Edward Snowden is Now a Russian Citizen
Snowden is an American hero who deserves far more recognition and admiration than he tends to receive.
On Monday of last week, Edward Snowden, the former U.S. intelligence contractor who blew the whistle on the National Security Agency’s (NSA) illegal mass data collection of U.S. citizens, was officially granted Russian citizenship while also retaining his U.S. citizenship. Snowden has essentially been in exile in Russia for nearly a decade now, as he became stuck in the country after fleeing the United States to avoid prosecution for leaking classified documents.
To those who think that Snowden deserves to be prosecuted, I would suggest reconsidering that position. In my opinion, Snowden is an American hero who deserves far more recognition and admiration than he tends to receive. Most of the reasons people have for believing otherwise are often based on misinformation or plain falsehoods. (To hear the story from the man himself, I would recommend listening to one or both of Snowden’s appearances on the Joe Rogan Experience.)
Given this recent development, I thought now would be a good time to remind people of what Snowden did for this country. He risked his freedom — I would argue, possibly even his life — in order to expose our government’s unconstitutional and tyrannical invasion of our privacy. Because he shed light on this attack on civil liberties he will likely never be able to return to the United States without facing prosecution.
Snowden began working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 2006 and continued to do work for both the CIA and the NSA for the next several years. In 2013, after witnessing then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lie to Congress about the NSA’s mass data collection (that’s not the sole reason why, but he has mentioned it helped push him in the right direction), he decided to leak documents to journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras which revealed classified information about the illegal spying programs being perpetrated on U.S. citizens.
As Greenwald wrote in some of his original reporting at The Guardian:
The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.
He later goes on to clarify that this was not the first time the NSA had been caught conducting similar programs, stating:
Under the Bush administration, officials in security agencies had disclosed to reporters the large-scale collection of call records data by the NSA, but this is the first time significant and top-secret documents have revealed the continuation of the practice on a massive scale under President Obama.
While the aforementioned article from The Guardian discussed the NSA collecting metadata from U.S. citizens’ phone calls, a later article that Glenn Greenwald helped co-author talks about the NSA collecting data from large tech companies through a program called PRISM. According to the article:
The National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian.
The NSA access is part of a previously undisclosed program called Prism, which allows officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats, the document says.
These programs, both of which violated our privacy as well as our Fourth Amendment rights, relied on Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants in order to have a veneer of legality behind them. FISA warrants themselves have come under scrutiny for being overly broad and unconstitutional. In a recent opinion piece for The Washington Times former New Jersey Superior Court Judge Andrew Napolitano briefly explained the history of these warrants:
After President Richard Nixon, who believed that presidents are above the law, had dispatched FBI and CIA agents to spy on anti-war activists in the U.S. in the early 1970s, Congress established the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. That court, meeting in secret with only government lawyers appearing, and with nearly all its rulings kept secret even from other judges, uses its own concocted standard of probable cause. That standard is probable cause of communicating with a foreign person as the requirement for a surveillance warrant. That standard is profoundly contrary to the Constitution.
(For anyone who’s interested, Napolitano also recently appeared on The Scott Horton Show to discuss Snowden becoming a Russian citizen.)
Snowden left the U.S. in 2013 knowing he might never return. He told his then-girlfriend (now his wife) that he was taking a business trip before traveling to Hong Kong, his chosen destination to leak the documents to the journalists he had been in contact with. That decision leads many people to claim Snowden was a traitor who fled to an adversarial country to spill state secrets, but there was likely valid reasoning for Snowden to choose Hong Kong.
That reason may be that Hong Kong has maintained a certain level of autonomy from mainland China since becoming a “special administrative region” of China in 1997 after many decades of being a British colony. The “one state, two systems” design allows Hong Kong to be much more liberal than the mainland, which led to the U.S. behaving differently toward the region than the rest of China.
As a part of that, the U.S. and Hong Kong had signed an extradition treaty (until a recent national security law implemented in China caused the U.S. to withdraw from that treaty), which meant both parties agreed to extradite fugitives back to each other. However, both parties also had the right to refuse to do so, and in the case of Hong Kong, Beijing had the power to veto extraditions. That situation, as well as Hong Kong’s “spirited commitment to free speech and the right of political dissent” in his words, likely played a role in Snowden’s decision-making.
Essentially, it was a bit of a gamble on whether or not Hong Kong would extradite him, and whether Beijing would allow his extradition, but his decision to leak the documents from there was not because he intended to give U.S. intelligence secrets to the Chinese government.
Unfortunately, in the end, Snowden lost that gamble and had to flee Hong Kong. His plan was to make it to Ecuador, where he thought he had the best chance of applying for asylum, likely due to the fact that they had offered Julian Assange asylum a year before. Assange is another person wanted by the U.S. for publishing leaked documents, except in his case, the U.S. government is trying to prosecute the journalist who published the documents, whereas Snowden was the one who leaked documents to journalists to publish.
In order to make it to Ecuador, however, he had to travel through Russia. This is because the U.S. empire has such a massive amount of influence over its client states that traveling through those countries would’ve probably meant Snowden’s extradition, and he couldn’t get a flight directly to Ecuador from Hong Kong.
Upon arriving in Moscow, Snowden discovered that the U.S. government had revoked his passport, which left him stranded at the Sheremetyevo airport for several weeks. During that time, he applied for asylum from 21 countries, all of which refused, including Ecuador due to him not being physically within the country. (I’m sure then-Vice President Joe Biden calling then-President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, to discuss Snowden’s case had no effect on that decision.)
This led Snowden to end up applying for asylum in Russia, where he has remained to this day. In 2020 he received “permanent residency” status, and that same year is when he officially applied for Russian citizenship. His decision to do so was for the good of his family, not out of some desire to renounce his U.S. citizenship. The fact that the U.S. government trapped Snowden inside Russia takes away all credibility from the notion that Snowden is a traitor who intentionally fled to one of America’s adversaries.
The U.S. government was so intent on capturing and prosecuting Snowden that in 2013 the presidential plane of Bolivia, one of the countries Snowden had tried to apply for asylum from, was forced to land in Vienna, Austria, after departing from Moscow due to both Portugal and France denying them access to their respective airspaces because of a rumor that Snowden was on the plane. The plane was set to land in Lisbon, Portugal, but had to reroute when they weren’t allowed to do so.
The U.S. government may not have explicitly forced the Bolivian presidential plane to land, but this is another example of client states of the U.S. empire working in tandem with Washington’s interests.
Not long after Snowden blew the whistle on the severity of our country’s surveillance state, U.S. officials began making claims that Snowden’s leaks benefitted terrorists and put U.S. troops in danger. They failed to provide specifics, however, and when the Pentagon did issue a report about the scope of the damage done, that report was originally classified. Snowden insisted to the journalists he worked with that they only publish what was in the public interest and that they avoid publishing anything that may put U.S. troops in harm’s way.
In my opinion, this was a clear example of the U.S. government trying to smear Snowden in order to discredit his character and by association, the importance of the information he provided to the public.
Snowden's persecution began under the Obama administration and continued under Donald Trump. Obviously, it’s very unlikely that President Joe Biden has had a change of heart toward the whistleblower since his time as Vice President, which means we can expect Snowden to remain a fugitive of his home country for years to come.
While it’s not surprising that Joe Biden will never pardon Snowden, Donald Trump campaigned on “draining the swamp” and “fighting the deep state”, which makes his refusal to pardon Snowden especially frustrating, even for those of us who knew Trump would never actually achieve any meaningful blows against the establishment. Trump had a great opportunity to provide Snowden a pardon, however, because the programs revealed by Snowden’s leaks were found to be illegal by a federal court during the former president’s time in office.
What’s ironic about Trump not pardoning Snowden is that Trump is potentially facing similar charges in relation to his retaining of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence. While no charges have been brought up yet, if Trump is eventually charged, it may very well be under the Espionage Act*, the same law being used to justify prosecuting not just Edward Snowden but Julian Assange as well. (Whether or not those potential charges are a result of a political witch-hunt is a discussion that may be left for another day.)
That law, passed in 1917 by the Woodrow Wilson administration which was used against dissenters of the U.S.’s involvement in World War I, has been rightly ridiculed by many on the left due to its use against whistleblowers. Those same people, however, suddenly forgot their principles and cheered for its use against Donald Trump. When Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) put out a recent tweet suggesting we get rid of the Espionage Act altogether, the same people who would tell you they support people like Edward Snowden and Julian Assange came after Paul and claimed that he wants to “legalize espionage”.
The Espionage Act should absolutely be repealed, and no matter how badly many people would like to see Trump behind bars, that doesn’t make this law any less abusive. If Trump had truly wanted to fight against the establishment, pardoning Snowden and Assange would’ve been a great way to do that. He chose not to, but after his potential brush with this law, perhaps he’ll feel differently should he ever hold the office of president again.
Edward Snowden, former intelligence contractor turned whistleblower, is now a dual U.S.-Russian citizen. Nearly a decade after his revelations, many people still see him as a traitor to his home country because of his willingness to uphold the oath he took to defend the U.S. Constitution. He is a hero, and in a just world he would’ve never had to flee to a foreign country, and the illegal spying programs he revealed would’ve been shut down immediately. Unfortunately, similar programs continue to this day, and the attempt to prosecute Snowden will likely never end.
This is the state of the United States of America, and this is what happens to those who shed a light on our government’s activities. To know what we know, because of Edward Snowden, and still choose to look the other way and allow these abuses of power and attacks on civil liberties to continue, would mean all that Snowden sacrificed for the good of this country would be in vain.
*Update*
I forgot to mention a key element of the Espionage Act of 1917 is that those who are charged under it lack the right to explain why they chose to break that law. While that element of the law is worthy of ridicule in all cases, it specifically pertains to Snowden’s case, as the reasoning behind his decision to leak those documents was valid and we as U.S. citizens have a right to know what our government is up to. Being unable to explain that reasoning in court practically ensures that Snowden would not receive a fair trial and he would almost certainly be found guilty of a law that should never have existed in the first place.
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