A new petition at the White House’s portal is calling for President Obama to immediately an unconditionally pardon Edward Snowden for leaking the truth about the NSA’s huge overarching surveillance of everyday Americans.
The US hasn’t charged Snowden yet, of course, but officials have made it clear they intend to, and have been throwing out works like “treason” for an action which, at its core, was simply about informing the American public of something they desperately needed to know.
Of course I’m not so naive as to think that Obama would actually pardon someone who revealed such gross violations of civil liberties under his watch – that’s not how these things work. At the very least, however, the petition would compel President Obama to make a comment on the matter, and would prevent him from passing the buck on the persecution/prosecution of Snowden and dodging responsibility for it.
The petition has already gotten 37,000 signatures in the first day, and a decisive victory for it will make it even harder for the administration to ignore.
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