Dinah PoKempner, left, general council for Human Rights Watch, listens as Edward Snowden speaks on a television screen via video link from Moscow during a news conference to call upon President Barack Obama to pardon Snowden before he leaves office, Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2016, in NY.
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Snowden and his legal team formally launched the campaign at a press conference in NY today.
He says whistleblowers are “democracy’s safeguard of last resort”.
It’s been more than three years since Snowden, then a 29-year-old former National Security Agency contractor announced that he was the source of astonishing revelations of mass surveillance by the United States government and its allies.
“Cases like Edward Snowden’s are precisely why the presidential pardon power exists”, ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero said.
“I’m not aware of any conversations or any communications between Mr Snowden and the President”, he said.
History may end up being kind to Snowden, but at this time many Americans still view him as a traitor who should pay for his crimes against his country.
Snowden was charged by U.S. federal prosecutors in 2013 with theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information, and willful communication of classified communications intelligence to an authorized person.
At PardonSnowden.org, the petition includes a countdown clock to the second until Obama leaves office and has gained signatures from luminaries such as Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Pentagon Papers whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg whose disclosures revealed that the USA government lied to Congress and the American public about the Vietnam War.
When questioned about the timing of his public plea for a pardon, especially coming just before the release of the film about his life and before Obama leaves office early next year, Snowden and his backers insisted they were not all directly linked. “I love my family”. As President Barack Obama’s second and final term comes to a close, how to handle a possible Snowden return stateside remains a hot-button issue in Washington and around the country.
“I know that he would love to come home”.
Edward Snowden has been avoiding United States extradition in Russian Federation for more than three years.
The White House’s last formal statement on what should happen to Snowden was its response to an online petition, published in May of a year ago. At a news conference, Snowden appeared by remote video link, thanking the organizers and arguing that his fate will have a broader impact.
Snowden himself talked about the possibility of a pardon during an interview with The Guardian on Tuesday.
After he provided top-secret documents to a group of journalists including MacAskill, Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Barton Gellman, federal prosecutors charged Snowden with espionage.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Edward Snowden in new the Oliver Stone film “Snowden”, and the actor needed to do a little research.
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Snowden’s was present at the press conference via a telepresence robot, he said that this isn’t really about his rather “it’s about us”.
