
Hillary Clinton Is Wrong About Edward Snowden - morgante
http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/hillary-clinton-is-wrong-about-edward-snowden
======
willholloway
There was only one candidate in the first Democratic debate that had the
courage to say that Snowden should be brought home a hero, because the
government was breaking the law, and that was Lincoln Chafee. He didn't
equivocate.

And he gave one very stupid, but very honest answer to a question on Glass-
Steagall. And he is being mocked for it.

Wolf Blitzer took the opportunity to kick him when he was down [1] . If you
look at Lincon's Twitter feed he was so excited to be on Wolf Blitzer's show,
because he thought he was going to be able to talk about his ideas.

He was naive, and that makes him a bad politician. But he had interesting
ideas he wanted to talk about even if he knew he couldn't win, namely
pardoning Snowden, ending drone strikes and the benefits of switching to the
metric system.

The only legitimate criticism I can level against him is that he didn't
assemble the proper campaign staff that would have prepared him for the debate
properly.

His answer to the Glass-Steagall question was unfortunate, because we did have
one candidate that could have brought attention to Snowden, and the cruelty
and futility of drone strike warfare.

He hasn't tweeted since the Wolf Blitzer bullying episode. An article has been
written that he has disgraced the legacy of his father. [2]

I think he deserves thanks for bringing some attention [3] to the response a
democratic nation should have to heroes like Snowden.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SExMtNDS5hk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SExMtNDS5hk)

[2] [http://wpri.com/2015/10/15/john-chafee-loyalists-
anguished-o...](http://wpri.com/2015/10/15/john-chafee-loyalists-anguished-
over-lincoln-chafees-white-house-run/)

[3] [https://www.thenation.com/article/lincoln-chafee-adds-a-
prop...](https://www.thenation.com/article/lincoln-chafee-adds-a-proposal-to-
the-2016-debate-lets-bring-edward-snowden-home/)

~~~
ScottBurson
I was not familiar with Chafee prior to the debate and I liked some of the
things he said, but he really did blow the Glass-Steagall question very badly.
You don't get to be President by making excuses. He should simply have said
"It was a mistake. I did not educate myself properly on the issue before
voting, and I regret it." I think everyone would have been fine with that.

------
FBT
Why does the United States constitution grant the president the power to grant
pardons and reprieves? I'd argue that it's for cases exactly like this one.
Where someone indeed broke the law, but did the right thing in doing so. We
want people to do what is right, not shake our heads tragically and say that
the law is the law, and must be followed blindly even if it means punishing a
hero for his heroic deeds.

I'd further say that it's the responsibility of the president to use his or
her constitutionally granted powers for this purpose, and say that a president
that refuses to use the powers of the presidency for the purpose they were
intended for is a simply bad at the job of being president.

~~~
rorykoehler
Snowden didn't break the law. He uncovered other people breaking the law. If
it is illegal to do something (like the NSA surveillance techniques) and that
something is done then the rest of the laws surrounding state secrets
automatically become devoid. That is the only way a sane working democratic
society can function. If it is illegal to uncovered illegality then it sets a
precedent that every witness to a crime will have to be tried as a defendant.
The Snowden situation is absurd and anyone who says he broke the law is
revealing themselves as the enemy of the people and of the country.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
_He uncovered other people breaking the law._

Despite an appeals court decision on illegality, because of the way that
Congress revamped what was previously Section 215's language, and ended some
of the previous programs, it has not been officially taken that what they did
was illegal - that is, named as culpable certain groups or individuals that
broke stated laws.

As a result, under common law and procedures of the courts/congress,
technically the only one who has broken a law was Snowden.

I'm not arguing right or wrong, I am just say that you are technically wrong
under legal statute.

~~~
rorykoehler
My comment was more a reflection on how messed up a system is if this is how
it works. Morally the law is unjust therefore it can't be right and I'm with
MLK on this one:

"One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws.
Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws."

------
throwaway13337
It's disheartening to read that 53% of Americans agree with Hillary and only
26% do not.

It's also surprising that ~81% of Americans polled had an opinion at all.

~~~
blktiger
53% agree that he should stand trial. That's not the same as being convicted.
He did break the law, so it stands to reason that he should stand trial.
Snowden himself said something similar if I recall, that if he was sure he
would stand a _fair_ trial he would return to the US.

~~~
BookmarkSaver
Exactly. A guy working in the US intelligence service who fled with stolen
information to China then Russia is not someone that should automatically be
granted clemency. He should be investigated and tried. He might be the hero
everyone here and on reddit imagines he is, or he might just be another shady
character in geopolitics. It's frustrating to see people so blindly picking
sides or misinterpreting opinions.

~~~
jazzyk
>"fled with stolen information to China then Russia"

Typical misconception, sad to see it on HN.

He did not flee to Russia, he got stuck on his way, because the US revoked his
passport. Russia was the only country who could stand up to the US. Few other
countries dared to offer him asylum.

Unfortunate it had to be Russia, given their civil liberties record, but he
HAD NO INTENTION of going there.

~~~
physicistjedi
Also he wasn't "with stolen information". He did not keep a copy with him on
his way.

------
ck2
The whistler-blower angle has been discussed to death and she knows it is
complete BS because whistler-blowers in government have an extremely tragic
history.

She only takes that position so she seems "tough on crime" like so make
democrats are afraid to appear otherwise to the "undecided voters" (whomever
those idiots are).

Just like why she had an email server in her home (which everyone should have)
because her husband knows damn well about the six month limit where any
government agency can read your email without a warrant, which is why he set
it up in the first place.

It's a shame she is the only realistic presidential candidate and the only one
out of all on both sides who I'd want picking the next few supreme court
judges.

Everything else coming out of her is basically going to be whatever she thinks
is going to get her elected, just like every other candidate.

Oh and she'll be the fourth president residing over our war in Afganistan -
certainly we'll "win" any one of these years, or decades and when we finally
do leave, certainly it won't revert back to what it was before like Iraq,
right?

------
cmrdporcupine
More disappointing than Clinton's response is Bernie Sander's middling
'respectable' response:

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/evan-greer/bernie-sanders-
woul...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/evan-greer/bernie-sanders-would-
make_b_8297414.html)

~~~
scrollaway
Why do you think that's disappointing?

~~~
newjersey
I read this paragraph

> "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," Sanders said. He went on to say that the role Snowden played in
> educating the public about violations of their civil liberties should be
> considered before he is sentenced, and that as president he would
> "absolutely" end the NSA spying programs in question.

and I would have disagreed with the analysis

> To read between the lines: Bernie thinks Edward Snowden did the right thing,
> but hey, laws are laws. If elected, though, it sounds like he'll make sure
> Snowden gets a really nice jail cell.

and said something along the lines of "the political system pardoned President
Nixon without even going through the trouble of actually charging him with a
crime. If a man like Nixon deserves pardon, I'd say Snowden does as well." But
I am not Bernie Sanders and I can't put words in his mouth. He urged Snowden
to come home and face trial. This may be a comforting thing for the people at
home who watch the 8 PM news but this is not the right thing to do. Not in a
nation that pardons people before they are convicted of a crime. No, I don't
mean we should dig up Nixon's grave and hang, quarter, and draw his body (I
wouldn't oppose doing so to Margaret Thatcher as the UK a historical
precedence of such actions but that is off-topic). I don't even want to charge
Nixon. All I am saying is there is a way to grant Edward Snowden the same
amnesty and immunity that we gave President Nixon. Not because what the the
two did were similar but I bring it up just as a demonstration of the things
we have forgiven and forgotten as a nation.

Edward Snowden did is a huge public service and he deserves our thanks for it.
I am not the person above but this is why I am a little disappointed. I am a
little concerned about Bernie Sanders saying as president he would
"absolutely" end the NSA spying programs in question. Does the POTUS have
access to everything that goes on in the NSA? Can't the programs
continue/reboot under a different pretense? Worst case, if a president can put
the program to sleep, what is to stop the next president to reanimate it?

~~~
cmrdporcupine
I'm the person above and I endorse your comments generally.

That said I am Canadian, so American laws concern me less. Snowden did the
world a favour, not just the US public, by exposing what many of us already
suspected was happening.

Sanders has exposed himself in this as far less radical than he likes to
market himself as.

As a person running in an election to be a _lawmaker_ he has every right,
actually responsibility, to criticize the laws that would imprison Snowden,
and to agitate to recognize the problems Snowden pointed out.

~~~
ganeumann
Actually, he is currently a lawmaker. He is running to be the person who
executes the laws.

Of course, this just makes his position worse.

------
hellofunk
It says:

>Did Snowden break the law? In passing classified information to reporters, he
did. The Espionage Act explicitly prohibits such actions. But this violation
surely needs to be balanced against the public service that Snowden carried
out in informing the American public about the extent to which their
government had been spying on them.

I don't think you can say that someone broke real laws and then excuse it
because public opinion or a subjective idea of public "service" somehow
trumped the laws. The U.S. is a nation of laws. If something doesn't work as
expected, laws are changed. The laws are either good or bad, but the nation
runs because of these laws. You can debate the merits or lack thereof in what
Snowden did, because that is a subjective opinion. You cannot debate the laws
he broke. You cannot say "yeah, he broke the law, but...." because then, what
is the value of law? It is possible to agree with Snowden's actions while
still accepting that he broke laws. As soon as you excuse the law because it
doesn't "feel" right, you walk a shaky path to anarchy.

I see I am downvoted for this, but ironically it is not because I disagree
with Snowden. I support what he revealed. But this article is not proper
logic, in my opinion.

I think it is interesting that Snowden himself prefers to be punished for
breaking these laws, and spend his life in prison, rather than live out a life
in another country. He accepts that he broke laws, why doesn't everyone else?
Hillary's attitude on this is not "wrong" as the article claims. If you are
running for president and think that you can excuse the Espionage Act, of all
laws, that to me seems like the wrong attitude.

~~~
hellofunk
In response to the commenters, we're talking about the Espionage Act, not
jaywalking. What message does it send to excuse someone from breaking this
law? It's a very important law, do we want anyone exposing national secrets?
Giving him a pass on this particular law sets a dangerous precedent. I support
what Snowden revealed, but why didn't he go about it legally? Can anyone
provide a good reason why he didn't follow whistleblower laws?

~~~
dllthomas
_" What message does it send to excuse someone from breaking this law?"_

It sends a message that if, in good conscience, you believe that what we're
secretly doing is wrong enough that you need to reveal it to the American
people, you can do so without facing inordinate punishment.

This is the best possible message we can send! If we are going to have secret
programs doing this kind of stuff, this is an important check that we're not
being horrendously evil in the world.

Remember that we're not polling a random collection of people, but people who
have chosen to work on this kind of thing, whose paycheck relies on accepting
it, who are regularly thinking about how to make it do more good and less bad
and want to believe they're being somewhat competent at that, and people who
have already been extensively vetted for security access. If one of _those_
people are sufficiently concerned to raise this kind of alarm, it needs to be
raised.

~~~
hellofunk
But somebody in good conscience could use our existing whistleblower laws to
expose it right. Deliberately breaking a major law on national security isn't
a risk we should recommend anyone to take.

~~~
slavik81
> Clinton said that Edward Snowden could have gotten all the protections of
> being a whistleblower." A key 1998 law focused on intelligence community
> workers does lay out a pathway Snowden could have followed. However, there
> is at least a significant legal debate over whether the issues Snowden
> wanted to raise would fall under that law.

> Additionally, legal experts including an Army inspector general have said
> that the 1998 law does not protect whistleblowers from reprisals.

> The protections that Clinton referenced do not seem to be as strong as she
> suggested, and most of the expert opinion suggests they would not apply to
> Snowden.

> We rate this claim Mostly False.

[http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-
meter/statements/2015/oct/...](http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-
meter/statements/2015/oct/14/hillary-clinton/clinton-says-nsa-leaker-snowden-
failed-use-whistle/)

------
enlightenedfool
As a politician, she just reflects popular public opinion. "Right" or "wrong"
is what the majority feels, unfortunately. If the public is strongly concerned
about privacy, they shouldn't vote for her or likes. The headline should
actually read "A majority of Americans are wrong about Edward Snowden"

~~~
cmrdporcupine
We should expect leaders to lead.

Here in Canada last year the majority of the public was (according to polls,
80ish %) on side with the government's very repressive Bill C-51. The only
major political party to come out against it was the NDP and all the pundits
predicted disaster for them. But they made the case and campaigned it and
although the bill passed parliament, the NDP in fact had a major rise in the
polls and public opinion swung the other direction and the bill became very
unpopular.

IHMO the reason we have political parties is to represent polarities of
interests and opinions and principles and in a functional democracy the
leaders within them should be making the arguments and trying to lead the
public so we can hash the debate out in the public sphere.

When everybody follows the polls we sink into a quagmire of mediocrity.

~~~
ZanyProgrammer
And the NDP has since fallen from those heights in the polling. We (privacy
concerned techies) might care about single issues, but the public doesn't (at
least not our kind of issues).

~~~
cmrdporcupine
Yes, that issue has vanished from the public eye for now. It was always hard
to make it a focus. But is an example of good effective leadership to do so.

------
joesmo
Who cares if Snowden broke the law if our own country is no longer ruled by
law?

I hear a lot of talk of whether Snowden should be punished or whether he
should get a trial, but no talk about the punishment for the NSA. Until I see
someone from the NSA going to jail for life, these kinds of questions are
moot.

------
throwaway1150
>The exchange began with host Anderson Cooper asking Lincoln Chafee, a former
governor of Rhode Island, “Governor Chafee: Edward Snowden, is he a traitor or
a hero?”

The answer really should be "both." Snowden supporters readily tout his
commendable whistle-blowing of unlawful domestic intelligence gathering while
at the same time ignoring, denying, or outright excusing stuff like this:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/23/world/asia/nsa-breached-
ch...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/23/world/asia/nsa-breached-chinese-
servers-seen-as-spy-peril.html?_r=0)

Snowden fled first to China and then afterwards to Russia with as much as a
terabyte of classified information, at least some of which--specifically
information concerning intelligence operations the NSA conducted against
Huawei--we know for a fact he shared with them.

Even William Binney, another NSA whistle-blower (who, by contrast, did not
seek asylum in two separate major geopolitical adversaries of the US),
criticized Snowden's subsequent leaks:

>But now he is starting to talk about things like the government hacking into
China and all this kind of thing. He is going a little bit too far. I don't
think he had access to that program. But somebody talked to him about it, and
so he said, from what I have read, anyway, he said that somebody, a reliable
source, told him that the U.S. government is hacking into all these countries.
But that's not a public service, and now he is going a little beyond public
service.

> _So he is transitioning from whistle-blower to a traitor._

[http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/06/16/snowd...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/06/16/snowden-
whistleblower-nsa-officials-roundtable/2428809/)

While Binney has since referred to Snowden as a "patriot," he has yet to
publicly disavow his past criticisms of Snowden:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/william-binney-and-edward-
sno...](http://www.businessinsider.com/william-binney-and-edward-
snowden-2014-10?op=1)

~~~
mixmastamyk
He didn't flee to Russia, he was stopped there in transit.

~~~
BookmarkSaver
You seriously believe that? You're willing to buy that explanation but not the
far more reasonably alternatives?

I mean ffs, he was claiming to be going from China to South America. Via a
connection that just happened to go through Moscow of all places. Even Russia
initially claimed that they had no evidence of his final destination. I cannot
believe how so many people are so gullible as to imagine that ending up in
Russia wasn't intentional.

~~~
mixmastamyk
Yes, if I remember correctly his passport was revoked during the flight. There
are not so many flights from Asia to South America, and many that do transit
in Los Angeles, or other countries with extradition treaties.

Do you have any concrete info?

~~~
csandreasen
His passport was revoked the day before he left Hong Kong.[1]. He traveled to
Russia on what turned out to be an invalid travel document issued by the
Ecuadorian embassy in London [2] (same one that Julian Assange is holed up
in).

[1] [http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ap-source-nsa-leaker-
snowdens...](http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ap-source-nsa-leaker-snowdens-
passport-revoked)

[2] [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/02/ecuador-
rafael-...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/02/ecuador-rafael-
correa-snowden-mistake)

------
vacri
It's sad that even after all this time, the diversionary topic "hero or
traitor?" gets more attention than the actual issues exposed.

------
ZanyProgrammer
No remotely electable candidate will have a view that differs much from
Hillary. And no, L Lessig is not a remotely electable candidate, outside of
our little circles of like minded activists and writers.

------
wernercd
More correctly: 'liary Clinton is wrong about everything.

And if she happens to be right, it's because polling said that was the right
answer and she's lying to you to get elected.

And there seems to be more opinions saying BS won the debate "hands down" than
saying HC did.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
Snowden took classified and sensitive information and went to 2 countries that
are the major geopolitical rivals of the United States (and that probably care
less about their citizens' privacy).

He claims (with no way to verify) that he did not give them any classified
information. So Russia and China provided sanctuary to a member of the
intelligence community without getting any classified information? Has, even
the US done something like that for members ofRussia's or China's intelligence
services? I find that very hard to believe.

If he had stayed in the United States, he would have had a trial. Even if
convicted, I think he would have portrayed as an unequivocal patriot and with
the intense pressure would have been pardoned by now. Now, he is seen as a
traitor and not without cause.

~~~
vezzy-fnord
_Has, even the US done something like that for members ofRussia 's or China's
intelligence services?_

Yes.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Soviet_intelligence_p...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Soviet_intelligence_personnel_who_defected_to_the_United_States)

~~~
IIAOPSW
Not that I disagree with you, but literally everyone in that list _did_ share
information with the CIA.

~~~
vezzy-fnord
Well, the political climate of the Russia at the time meant they were full
defectors and not merely asylum seekers as in Snowden's case. Snowden hasn't
actually renounced his citizenship, from what I know.

