“Finally, the Committee remains concerned that more than three years after the start of the unauthorised disclosures, NSA, and the intelligence community as a whole, have not done enough to minimise the risk of another massive unauthorised disclosure”, the executive summary says.
Advertisement
Snowden ended up stranded at Moscow’s worldwide airport after his passport was annulled by the U.S. government when trying to fly to South America.
The executive summary of the report comes amid a growing backlash from civil rights groups and some USA citizens saying that Snowden should be issued a pardon before Obama’s presidency finishes.
While there are calls for the whistleblower Edward Snowden to be pardoned, the House intelligence committee yesterday unanimously approved a blistering report on him.
Judging by the resoluteness of US officials’ tone, the chances President Barack Obama will pardon Edward Snowden appear very slim, and close to none before November’s presidential election.
Snowden thanked human rights groups for seeking a pardon from President Obama. “I look forward to his eventual return to the United States, where he will face justice for his damaging crimes”, he added.
Edward Snowden is also the hero of a new movie by American director Oliver Stone, who also pleads for his forgiveness.
The former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor leaked thousands of classified United States documents in 2013 revealing the vast USA surveillance put in place after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
The US government has struggled to manage the effects of Snowden’s disclosures, which brought to light extensive its digital surveillance programmes and have led to dramatic changes in digital communications security and worldwide data-sharing arrangements, including the annullation of a data-sharing treaty between the US and the EU.
“It’s certainly an outside chance that he is going to get pardoned, but I think it’s something Obama can and will consider”, Timm said during an interview with Reason’s Nick Gillespie.
The 33-year-old addressed a New York City news conference where advocates from the ACLU, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International announced an online petition drive to urge Obama to pardon Snowden before he leaves office.
But US officials, while adopting measures a year ago that regulate the National Security Agency’s (NSA) collection of US citizens’ telephone call metadata, have argued that the surveillance programmes are justified in that they protect US interests.
“What we’re hoping is that after the election when Obama is in his final months in office at that stage he can begin to do something that are appropriate as a matter of conscience but politically hard”, Roth told the AP.
Advertisement
‘There’s been broad recognition that Edward Snowden has done an enormous public service by disclosing the degree to which all of our privacy has been invaded needlessly’.
