With the release of the new movie about Edward Snowden, the issues surrounding his release of confidential information has once again been brought to the forefront of our attention as a nation once again. Many people are arguing for a pardon from the President, however, I believe that would set a bad precedence. A government's duty is to protect it's citizens from external and internal forces. They must be fairly utilitarian in this respect at times because they have to balance the needs of the many of the needs of a few. Sometimes this means that a government agency will do something an individual citizen would get jail time for, and as long as the end result is the protection of it's citizen's, very little happens to said agency. For
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While his whistle blowing of the meta data gathering by the NSA can be considered laudable and was at best sketchy on the part of the NSA, he should still be held responsible for the rest of the information that was leaked. It's unknown exactly how many documents have been leaked, but it is estimated that approximately 1.5 million classified documents still remain in Snowden's grasp. (Board and Editors) Due to the nature of espionage, the public will most likely never be aware of what he is in possession of, but there is no doubt it could hurt our intelligence community. It also seems that it was not just America’s intelligence files, but both Britain and Australia had files stolen from them. (Wikipedia) This put both our intelligence, and the intelligence of our allies in jeopardy. Our government has an obligation to our allies and it's citizens to recover the documents and prosecute Snowden for the theft of said documents. Another troublesome fact is where Snowden decided to take asylum. While Russia is not officially our enemy, due to the current regime's lack of ethical boundaries and blatant human rights violations, they can be viewed as a frenemy, to use current vernacular. It can be considered an “open secret” that we still spy on Russia, and Snowden is in asylum in their country with several intelligence documents containing god knows what. This puts our agents and intelligence officers at risk in the Russian theater of
While his whistle blowing of the meta data gathering by the NSA can be considered laudable and was at best sketchy on the part of the NSA, he should still be held responsible for the rest of the information that was leaked. It's unknown exactly how many documents have been leaked, but it is estimated that approximately 1.5 million classified documents still remain in Snowden's grasp. (Board and Editors) Due to the nature of espionage, the public will most likely never be aware of what he is in possession of, but there is no doubt it could hurt our intelligence community. It also seems that it was not just America’s intelligence files, but both Britain and Australia had files stolen from them. (Wikipedia) This put both our intelligence, and the intelligence of our allies in jeopardy. Our government has an obligation to our allies and it's citizens to recover the documents and prosecute Snowden for the theft of said documents. Another troublesome fact is where Snowden decided to take asylum. While Russia is not officially our enemy, due to the current regime's lack of ethical boundaries and blatant human rights violations, they can be viewed as a frenemy, to use current vernacular. It can be considered an “open secret” that we still spy on Russia, and Snowden is in asylum in their country with several intelligence documents containing god knows what. This puts our agents and intelligence officers at risk in the Russian theater of