Edward Snowden’s Lawyer Wants Obama To Give Him A Pardon
Lawyers working with Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency whistleblower who received sanctuary in Russia after fleeing the US, have vowed to step up pressure on Barack Obama’s administration for a Presidential Pardon.
“We’re going to make a very strong case between now and the end of this administration that this is one of those rare cases for which the pardon power exists,” Ben Wizner, the ACLU lawyer who is Snowden’s principal legal adviser, told New York magazine in a cover story published late on Sunday.
“It’s not for when somebody didn’t break the law. It’s for when they did and there are extraordinary reasons for not enforcing the law against the person.”
From safety in Moscow, Snowden has conceded that Obama is unlikely to offer such a pardon before he leaves office.
“There is an element of absurdity to it,” he said. “More and more, we see the criticisms levelled toward this effort are really more about indignation than they are about concern for real harm.”
The comments were reported in lengthy article about Snowden’s use of a “Snowbot”, technically a BeamPro robot, to appear at US galleries and events. The Snowbot is a $14,000 machine that consists of a flatscreen monitor and camera atop a moving base.
From a home studio in Moscow, the magazine reported, the former NSA contractor can control the Snowbot with his computer, moving around and swiveling to make eye contact with people as they speak.
“I’m able to actually have influence on the issues that I care about, the same influence I didn’t have when I was sitting at the NSA,” Snowden said.
The Snowbot, he said, has given him a degree of autonomy. “There’s always that initial friction, that moment where everybody’s like, ‘Wow, this is crazy,’ but then it melts away. Regardless of the fact that the FBI has a field office in New York, I can be hanging out in New York museums.”
The Snowbot was sourced by Wizner, but it has found an enthusiastic audience amongst the whistleblower’s supporters. In the New York magazine piece Glenn Greenwald, one of the journalists to whom in 2013 Snowden leaked thousands of NSA files, imagines him – or it – “let loose in the parking lot of [NSA headquarters at] Fort Meade”.
At a recent event at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Snowden used the Snowbot to tell his audience: “In an extraordinary and unpredictable way, my own circumstances show there is a model that ensures that even if we’re left without a state, we aren’t left without a voice.”
Former attorney general Eric Holder conceded last month that Snowden “actually performed a public service” and said: “I think a judge could take into account the usefulness of having had that national debate.”
But neither candidate to succeed Obama in the White House has shown much sign of sympathy. Hillary Clinton has said Snowden should not be allowed to return to the US without “facing the music”. In 2013, Donald Trump suggested Snowden should be executed.
Snowden told the magazine he did not expect to die in Russia and has criticised Russia’s surveillance legislation.
Snowden has also condemned a “dangerous” package of anti-terrorism legislation passed by Russia’s parliament last week, in a rare criticism of the authorities in his host country.
Mr. Snowden, who fled to Russia in 2013 after exposing a surveillance programme run by the US National Security Agency (NSA), urged Vladimir Putin to reject an” unjustifiable violation of rights".
Mr. Snowden described the bill approved by the State Duma as a “Big Brother law” that was “unworkable” and “should never be signed”.
He added: “Mass surveillance doesn't work. This bill will take money and liberty from every Russian without improving safety.”
The new measures would force Russian mobile phone operators to store the details of all calls and text messages made by their clients for six months, and keep the metadata of calls and messages - information about the date, time and users - for three years.
Providers of messaging apps, email services and any other electronic communication will be required to provide the security services with a key to decode encrypted messages.
The bill also lowers the age of criminal responsibility for a range of offences to 14, makes it an offence not to report a crime, and drastically increases punishments for “extremism,” inciting “mass unrest” and writing social media posts “justifying terrorism.”
