It coincides with the release of Oliver Stone’s “Snowden” movie. “He had been reprimanded just two weeks before he began to illegally downloading classified documents”, said the Intelligence Committee in a statement.
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The leak prompted significant changes in Washington, including the passage of legislation that revoked the NSA’s authority to collect the phone records of millions of Americans.
According to Wizner, given the various reforms sanctioned by Congress after Snowden-provided documents were leaked, it would be highly challenging winning a case.
“Snowden caused tremendous damage to national security, and the vast majority of the documents he stole have nothing to do with programmes affecting individual privacy interests”.
“Contrary to his public claims that he notified numerous NSA [National Security Agency] officials about what he believed to be illegal intelligence collection, the Committee found no evidence that Snowden took any official effort to express concerns about USA intelligence activities – legal, moral or otherwise – to any oversight officials in the United States government, despite numerous avenues for him to do so”, said the report.
Republican Devin Nunes, chairman of the committee, said Mr Snowden betrayed his colleagues and his country.
“Mr. Snowden has been charged with serious crimes, and it’s the policy of the administration that Mr. Snowden should return to the United States and face those charges”, Earnest said.
“I’m not actually asking for a pardon myself because I think the whole point of our system and the foundation of our democracy is a system of checks and balances”, he said.
On Wednesday, three groups – the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch – called on President Barack Obama to grant Snowden a pardon.
Kenneth Roth, HRW’s executive director, was on the panel of the Athens conference, and described the effort as “an uphill battle”.
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Former Genesis man Gabriel said of the track: “As we become so visible in the digital world and leave an endless trail of data behind us, exactly who has our data and what they do with it becomes increasingly important”. Unless the government is willing to consider charging him with something appropriate, theres not going to be a trial if we have anything to say about it. “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”.
