SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The Globe and Mail reports that Edward Snowden's Russian lawyer Anatoly Kucherena says the fugitive former US spy agency contractor who leaked details of the government’s mass surveillance programs was working with American and German lawyers to return home. “I won’t keep it secret that he … wants to return back home. And we are doing everything possible now to solve this issue. There is a group of U.S. lawyers, there is also a group of German lawyers and I’m dealing with it on the Russian side.” Kucherena added that Snowden is ready to return to the States, but on the condition that he is given a guarantee of a legal and impartial trial. The lawyer said Snowden had so far only received a guarantee from the US Attorney General that he will not face the death penalty. Kucherena says that Snowden is able to travel outside Russia since he has a three-year Russian residency permit, but "I suspect that as soon as he leaves Russia, he will be taken to the US embassy."
(Score: 4, Interesting) by aristarchus on Wednesday March 04 2015, @09:34PM
"Espionage" is passing secrets on to a third party in order to enable it to cause damage to the people.
Very close. Espionage is passing classified information to the enemy. For there to be an enemy, legally, we have to be in a legally declared state of war. We said in signing the UN Charter that we renounce the use of force in international relations, hence, we cannot be in a state of war. Therefore, there is no "enemy", and therefore there is no "Espionage". (Unless the enemy is the American public.)
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Wednesday March 04 2015, @11:25PM
If you release the documents to everyone, then someone deemed to be an enemy by the government will be able to get them too. State of war or not, his actions were correct, as the People always need to know when their government is violating the constitution and violating people's freedoms.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday March 05 2015, @12:24AM
If espionage occurs in such a way that you know it has occurred, it is not nearly so harmful. Once you know that they know, unless they don't know that you know that they know, we are on an equal playing field. This is why public release is "journalism", and not espionage. Maybe the enemy knows, but we now know that they know, so we are not giving them any advantage. (Unless, of course, it comes from the Total Information Awareness department, in which case the whole thing might be a disinformation campaign to make us thing we know when actual the enemy knows that what we think we know is not so! See why the whole spy-vs-spy thing is so morally ambiguous?)