“And we don’t want that, that’s what Snowden said”.
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Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union launched the campaign to urge President Obama to issue the pardon before he leaves office in January.
The hope of justice, however, still remains for Snowden and his supporters. They are hoping that an internet campaign they began at the website pardonsnowden.org will be successful. “At great personal risk, he blew the whistle”.
Stone massages what could have been a banal plot point to thematically and aesthetically fit the thriller into which he’s shaped “Snowden” – the exfiltration of the classified NSA documents. By revealing this information, Snowden performed a service to Americans and people around the world.
Snowden has lived in exile since 2013.
The Obama administration has urged Snowden to return to the USA and face trial. He faces up to 30 years in prison.
“Yes, there are laws on the books that say one thing, but that is perhaps why the pardon power exists-for the exceptions, for the things that may seem unlawful in letters on a page but when we look at them morally, when we look at them ethically, when we look at the results, it seems these were necessary things, these were vital things”. “Of course, I look forward to coming home but I can not support the persecution of those charged under an Espionage Act when they committed no espionage”.
Snowden and his supporters argue that although he stole information, the revelations have benefited the public because they led to improved privacy protection laws.
For this reason, Snowden has requested that Obama and his administration pardon him for his actions.
Will Obama do it? “And that’s what the president believes”, Earnest added, according to USA Today.
“I’d like to applaud the technologists, our scientists and leaders who, since the history of mass surveillance broke, have sought to resist this new and accelerating trend of overreach into our private lives”, Snowden said, adding: “Reliable uncompromised encryption is our only effective means for keeping our lights on and our roads open”. The law as such has not changed.
The American public appears to be split when it comes to assessing Snowden’s actions.
Obama’s administration also rejected a 2015 public petition for the pardon which had 168,000 signatures by stating that he should have not run away to Russian Federation and instead should’ve come to the USA and “be judged by a jury of his peers-not hide behind the cover of an authoritarian regime”.
What Snowden faces if he was to come back to the US are three felonies, including two espionage charges, each carrying a maximum sentence of ten years. Still, if you come out of Snowden less than angry, you haven’t been paying attention to the 21st century. Some famous Presidential pardons have included President Gerald Ford’s pardoning of Richard Nixon, seen as a way to help the nation heal.
“I would consider it an honor to tell his story”, the 35-year-old actor told Variety at the film’s premiere at AMC Lincoln Center.
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A pardon now may make sense for Obama, the groups said, because he may be seeking to burnish his legacy and be able to act with less concern for politics.
