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White House spokeswoman and Presidential Advisor on Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Lisa Monaco issued a response to the petition that Edward Snowden receive immunity from any laws he may have broken and be allowed to return to the USA as a free man. Her statement reasserted the Administration's position that Snowden is a criminal, running away from the consequences of his actions and should return to the USA to stand trial (and inevitably serve out the rest of his life in solitary confinement).
The full text of the response:
Thanks for signing a petition about Edward Snowden. This is an issue that many Americans feel strongly about. Because his actions have had serious consequences for our national security, we took this matter to Lisa Monaco, the President's Advisor on Homeland Security and Counterterrorism. Here's what she had to say:
Since taking office, President Obama has worked with Congress to secure appropriate reforms that balance the protection of civil liberties with the ability of national security professionals to secure information vital to keep Americans safe.
As the President said in announcing recent intelligence reforms, "We have to make some important decisions about how to protect ourselves and sustain our leadership in the world, while upholding the civil liberties and privacy protections that our ideals and our Constitution require."
Instead of constructively addressing these issues, Mr. Snowden's dangerous decision to steal and disclose classified information had severe consequences for the security of our country and the people who work day in and day out to protect it.
If he felt his actions were consistent with civil disobedience, then he should do what those who have taken issue with their own government do: Challenge it, speak out, engage in a constructive act of protest, and -- importantly -- accept the consequences of his actions. He should come home to the United States, and be judged by a jury of his peers -- not hide behind the cover of an authoritarian regime. Right now, he's running away from the consequences of his actions.
We live in a dangerous world. We continue to face grave security threats like terrorism, cyber-attacks, and nuclear proliferation that our intelligence community must have all the lawful tools it needs to address. The balance between our security and the civil liberties that our ideals and our Constitution require deserves robust debate and those who are willing to engage in it here at home.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @03:26AM
Instead of constructively addressing these issues, Mr. Snowden's dangerous decision to steal and disclose classified information had severe consequences for the security of our country and the people who work day in and day out to protect it.
There is zero evidence or reason to think that it was "dangerous" unless you think that simple democracy is dangerous, or you think that the government should be able to violate the constitution as it pleases. On the contrary, releasing the information to The People was the only correct decision; we have a right to know when the government is doing unethical and/or illegal things. That would be true even if it was "dangerous" to leak that information.
If he felt his actions were consistent with civil disobedience, then he should do what those who have taken issue with their own government do: Challenge it, speak out, engage in a constructive act of protest, and -- importantly -- accept the consequences of his actions. He should come home to the United States, and be judged by a jury of his peers -- not hide behind the cover of an authoritarian regime. Right now, he's running away from the consequences of his actions.
He's seeking shelter from one authoritarian regime in another authoritarian regime that's not currently angry with him. If he were to "accept the consequences of his actions", he would be treated as a hero and would not go to prison at all. But he would not have a fairy trial in the first place; the government would make certain of that. I don't think Snowden is suicidal or masochistic, so it would be unwise to come back at this point.
We live in a dangerous world.
And we always have. The free and brave thing to do would be to accept that we live in a dangerous world rather than violating human rights and the constitution in order to (supposedly) increase safety. Filthy cowards desire safety above all else.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by takyon on Wednesday July 29 2015, @04:05AM
The security state isn't going away. We have nuclear weapons, eternal enemies, insecure by design Internet, insecure by nature software, and emerging threats from non-state actors (the other NSA). The danger has increased, and the paranoia of govt and law enforcement has increased faster.
The government conducted illegal surveillance, silenced several internal whistleblowers, and it complains that Snowden wasn't constructive. Even in the case of supposedly lawful foreign surveillance, the public has a right to know and a right not to spend tax money on programs that were going to damage our credibility once they came to light. Theoretically this could be expressed through our elected officials, but many of them were not fully aware of the implications of the surveillance programs they approved, including secret legal interpretations by the executive. Misinformation and outright lies have been trotted out regularly in order to discredit Snowden. Of course, "authorized leaks" and "anonymous officials" are still used to push the agenda of the week. Must crush ISIS.
The classified budget of the NSA is $10 billion or more. Would cutting that to $2 billion improve or damage national security?
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(Score: 5, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday July 29 2015, @04:55AM
Everyone who agrees that "Snowden is a hero" probably just got their names added to several lists-- the list of people who are ineligible for secret clearances, the list of suspected potential terrorists, the "no-fly" list, and, heck if you also think Bradley/Chelsea Manning is a hero, the sex offender list and the military's secret list of potential soldiers who are not to be trusted because they are sexually confused or homosexual.
Presumably spy agencies and the military have rather similar attitudes to many things. They have this lamentable tendency to view disagreement as possibly treasonous. The gun turret explosion on the Battleship Iowa back in '89 is most revealing of military attitudes and their completely unwarranted and unfair suspicion of pretty much every outsider, everyone who isn't "America F Yeah!" The navy concocted this ludicrous story that the Iowa was sabotaged by a homosexual sailor acting out his suicidal sexual frustration over a relationship that ended badly. Why did they try to run with such an implausible story, and why choose that particular one? Why couldn't a hetero sailor get just as sexually frustrated and commit suicide? Why couldn't any sailor go postal out of frustration over harsh and unfair discipline, and not sexual denial? Was it because the investigators were trying to play to military prejudices, hoping thereby to get the rest of the military to accept the story regardless of what the general public thought? As it turned out, they were using experimental powder that had already been shown to be unsafe, but the high-ranking officer pushing the powder wanted it to succeed and was all too willing to suppress and ignore contrary findings.
Another bad time to act out was during the tenure of J. Edgar Hoover. There was also McCarthyism, with the harassment of any Hollywood talent who dared question the stifling norms of the 1950s America.
I don't think things have changed much.
(Score: 5, Informative) by mhajicek on Wednesday July 29 2015, @05:04AM
“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” - CIA director William Casey, February 1981
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 5, Funny) by dyingtolive on Wednesday July 29 2015, @05:19AM
Crap. I don't know whether to believe that or not.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @06:19AM
William Casey, died on a canoeing trip where he was wearing a three-piece suite. Totally credible.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday July 29 2015, @02:16PM
How in hell did he get a "suite" into a canoe? Either English is not your first language, OR, you don't know how to spell, OR, Casey was one hell of a man to get that canoe out into deep water while carrying an entire suite.
(Score: 1) by jdavidb on Wednesday July 29 2015, @08:44PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @08:22AM
DUH!
they have to pass the bills to find out what's in them!
(Score: 1, Troll) by albert on Wednesday July 29 2015, @04:35AM
Is it your opinion that the USA shouldn't spy on foreign nations, or is it your opinion that none of the stuff leaked
(see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_ANT_catalog [wikipedia.org] for an awe-inspiring list) was for targeting foreign nations?
Either is crazy, and I see no other even half-logical way to reach your conclusion.
Really, take a look at that list. Leaking that list is obviously devastating. The loss of information will hurt the USA for many decades. Future presidents will make more mistakes due to the loss of information.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @04:50AM
Future presidents will make more mistakes due to the loss of information.
After the presidency of George W. Bush, I really do not think this is possible.
(Score: 1, Troll) by albert on Wednesday July 29 2015, @07:19AM
He couldn't spy as well as Obama could. Taking Bush at his word (yeah, I know...) we see that he actually started a war because he was misinformed. Had the spying been better, the 2nd war in Iraq might have been avoided.
With the loss of capability, we're headed back to the Bush level of cluelessness. Oh joy.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @08:24AM
...they would have been able to at least plant some WMD's to give the spin some credibility
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday July 29 2015, @01:22PM
Where do they find you guys? Did the government run a recruiting event at Bob Jones University? Or were you vat-grown in secret labs beneath Ft. Mead and decanted to undertake this social media mission?
This honestly takes the cake for the greatest amount of drivel I've yet seen on our beloved Soylent. Bush spied less well than Obama? Who the hell do you think started the Total Information Awareness program, Obama 8 years before he was elected President?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by albert on Wednesday July 29 2015, @10:26PM
Bob Jones University would kick me off campus mighty fast. I'd probably reach escape velocity.
It probably hasn't occurred to you, but there exist conservatives who are not Bible-thumping types driving pickups with confederate flags. It's possible to be a reality-based thinker with conservative values. The fact that many conservatives are completely illogical does not imply that liberal values are logical.
Bush evidently did spy pretty well by the end of his second term, getting Obama off to a great start. Obama's last couple years will be lousy. The next person will have trouble too. It doesn't matter if they have a "D" or "R" after their name. This stuff is done by government workers and contractors who are essentially nameless and hidden, many working for low pay. These are people who love their country and really want their country to win. It's called patriotism, something sorely lacking in most of the tech industry. Patriotism is about more than just constitutional amendments 1 and 4.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anal Pumpernickel on Thursday July 30 2015, @01:14AM
These are people who love their country and really want their country to win.
It sounds like they're more in love with the idea of an authoritarian regime of their own making.
It's called patriotism
Patriotism is wanting your country to do better, and defending the principles of freedom. You're certainly not a patriot if you advocating violating or violate the highest law of the land and destroy people's freedoms in the name of safety.
something sorely lacking in most of the tech industry.
Good. That fake "patriotism" isn't desirable.
Patriotism is about more than just constitutional amendments 1 and 4.
Right. You have to follow the rest of the constitution, too. Sorry, government.
(Score: 1) by albert on Thursday July 30 2015, @04:36AM
Do you really think they intended to violate the constitution?
They have a bias, and so do you. These biases lead to opposite conclusions. So far the courts have mostly sided with you, so in that sense you got things right, but that doesn't mean that the other side was purposely violating the constitution.
Most likely they were blinded to the situation by needing to get things done and by being in an echo chamber very different from the one here at soylentnews.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anal Pumpernickel on Thursday July 30 2015, @03:13PM
Do you really think they intended to violate the constitution?
I think they don't give a shit. Their intentions don't matter, however; they're treacherous scum.
They have a bias, and so do you.
And their biases lead to egregious violations of our fundamental liberties, ethics, and the highest law of the land.
There are too many obvious constitutional violations for them to not realize this. I don't buy this apologist nonsense one bit, and even if they didn't realize what they were doing, they still deserve to be in prison.
So far the courts have mostly sided with you, so in that sense you got things right
I would be correct even if the courts didn't side with me. To say otherwise leads to a paradox. Does reality change once the courts make a ruling? Because courts have overruled previous court decisions in the past. Were both rulings correct, or did reality change in that time? The notion that the courts are always right is just a legal fiction at best, because at the end of the day you probably have to have someone with a bit of power who people listen to. But when the courts get it wrong, and they have and they will continue to do so, The People have to fix the situation.
Most likely they were blinded to the situation by needing to get things done and by being in an echo chamber very different from the one here at soylentnews.
I like how you're comparing the "biases" as if they're anything alike.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Thursday July 30 2015, @09:34AM
Those are called, "Libertarians," nowadays. And (the hint is in the name) they really hold fast to the Constitution and like freedom. They do not approve of violating it. The rest are Know-nothings [wikipedia.org]. (Heck, even their anti-Catholicism has not gone, as you can see on the front page of Drudge today, which is asking if the Pope is the Anti-Christ.)
You cannot claim to defend the Constitution and turn around and wipe your ass with it.
That's a bullshit false choice. It's the same dreck fascists always roll out to shout down free men. We all remember that telling Goering quote, "the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country." Implying that those who oppose authority are cowards or want their country to lose is an argument made by those with no honor.
It truly astonishes me how so many can completely invert very clear language and intentions to believe the opposite thing. Jesus said, "This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you." It does not mean, "Run out and kill Muslims." But that's exactly what conservatives tell themselves Jesus meant. The United States has multiple laws and signed many treaties against torture and has prosecuted torturers as War Criminals, which is a long precedence of staunch opposition to torture, enshrined in American law. But what do conservatives think that means? Hey, let's go out and torture people! It's not torture when America is the one torturing people...
It's almost as though American conservatives did capture Mengele after the fall of the Third Reich and agreed to let him go on to exile in South America if he first perfected the technique of performing a rectal-cranial inversion on their rank-and-file.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by albert on Thursday July 30 2015, @04:30PM
You can be socially conservative while being a non-believer.
Jesus never existed, and therefore couldn't spew liberal nonsense. Run out and kill Muslims.
We can see liberal values destroying themselves in France just this past week. A lady was sunning herself in the park. A group of Muslims attacked her for being in a bikini. You liberals want to let everybody in, and then those people turn society conservative in a very fucked up way.
Self-preservation requires a bit of xenophobia. Someday we'll be living under Sharia because of people like you.
This is just victor's justice. We "prosecute" because that is the only way a democracy can get liberal voters on board with what possibly needs to be done. A more honest approach would either skip the sham trial (go straight to execution) or make it non-sham by allowing "orders that were lawful at the time" as a defense.
Supporting a sham trial is pretty vile. It's worse than just lining people up and shooting them.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Wednesday July 29 2015, @03:11PM
Had the spying been better, they would have used it to violate more people's rights, and there still would've been an Iraq war, because Bush and his buddies are all sociopathic, lying war criminals.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @10:39PM
> we see that he actually started a war because he was misinformed.
That's a misleading characterization.
Yes, the best available intelligence on Iraq's WMD program suggested that they did have WMDs. But the expiration date on that intelligence was 5 years past. Bush and his collaborators choose to discount that the intelligence was well-known to be stale because it confirmed their biases. That's not a failure of intelligence, that's a failure of judgment.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 30 2015, @01:17AM
One thing I don't see often mentioned is the fact that, even if they did have WMDs, so fucking what? Iraq was a sovereign country. The US had and has WMDs, and was in fact the only country that actually used atomic bombs during warfare, and used them to murder countless innocents. Maybe the world should invade the US.
The justification seems to be that they might use the WMDs they supposedly had in some evil way at some unspecified point in the future, so we have to engage in preemptive warfare. That's unethical to the highest degree.
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Thursday July 30 2015, @12:33AM
He couldn't spy as well as Obama could. Taking Bush at his word (yeah, I know...) we see that he actually started a war because he was misinformed.
You can't take him at his word. The man lied to everyone, and maybe even himself, to justify a war he wanted to start and/or finish (start or finish depends how you frame it, I guess). What Bush wanted from "spying" was not reality but justification of his predetermined stance. Things that were inconvenient were thrown out. Even if there was perfect spying on Hussein (you know, it was pretty good considering almost continual inspections!!), it would have been completely ignored.
(Score: 1) by albert on Thursday July 30 2015, @03:58AM
Seeing what you want to see is a pretty typical human failure. Probably all of us do that, all the while steadfastly denying it.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Thursday July 30 2015, @03:26PM
Stupidity is not a sufficient explanation for the levels of corruption we see in government. Power corrupts, and these sociopathic pieces of garbage are irredeemably corrupt.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by takyon on Wednesday July 29 2015, @05:01AM
The information was always going to become public. Snowden sped up that process. Keep that in mind for the following.
The spying that we are doing on other nations' telecommunications is beyond the scale of any previous foreign surveillance. It has hurt our reputation overseas (although some EU heads of state and a certain Brazilian would like to move past it). The surveillance is not nearly as valuable in stopping terrorist attacks or for diplomatic purposes as believed. The products in that TAO catalog and NSA's muddling in standards processes weaken the security of targets and non-targets. Buying and exploiting zero-days rather than fixing them hurts everyone's security, just as supporting and paying Hacking Team hurts everyone's security.
Choices were made for the American people to spend billions of dollars on these programs. The results: weakened security for everyone, further mistrust and hate of America abroad, potential balkanization of the Internet, economic harm to U.S. tech and cloud companies. Spying on your allied governments is cute, spying on everyone on the planet is counterproductive.
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(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday July 29 2015, @02:18PM
How does all that matter? When you spy a criminal committing criminal activities, you should keep some or most of his activities secret? Huh, WUT?!?!?!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @03:00PM
Nothing illogical there. Mass surveillance is always unethical, because it will always capture the data of countless innocent people who are not suspected of anything. Foreigners have rights too; I know that may come as a surprise for you. If we have to spy on a foreigner, there should be evidence that they're doing something wrong, or they should be an enemy country.
Leaking that list is obviously devastating.
Not only have you not shown that, but even if it was, freedom would still be more important than safety. The ends don't justify the means. And no, it doesn't matter how many other countries also spy on foreigners; if we're the world's leader (as our politicians like to say), we should set an example.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday July 30 2015, @12:10AM
One of the only reasons why we don't see far, far, far more political fallout in our clearly retarded foreign policy is that we offer our victim's governments a share in our spoils, and an offer to share in future spoils. In other words, there won't be an enemy country created out of these actions, as those countries are all too happy to become enemies to their own people as well. One set of thieves complaining to the other, not about the ethics of the theft, but the acquisition and division of their illicit gains.
That to me is one of the more depressing realities of our time; There are no governments above corruption, above monied interests, and above wholly abusing their own peoples. All of the grand ideals and American ideology pushed on me in my youth in school were nothing more than a tragic and pathetic lies. I used to believe that I lived in a world governed by the U.S Constitution and the ideals it so passionately expressed, but that's just a beautiful dream and illusion in a world where my politicians respect it about as much as toilet paper. In all practicality, the only differences are in the standards of living, the degree to which the abuse is occurring, and the odds that you will be next. Functionally, my freedom is the same in the United States that it is in Burma. In the US however, my standards of living are just higher, and the odds I become hanged by law enforcement in jail like Sandra Blank are more comfortably low. Make no mistake however, law enforcement in the U.S and Burma are just as likely to abuse you, harm you, and even kill you. They have an equal amount of respect for their fellow citizens, human rights, etc. I can no longer come to any other conclusion when multiple times per month I see another American like John Crawford III, Sandra Blank, Angela Williams, Kelly Thomas, etc. being killed by police in egregious situations that clearly had police acting in a rogue fashion no better than the children in the Lord of the Flies.
When you watch the tapes of those officers brutally murdering Kelly Thomas, it looks just like a scene playing out in Hell. Literally. Those men were nothing but excited angry beasts, seemingly taking joy in the brutality of beating a homeless man they found objectionable, and amazingly, to this day they claim was an imminent threat toward their lives. Anybody watching the video sees a mentally ill man screaming out in pain and confusion.... for his daddy. Our fellow citizen, beaten to death cruelly, crying out for mercy and his parent. Hyperbole or not, I just cannot see anything different between that and the acts of brutality we condemn on a regular basis in 3rd world countries. The hypocrisy is astounding when we treat these officers as any different than the base animals running around in ISIS decapitating people.
It used to be that we held governments up the standard of ONLY committing ethical acts, of ONLY being comprised of our best, brightest, and most honorable. Now it's comprised of slick politicians accepting payments from the highest bidder , to enact laws written by sociopathic MBAs drinking the economic Kool-aid from on high.
Ahhhh, the end days of Rome. Exciting times.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 30 2015, @01:22AM
It used to be that we held governments up the standard of ONLY committing ethical acts, of ONLY being comprised of our best, brightest, and most honorable.
Those times never existed. We had slavery, had Jim Crow laws, wouldn't allow women to vote, created Japanese internment camps, committed genocide against the Native Americans, etc. When was the US government ever not corrupt in numerous ways? Other governments had different issues, but they were still corrupt.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @06:52AM
The Alamo was an example of 'the people' taking action when the government refused to. (Busy bickering over slave or free state as the Free Texas movement was preparing its last stand against Mexico.) The lesson learned (as the Snowden case also shows) is that the actions of the few will often be the catalyst needed to change or force the government into action, but the 'heroes', good or bad, WILL be crushed within the gears of bureaucracy, whether directly or indirectly.
Remember the Alamo, remember that they died so a bunch of aloof statemen could bicker about matters that should have been less pressing than defending a potential ally.
(Score: 2) by The Archon V2.0 on Wednesday July 29 2015, @02:40PM
> But he would not have a fairy trial in the first place; the government would make certain of that
Fairy trial in the sense that a fair trial would be a fantasy, yes. But no, he can't get a fair trial, they wouldn't even need to "make certain" of that as that implies they'd need to do something special. From Bruce Schneier's "Data and Goliath":
"Intelligence-related whistleblowing is not a legal defense in the US; the Espionage Act prohibits the defendant from explaining why he leaked classified information. Daniel Ellsberg, the first person prosecuted under the law, in 1971, was barred from explaining his actions in court. Former NSA senior executive Thomas Drake, an NSA whistleblower who was prosecuted in 2011, was forbidden to say the words 'whistleblowing' and 'overclassification' in his trial. Chelsea Manning was prohibited from using a similar defense."