Will Snowden Get Amnesty?

On Jan. 2, America’s New York Times and Britain’s Guardian both published editorials appealing to the Obama administration to forgive and grant amnesty to former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden or to reduce the punishment for his leaks.

Snowden has not personally been disclosing NSA secrets of mass surveillance and data collection, since Russia granted him asylum at the end of last July. It is those leading American and European newspapers, which Snowden provided with secret documents — including Britain’s Guardian and Independent, America’s New York Times and Washington Post, and Germany’s Der Spiegel — that are continuously disclosing the NSA’s other plans and actions of secret surveillance and data collection. For instance, on Jan. 2, based on the secret documents Snowden provided, The Washington Post reported that the NSA had spent nearly $80 million trying to build a quantum supercomputer, 10 trillion times faster than classical computers, to break encryptions and collect information. The quantum computer could break nearly every kind of encryption used to protect bank accounts and other information from online spying around the world.

Snowden kept his promise not to damage Russian interests and did not continue with the leaks. Snowden, who remains in Russia, is always justifying his leaks and claims that he always pledges his loyalty to the U.S. and never betrayed his country. He is struggling for his future in a political game with the U.S. government. Last October, he said that he would like to appear as a witness for investigating NSA surveillance in Germany. In mid-December, he implied that he would help the government of Brazil investigate surveillance, if he were granted political asylum. On Christmas day, Snowden warned of the dangers posed by a loss of privacy in a Channel 4-Alternative Christmas Message, urging the end of mass surveillance. The other day, he declared, “mission accomplished,” and, “give society a chance to determine if it should change itself” in an exclusive interview with The Washington Post.

There is little chance that the Obama administration will give Edward Snowden amnesty now, in spite of the growing clamor from domestic and international public opinion to grant him clemency. While Richard J. Leon, judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, ruled on Dec. 16 last year that the mass surveillance of the NSA constituted an invasion of privacy and violated the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, on Dec. 27, William Pauley, a federal judge on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, ruled that NSA phone surveillance was legal. On Jan. 3, the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court renewed the NSA phone collection program, allowing the agency to continue collecting every American’s telephone records. Different rules by different courts indicate a sharp disagreement in the attitudes of American society toward Snowden’s leaks — not an easy matter to reconcile.

At the moment, the U.S. government is still taking a tough stance; there is no indication of compromise. Obama defended NSA surveillance programs at his year-end press conference on Dec. 20 last year. He stated that Snowden’s leaks not only hurt relations between the U.S. and other countries, but also hurt the ability of the U.S. to obtain information through international cooperation. Peter King, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, claimed that Snowden was dangerous to the security of Americans. Former CIA Director James Woolsey had harsher words and argued that Snowden should be tried in the U.S. and hanged if he is convicted of treason.

It could be expected that this year, the U.S. government will still be entangled in problems such as Snowden’s future after his temporary asylum and the contest in American society between surveillance and anti-surveillance. Snowden will still play an indispensable central role in these problems. The global surveillance of the NSA will still bother the Obama administration because of its influence on relations between the U.S. and other countries.

Xiaoqiu Yu is a scholar of international relations and a columnist for Haiwai Net.