Hillary’s Attack on Snowden Was Devoid Of Facts

There is a consensus among all the major politicians running for president in America, regardless of their party: Edward Snowden, they all say, deserves to face federal prosecutors for illegally leaking vast troves detailed information about government surveillance programs to the press.

Chafee was stating a truth. The Patriot Act did not authorize the government to gather calling records in bulk, the judges said.

Snowden broke the law. “He could have gotten all of the protections of being a whistleblower”, Clinton said.

“He could have been a whistleblower, raised all the issues that he has raised and I think there would have been a positive response to that”, she said.

“I think that Snowden played a very important role in educating the American people to the degree to which our civil liberties… are being undermined”, Sanders said.

Chafee has been an outlier on the issue, saying that Snowden should be brought home, and though he has largely avoided saying whether Snowden deserves jail time (including in Tuesday’s Democratic debate), he has tweeted that Snowden has “done his time”. The NSA Inspector General who would have heard a complaint by Snowden, George Ellard, called him a naive, ignorant, and egotistical manic thief, and said he would have ‘explained to Mr. Snowden his misperception and lack of understanding about what NSA does.’ It’s ironic that Mrs. Clinton has the gall to lecture anyone about the proper handling of classified information given her own disregard for the rules.

As someone who cares deeply about economic injustice and numerous other things that Sanders has made cornerstones of his campaign, I want to like him.

Snowden took refuge in Russian Federation as he did not believe he was granted adequate protection from reprisal under whistleblower laws. I represent whistleblowers who have served time in jail or are in exile for alleged disclosures of classified information on a much smaller scale.

Two of the other candidates on stage, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley and former Virginia Sen. As of right now, there is no Federal law that protects me from being fired from my job or denied housing as a transgender person. “But I think what he did in educating us should be taken into consideration”, Sanders said.

She said today: “Clinton’s statement shows how out of touch she is with the reality for whistleblowers”. But it doesn’t withstand inspection. The USA government has formally charged him under the Espionage Act, while members of Congress have sought to reform the surveillance programs in the wake of the leaks.

The National Security Agency whistleblower has cautioned Australian followers that their online movements are now being tracked.

Anderson, Snowden put a lot of Americans’ lives at risk. Snowden has said that he destroyed all of the documents he had in his possession before departing Hong Kong for Moscow. The Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989, which provided legal immunity to government employers who reveal lawbreaking, malfeasance, or abuse of authority, doesn’t apply to employees of the intelligence agencies, including contractors like Snowden.

So what was Clinton up to? He would still like Snowden to face trial, but believes the sentencing should reflect the good that came out of blowing the whistle, as well as the bad. Perhaps she was just using Snowden to burnish her credentials as a hawk and appeal to the American public at large, which is rather less sympathetic to Snowden than most progressives are.