is that at least I get a fair trial. And that is the one thing the government has refused to guarantee because they won't provide access to what's called a public interest defense," Snowden told "CBS This Morning."
The Government has refused a simple guarantee, meaning they have no interest in a fair trial. Had the Government offered a guarantee, and Snowden refused, you may have a point, but as things are now, no.
The Council of Europe believed strongly enough that Snowden would not get a fair trial [5]
But did they break laws or is your imagination running wild with hypothetical scenarios? You can't use some imagined alternate timeline/scenario as supporting evidence for your claim.
It is a matter of public record that the USGov has (a) assassinated American citizens abroad and (b) used "extraordinary rendition" hundreds if not thousands of times to lock people up on black sites for torture or worse with absolutely zero due process.
You should refrain from holding strong opinions on a subject that you did not bother to put even a bit of effort to understand.
Snowden did not run to Russia, he was on his way from Hong Kong to Ecuador and was in the international transit zone of Moscow's airport as part of a layover flight when the U.S. cancelled his passport leaving him stuck in the airport for over a month. During that time Snowden applied for asylum in several countries including Bolivia, Brazil, Austria, India, etc etc... the U.S. placed a great deal of diplomatic pressure on every single country he applied to to refuse his request and finally Russia gave him what was at the time intended to be temporary asylum so he could leave the airport and pursue asylum elsewhere. That temporary asylum is now a residency permit.
Snowden has stated he would be willing to return the U.S. to face trial if said trial would be open and transparent as well as present a public interest defense. The charge against him for violating the Espionage Act allows substantial portions of the trial to be conducted in secret, precludes the possibility of using a public interest defense, and places a great deal of restrictions on a defendant to properly argue their case.
Daniel Ellsberg, another whistleblower who was charged under the Espionage Act for releasing the Pentagon Papers has fully supported the actions of Edward Snowden has made it clear that he would have acted in the same manner given the circumstances.
Ellsberg was very fortunate that the prosecution acted with such brazen and open recklessness against him in the illegal gathering of evidence that it led the judge to dismiss all charges against him, otherwise Ellsberg would have faced 115 years in prison for what he did.