The Snowden leak of NSA documents concerning mass surveillance has certainly been one of the great earthquakes of the last 20 years. Now, on Lawfare, Timothy Edgar is advocating that Snowden be pardoned – because he caused so much damage:
Edward Snowden’s actions caused great damage to national security. They should not have been necessary to achieve the sensible reforms of the past four years. That they were represents a failure of leadership by the intelligence community and the national security teams of the previous two administrations. …
There is an inherent tension between the values of a free society and mass surveillance. For Snowden and his supporters, the answer is easy. End mass surveillance—which is to say, most of what the NSA does. Those of us who believe that the NSA’s far-flung operations are essential to national security and global stability have the harder task of keeping mass surveillance under control.
If Snowden deserves our thanks for both this round of surveillance reform and the next, it is only because the laws and institutions we created to control surveillance had become so obsolete. Intelligence agencies should not need the shock of massively damaging leak to abandon programs that are not working and refine and improve those that are. Disclosing details of classified programs should not be the most effective way to force change.
But apparently they were.
Recalling that Richard Nixon was preemptively pardoned by President Ford, I suppose Snowden could be pardoned for the charges that are currently lodged against him.
