Dear Mr. President:
You are acutely aware that the history of liberty is a history of civil disobedience to unjust laws or practices. As Edmund Burke sermonized, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”
Civil disobedience is not the first, but the last option. Henry David Thoreau wrote with profound restraint in Civil Disobedience: “If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.”
Thoreau’s moral philosophy found expression during the Nuremburg trials in which “following orders” was rejected as a defense. Indeed, military law requires disobedience to clearly illegal orders.
Complete letter:
http://www.popularresistance.org/letter-to-obama-civil-disobedience-edward-j-snowden-and-the-constitution/
I think he has some very good and strong points in the letter. But justice can be served with a trial too.
But I must say that I have no idea if their could be a fair trial. If I read it correctly that is what the gather of Snowdon is afraid for.
It's more a moral appeal than a real request but as such a good one. The US officialy promised Russia that it won't torture Snowden or put him on death which is a moral defeat. Check this post for THAT letter https://plus.google.com/u/1/112352920206354603958/posts/CNGQ8pPDvWy
I read it. I really did not know how to reply to it. The part of the death sentence I can understand, because the US has that option.
But to promise that they won't torture him… To my knowledge torture is not allowed. So why promise something you're not allowed anyway?
To be honest all the US general attorney wrote was 'torture is forbidden in the US' but it's a sorry state of affairs if you need to spell that out to another state. +Paul Schoonhoven
That's what happens to reputations after waterboarding, the treatment of Manning and Guantanamo Bay.
Well… To the US that was no torture, I thought.
(only for the rest of the world, but that's a different story.)
I wonder whether a person would ever be able to cite the constitution as a legal authority to disobey orders, given that most of us aren't constitutional scholars.
That is a big catch-22.
Kind of difficult to justify why he leaked the US's spying efforts on international concerns. That's treason, no matter how you spin it.
Eh… revealing the domestic spying was worth that. I'm far more concerned with tyranny at home than I am of foreign intelligence
He signed confidentiality agreements as conditions for employment. His speaking out on data obtained from employment and making unauthorized copies of same data broke those confidentiality agreements. Those confidentiality agreements are covered under federal law and carry penalties of federal fines and imprisonment. Those agreements he could not have been ignorant of, the consequences of which he knows full well he was running a terrible risk. Otherwise, he would not have needed to go halfway around the world to try to escape capture to get the word out. It's not a constitutional matter so much as it is a federal statutes/moral dilemma he chose upon.