Honest question: Is there any doubt that Snowden is guilty of the crimes he's charged with (e.g. "unauthorized communication of national defense information")?
"Note that the second and third charges both require the feds to prove that Snowden's release of information to the press was harmful to the United States. This puts our government in the position of attempting to prove that it is harmful to release accurate information about how it is spying on us, and how it is misleading us about spying on us.
Espionage charges usually describe someone with classified information leaking that information to powers hostile to the United States government."
That doesn't seem like it would be nearly as awkward nor as difficult to prove as is implied here.
I would think secret details of spy programs would almost always harm national security (insofar as you believe spying can aide national security). The whole point of spying on communications depends on the targets not knowing they're being listened to.
(Note: I'm not saying the NSA program is good or justified)
"The statute...require[s] the government to prove that the defendant...communicated or made unavailable to an unauthorized person...in any manner prejudicial to the United States or for the benefit of any foreign government to the detriment of the United States...classified information..."
The middle part (labeled (3) by Popehat), as the blog correctly points out, is the reason this is a big controversy and not a straightforward spy case -- it's not at all clear that his disclosures were meant to benefit foreign powers, or that he was attempting to harm the United States.
I think you're misreading that. It's whether the action has the effect of prejudicing the United States or benefiting a foreign government regardless of intent.
>It's whether the action has the effect of prejudicing the United States or benefiting a foreign government regardless of intent.
I wonder if there is a precedent supporting successful use of that charge. That's very broad wording. Taken literally, nearly anything you say that isn't puppies and rainbows could qualify.
Most definitely. He may well be completely innocent per numerous laws, executive orders and/or the Constitution. An example of the relevant recent piece:
"Executive Order 13526:
Sec. 1.7. Classification Prohibitions and Limitations.
(a) In no case shall information be classified, continue to be maintained as classified, or fail to be declassified in order to:
(1) conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error.."
IANAL, but I really don't think that EO (which is not a law) means that you can unilaterally declassify something which you think conceals a violation of law. Also, I'm not aware of anything Snowden disclosed that shows the NSA broke any laws. The FISA court signed off on this stuff, no?
Right. The determinant as to whether information is classified is its effect on national security if widely known.
You don't classify innocuous material just because it might be embarrassing.
But on the other hand you can classify material that risks national security even if it also happens to be embarrassing.
In any event PRISM itself is 0.01% or so in actuality as it was claimed to be, I'm not even sure I'd call PRISM itself embarrassing (it's just a damn web service). The laws under which PRISM operate might be different, but that's not something we can pin on NSA, and it's not something that was secret anyways.
>You don't classify innocuous material just because it might be embarrassing.
You're wrong. That's a well-known, ongoing, and acknowledged problem in the US which even has its own act of Congress as an attempt to deal with the problem.
Who knows? The "court" meets in secret. Its rulings are secret. I'm not even certain that NSA is bound in any meaningful to abide by their decision/advice.
Although there does seem to be some debate about whether or not what he did should be considered a crime, and whether he's guilty of everything he's charged with.
If he's given a trial by jury, and the jury believes the circumstances justified his actions, they have the option of acquitting him, regardless of how strong the evidence is that he broke the law.
"The courts cannot search the minds of the jurors to find the basis upon which they judge." [2]
In the United States, judges cannot direct a jury to deliver a specific verdict, getting a verdict you didn't like is not an acceptable reason for an appeal, and jurors cannot be punished for the way they decide a case [2].
its almost certain that he broke some law, and the US gov't is trying to nail him as an example for other to-be-whistleblowers.
Whether the laws he broke is justified for the sort of revelation his information revealed, i m certain that is the case, but i highly doubt the courts in the US will agree.
http://www.popehat.com/2013/06/23/a-look-at-the-charges-agai...
"Note that the second and third charges both require the feds to prove that Snowden's release of information to the press was harmful to the United States. This puts our government in the position of attempting to prove that it is harmful to release accurate information about how it is spying on us, and how it is misleading us about spying on us.
Espionage charges usually describe someone with classified information leaking that information to powers hostile to the United States government."