Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the U.S. group ACLU launched a campaign Wednesday to push President Barack Obama to pardon Edward Snowden, the fugitive NSA whistle-blower living in Russian Federation.
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A NUMBER of technology, human rights leaders and Hollywood heavyweights have thrown their support behind a campaign calling for Barack Obama to grant Edward Snowden a presidential pardon.
Snowden, who lives in Moscow, appeared via video link on Wednesday at a NY press conference, where advocates from human rights groups called for a pardon.
The report summary said Snowden damaged USA national security when he made public a cache of documents about the U.S. government’s intelligence programs in 2013.
The House of Representatives intelligence committee report declared that Snowden was “not a whistleblower” as he has claimed in interviews and that most of the material he stole from NSA outposts was about intelligence and defence programs of great interest to US foreign adversaries.
Still, the executive director of the ACLU said, “Edward Snowden should be thanked and not punished”.
Snowden said he could not receive a fair trial in the United States because a law he was charged under, the 1917 Espionage Act, does not let him explain to a jury his reasons for leaking. “I would be very surprised if it does”, Harrison said last week. It says that Snowden “failed basic annual training for NSA employees on Section 702” – a controversial part of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that allows for the mass collection of information on foreign communications, which Snowden’s later disclosures threw into the global spotlight.
Upon the report’s release, Snowden took to Twitter to rebut its accusations.
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The launch of the presidential pardon campaign comes two days before Oliver Stone’s biopic “Snowden” opens. Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA, revealed details of top-secret surveillance conducted by the United States’ National Security Agency regarding telecom data.
Snowden is now campaign for President Barack Obama to pardon him. There, Snowden contains that it was morally “necessary” to reveal mass surveillance programs in the United States and beyond.
That was a sentiment echoed throughout the call by various supporters of Snowden, which made him choke up with emotion at times.
“I’m gonna tell you the truth, I didn’t know the difference before I spent the time to look into it”, Joseph confessed.
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Snowden noted that President Obama’s administration has brought more charges against whistleblowers than previous administrations combined, and said the public should have its say.
