Trump wrong to not pardon Snowden

Posted January 2021

By Tristan Hansen

Staff Editor

Although the moment has already passed, it must be said that Trump was mistaken to not pardon Edward Snowden.

On his final day in office, Trump used his executive power to release a list of 73 pardons and 70 commutations—more than doubling the number of pardons he issued during his presidency. One notable name that was not on the list was that of whistleblower and former NSA subcontractor Edward Snowden.

It’s been over seven years since Edward Snowden’s revelations were revealed to the public, so it might be worthwhile to review what exactly they entailed. In 2013, documents provided to various news outlets by Snowden revealed the existence of a global surveillance apparatus operated by the NSA, with help from Canada’s CSEC, the UK’s GCHQ, and Australia’s ASD. This encompassed, among other things, a program entitled PRISM, in which the NSA harvests internet communications from a variety of private companies, including Google and Yahoo, payments made to aforementioned private companies, a secret court order requiring Verizon provide the NSA with millions of Americans’ phone records, the collection of millions of instant messaging and email contact lists, the searching of email contents, and the tracking and mapping of cell phone locations. Much of this data can then be accessed by NSA agents using a program entitled XKeyscore.

"Any analyst at any time can target anyone… I, sitting at my desk, had the authority to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant to a federal judge to even the president if I had a personal email,” Snowden has stated in reference to XKeyscore’s abilities.

The excuse for such programs most often provided by the U.S government is that they’re necessary as part of the effort to curb terrorism. But the government has thus far failed to provide a single instance in which a large terrorist attack was actually stopped as a result of the NSA’s surveillance efforts.

As Jenna McLaughin stated, in an article for The Intercept, “The reason there haven’t been any large-scale terror attacks by ISIS in the U.S. is not because they were averted by the intelligence community, but because — with the possible exception of one that was foiled by local police — none were actually planned.”

What are the NSA’s surveillance capabilities actually used for, then? Predominantly for spying on ordinary citizens. The Washington Post, in 2014, revealed that 90% of those placed under surveillance are normal citizens who have not been lawfully targeted, many of whom are Americans. It’s been reported that NSA agents sometimes use the programs at their disposal to spy on love interests. Leaked slides revealed by journalist Glenn Greenwald reveal the express intent of the NSA being to “Collect it All," "Process it All," "Exploit it All," "Partner it All," "Sniff it All" and "Know it All."

It is frequently argued that Snowden’s disclosure weakened national security by informing terrorists of the surveillance being conducted against them, thereby causing them to begin using more secure communication methods more resistant to surveillance. This claim appears to be, for the most part, true. The New York Times reported in 2015 that ISIS had studied Snowden’s disclosure and adapted their methods of communication accordingly, using encrypted channels that cannot be, or are very difficult to, crack. However, I sincerely fail to understand how this fact detracts so much from the value of his disclosure to the American public that he should effectively be deemed a traitor on account of it. It’s obviously not a desirable outcome, but revealing such information to the public was inevitably going to result in bad guys catching wind of the U.S.’s surveillance too. Would it have been preferable for us to just continue living in the dark about our government’s excesses and abuses so that the bad guys, whose activity has never actually been prevented by our surveillance anyway, wouldn’t know? And if the answer to that is yes, is it also preferable to just violate everyone’s rights in the interest of counterterrorism? The very nature of most civil liberties afforded to us by the government is that they have the capacity to be misused by bad people. That doesn’t mean they should be abridged for everyone.

Furthermore, if Snowden is going to be blamed for weakening national security due to his disclosures leading to terrorists adopting more secure communication methods, shouldn’t the creators of said secure communication methods also be targeted? And yet, I don’t see many people labelling the creators of services like Signal or ProtonMail, or even Tor (whose main component, onion routing, was actually developed by the US Navy) as “traitors”.

Snowden’s revelations provided the American public with information it deserved to know, information specifically pertaining to unconstitutional behavior on behalf of their government which violated their fourth amendment rights. He deserves not to be excoriated as a traitor, but rather fondly remembered as a hero, and as among the most important and consequential whistleblowers in American history. And he deserved a pardon.