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Snowden Inc. ("The strategy: Attention = bargaining power")
Snowden Inc.
By: Josh Gerstein
<...>
The strategy: Attention = bargaining power
Snowden has also managed to used the very global interconnectedness that the NSA has exploited to his own benefit, carrying on his campaign remotely via Web chats and, now, a video link from his Russian exile. He often uses encrypted computer communications to engage with outsiders, as he did in an interview in October with The New York Times...Snowden’s advisers hope that his following at home and abroad increases his leverage in future discussions with the Justice Department about a potential plea bargain that could bring about his return to the United States. “The public discourse about what he’s done increases his popularity and his bargaining power,” said Radack.
Officially, Snowden’s legal team is insisting — for now — that he deserves a pardon, which would allow him to come home without any legal repercussions. However, when Attorney General Eric Holder signaled earlier this year that he was open to talks with Snowden’s attorneys, Radack said she welcomed the opening.
“We’re glad that Holder made that statement,” she told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Top officials have repeatedly compared Snowden to Robert Hanssen, the FBI agent who spied for Russia and whose disclosures allegedly led to the deaths of at least three KGB agents working for the United States. Hanssen pleaded guilty and received a life sentence.
“Snowden … was manic in his thievery, which was exponentially larger than Hanssen’s,” NSA Inspector General George Ellard said at the Georgetown conference. “Hanssen’s theft was in a sense finite, whereas Snowden is open-ended as his agents decide daily which documents to disclose. Snowden had no background in intelligence and is likely unaware of the significance of the documents he stole.”
- more -
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/03/edward-snowden-national-security-agency-sxsw-104509_Page2.html
By: Josh Gerstein
<...>
The strategy: Attention = bargaining power
Snowden has also managed to used the very global interconnectedness that the NSA has exploited to his own benefit, carrying on his campaign remotely via Web chats and, now, a video link from his Russian exile. He often uses encrypted computer communications to engage with outsiders, as he did in an interview in October with The New York Times...Snowden’s advisers hope that his following at home and abroad increases his leverage in future discussions with the Justice Department about a potential plea bargain that could bring about his return to the United States. “The public discourse about what he’s done increases his popularity and his bargaining power,” said Radack.
Officially, Snowden’s legal team is insisting — for now — that he deserves a pardon, which would allow him to come home without any legal repercussions. However, when Attorney General Eric Holder signaled earlier this year that he was open to talks with Snowden’s attorneys, Radack said she welcomed the opening.
“We’re glad that Holder made that statement,” she told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Top officials have repeatedly compared Snowden to Robert Hanssen, the FBI agent who spied for Russia and whose disclosures allegedly led to the deaths of at least three KGB agents working for the United States. Hanssen pleaded guilty and received a life sentence.
“Snowden … was manic in his thievery, which was exponentially larger than Hanssen’s,” NSA Inspector General George Ellard said at the Georgetown conference. “Hanssen’s theft was in a sense finite, whereas Snowden is open-ended as his agents decide daily which documents to disclose. Snowden had no background in intelligence and is likely unaware of the significance of the documents he stole.”
- more -
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/03/edward-snowden-national-security-agency-sxsw-104509_Page2.html
Snowden recently changed his story because he's still desperate for clemency
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024640825
Our Chat With Edward Snowden’s Legal Counsel
<...>
Winship: How would you characterize what he has revealed?
Wizner: Well, maybe the best way to answer that question is to remember what President Obama said in the first week after the revelations began to appear on front pages. He said Americans shouldn’t be too worried about these disclosures because all three branches of government had blessed the programs and activities that were being disclosed. That was a true statement. That was also exactly the problem. And it’s worth looking at what those same three branches of government have done since Edward Snowden’s disclosures, since the public was brought into this conversation.
So let’s look at the courts. Now, it’s true that a court called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court had approved, in secret, some of these programs. It’s a court that hears only from the government, does not have the benefit of adversarial briefing, didn’t get to hear what our objections would have been. It’s also a court that was set up to give warrants, not to write opinions on whether surveillance programs in general were lawful. And when we tried to bring challenges to these programs in open federal courts, we got as far as the Supreme Court, but every court turned us away without even considering the legality of the programs. The government said, “These plaintiffs have no right to be in court. They can’t show that they were subjected to these surveillance programs, and therefore they don’t have standing. And they’re not allowed to use the discovery process to learn that, because that would be a state secret.” The result being that no one has the right to go into federal court to challenge the legality of these programs.
Edward Snowden was watching this. In our very first conversation, one of his first questions to me was, “Have these documents that have been published so far given you standing to go back in court?” To him, the idea that a court would not answer the question, “Is this program legal? Is it constitutional?” but instead would contort itself in order to not answer that question seemed like a failure of oversight, and he was right.
What’s happened since his disclosures? We have now taken some of these documents, gone back into federal courts, where our standing is really much harder to question. Two federal judges have now considered, for example, the constitutionality of the government’s collection of all telephone metadata. They’ve come so far to different conclusions on the legal question, but both said that the plaintiffs have standing to be in court. So one thing that he’s done is he’s reinvigorated judicial oversight.
- more -
http://billmoyers.com/2014/03/11/our-chat-with-edward-snowdens-legal-counsel/
Winship: How would you characterize what he has revealed?
Wizner: Well, maybe the best way to answer that question is to remember what President Obama said in the first week after the revelations began to appear on front pages. He said Americans shouldn’t be too worried about these disclosures because all three branches of government had blessed the programs and activities that were being disclosed. That was a true statement. That was also exactly the problem. And it’s worth looking at what those same three branches of government have done since Edward Snowden’s disclosures, since the public was brought into this conversation.
So let’s look at the courts. Now, it’s true that a court called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court had approved, in secret, some of these programs. It’s a court that hears only from the government, does not have the benefit of adversarial briefing, didn’t get to hear what our objections would have been. It’s also a court that was set up to give warrants, not to write opinions on whether surveillance programs in general were lawful. And when we tried to bring challenges to these programs in open federal courts, we got as far as the Supreme Court, but every court turned us away without even considering the legality of the programs. The government said, “These plaintiffs have no right to be in court. They can’t show that they were subjected to these surveillance programs, and therefore they don’t have standing. And they’re not allowed to use the discovery process to learn that, because that would be a state secret.” The result being that no one has the right to go into federal court to challenge the legality of these programs.
Edward Snowden was watching this. In our very first conversation, one of his first questions to me was, “Have these documents that have been published so far given you standing to go back in court?” To him, the idea that a court would not answer the question, “Is this program legal? Is it constitutional?” but instead would contort itself in order to not answer that question seemed like a failure of oversight, and he was right.
What’s happened since his disclosures? We have now taken some of these documents, gone back into federal courts, where our standing is really much harder to question. Two federal judges have now considered, for example, the constitutionality of the government’s collection of all telephone metadata. They’ve come so far to different conclusions on the legal question, but both said that the plaintiffs have standing to be in court. So one thing that he’s done is he’s reinvigorated judicial oversight.
- more -
http://billmoyers.com/2014/03/11/our-chat-with-edward-snowdens-legal-counsel/
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