White House petition to "Pardon Edward Snowden" reaches 70,000 signatories (Updated)

[TakeALeftTurn]

Last edited Fri Jun 14, 2013, 07:36 AM - Edit history (5)

30,000 more needed to garner some publicity and get a response from the White House.

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/pardon-edward-snowden/Dp03vGYD

The worldwide petition to treat Edward Snowden as a whistle blower, NOT a criminal and to end the Prism program IMMEDIATELY, reaches 462,000 signatories.
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/stop_prism_global/?wZumrcb

Update 06/14 - The number of signatories is now over 727,000 - 260,000 were added in the last 12 hours. They are getting added at an ever increasing rate.

It would seem the Rest of the World is far more informed about the NSA's activities than the vast majority of Americans are.

America is spying on EVERYONE in Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand too.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023007431

America is not exactly gaining a lot of friends out of this.

[Catherina]

1. That's great news. I want a response. And this I didn't know

Petition to Pardon NSA Leaker is Among Most Popular Ever Posted to White House Site

A petition on the White House’s We the People website demanding that President Obama pardon Edward Snowden, the leaker of National Security Agency documents, is gaining signatures at a rate that rivals and may surpass the most popular petitions ever posted to the site.


...

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney declined to comment on the Snowden petition during his daily briefing Monday in response to a question by ABC News’ Jonathan Karl.

“When it comes to petitions, we wait until the threshold has been crossed, and that threshold has not been crossed,” Carney said.

The White House has pledged to offer an official response to any We the People petition that receives more than 100,000 signatures in one month.

...

http://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2013/06/petition-pardon-nsa-leaker-among-most-popular-ever-posted-white-house-site/64616/?oref=ng-skybox

[graham4anything]

2. One cannot pardon someone who hasn't been convicted and apologizes for the crime.

Bush commuted the sentence of Libby, but did not pardon him.

The person first needs to be sentenced then a pardon could happen if the correct forms are filled out.

Oliver North only got free because of technicalities.
Same with Ellsberg.

Had there not been technicalities both would have been jailed.
(btw, Ellsberg did not run, and accepted his fate.)

[Romulus Quirinus]

3. You forgot Nixon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_pardon#Pardon_of_Nixon

[graham4anything]

5. you forget Ford was never elected to any office.

[Romulus Quirinus]

6. I forgot why that matters. nt

[arely staircase]

4. nixon was pardoned without any of those conditions

i won't sign it because i think he should be proscutd.

[think]

11. Ellsberg was illegally wiretapped by the Feds. That was the "technicality"

So please don't malign Ellsberg and lump him with Olliver North by omitting the gross governmental misconduct and illegal evidence gathering....

Trial and mistrial

~Snip~

On May 9, further evidence of illegal wiretapping against Ellsberg was revealed in court. The FBI had recorded numerous conversations between Morton Halperin and Ellsberg without a court order, and furthermore the prosecution had failed to share this evidence with the defense.[24] During the trial, Byrne also revealed that he personally met twice with John Ehrlichman, who offered him directorship of the FBI. Byrne said he refused to consider the offer while the Ellsberg case was pending, though he was criticized for even agreeing to meet with Ehrlichman during the case.[23]

Due to the gross governmental misconduct and illegal evidence gathering, and the defense by Leonard Boudin and Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson, Judge Byrne dismissed all charges against Ellsberg and Russo on May 11, 1973 after the government claimed it had lost records of wiretapping against Ellsberg. Byrne ruled: "The totality of the circumstances of this case which I have only briefly sketched offend a sense of justice. The bizarre events have incurably infected the prosecution of this case."[23]

As a result of the revelation of the Fielding break-in during the trial, John Ehrlichman, H R Haldeman, Richard Kleindienst and John Dean were forced out of office on April 30, and all would later be convicted of crimes related to the Watergate scandal. Egil Krogh later pleaded guilty to conspiracy, and White House counsel Charles Colson pleaded no contest for obstruction of justice in the burglary. "The court concluded that Nixon, Mitchell, and Haldeman had violated the Halperins' Fourth Amendment rights, but not the terms of Title III. The Halperins were awarded $1 in nominal damages in August 1977."[25][26]

Ellsberg later claimed that after his trial ended, Watergate prosecutor William H. Merrill informed him of an aborted plot by Liddy and the "plumbers" to have 12 Cuban-Americans who had previously worked for the CIA to "totally incapacitate" Ellsberg as he appeared at a public rally, though it is unclear whether that meant to assassinate Ellsberg or merely to hospitalize him.[27][28] In his autobiography, Liddy describes an "Ellsberg neutralization proposal" originating from Howard Hunt, which involved drugging Ellsberg with LSD, by dissolving it in his soup, at a fund-raising dinner in Washington in order to "have Ellsberg incoherent by the time he was to speak" and thus "make him appear a near burnt-out drug case" and "discredit him". The plot involved waiters from the Miami Cuban community. According to Liddy, when the plan was finally approved, "there was no longer enough lead time to get the Cuban waiters up from their Miami hotels and into place in the Washington Hotel where the dinner was to take place" and the plan was "put into abeyance pending another opportunity".[29]

From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg#Trial_and_mistrial

[TakeALeftTurn]

13. self deleted

replying to the wrong comment

[tarheelsunc]

7. Dumb petition.

The response will be something along the lines of "Snowden cannot be pardoned, because he has not been convicted of a crime" followed by a history of the use of pardons in our political system. They should have asked for Snowden to be granted immunity or something.

[TakeALeftTurn]

10. That can come up in the discussion

of the dismissive response from the WH.

[graham4anything]

8. Irony- 70,000 people have given their names and numbers/ info to the White House.

one assumes all are truthful when they sign a petition, as we know from election time,
an entire petition can be tossed if there are fake info on it.

So I assume, all 70,000 have signed their name, number, and all that.

Isn't it ironic?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

12. Do you think they should be fearful?

[TakeALeftTurn]

15. It is 90%+ likely that they are already on a list

They haven't got anything to worry about, by signing.
They have probably already posted out somewhere, something critical of the NSA.

They are probably already politically aware and were already being watched before signing.

[graham4anything]

16. Probably been for 40 years since Nixon and yet, I am still here LOL

[TakeALeftTurn]

21. It is pretty obvious why you are not in any trouble with the government

.

[Inkfreak]

40. Best reply to that poster. Ever. n/t

[TakeALeftTurn]

14. TY for posting

I have been looking through your other posts.

It would seem the White House is absolutely desperate to try and prevent the petition from reaching the 100,000 thresh hold.

Now I wonder why that would be (sic).

Thank you for confirming my thoughts.

[sibelian]

9. Well, that I did not expect.

Interesting.

[Raine1967]

17. How can he be pardoned without proof of wrongdoing?

It's very weird. Ford Pardoned Nixon and here is Nixon's response:

I have been informed that President Ford has granted me a full and absolute pardon for any charges which might be brought against me for actions taken during the time I was president of the United States.

In accepting this pardon, I hope that his compassionate act will contribute to lifting the burden of Watergate from our country.
Here in California, my perspective on Watergate is quite different than it was while I was embattled in the midst of the controversy, and while I was still subject to the unrelenting daily demands of the presidency itself.

Looking back on what is still in my mind a complex and confusing maze of events, decisions, pressures and personalities, one thing I can see clearly now is that I was wrong in not acting more decisively and more forthrightly in dealing with Watergate, particularly when it reached the stage of judicial proceedings and grew from a political scandal into a national tragedy.
No words can describe the depths of my regret and pain at the anguish my mistakes over Watergate have caused the nation and the presidency — a nation I so deeply love and an institution I so greatly respect.

I know many fair-minded people believe that my motivations and action in the Watergate affair were intentionally self-serving and illegal. I now understand how my own mistakes and misjudgments have contributed to that belief and seemed to support it. This burden is the heaviest one of all to bear.

That the way I tried to deal with Watergate was the wrong way is a burden I shall bear for every day of the life that is left to me.

I don't get this petition. Snowden has claimed time and time again he did nothing wrong. Why should he be pardoned?

The entire nation knew Nixon broke the law. Why should Snowden be afforded this petition?

[limpyhobbler]

59. This would be a pardon in regard to the crime. Crime is not the same as wrongdoing.

[Whisp]

18. 70,000 idiots.

they don't even know what was stolen and what the ramifications can be.

o.f.f.s.

[TakeALeftTurn]

20. Have you ever thought that the people who have signed the petition might of

read up on the subject more than you?

The NSA's Best Defense of PRISM Didn't Even Last a Week
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022998898

Clapper and Feinstein finally admit that ALL phone records going back 7 years have been collected
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022990011

The NSA's massive new $2bn data center in Utah - built to spy on EVERY American
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022998690

All the Infrastructure a Tyrant Would Need, Courtesy of Bush and Obama and Congress
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022998690

The details of the NSA's Mass Surveillance programs
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022962685

[graham4anything]

22. Those are all threads you started. Sublime.

[TakeALeftTurn]

23. Yep - but I have also included a lot of threads started by OTHER people on here

in my NSA info thread.

You can look through it - they all reference DU and a link to the source.

I only included what I thought were the best ones - there are several others that have been written by other people over the last week since the story came out.

There are so many articles on this already, from all sorts of sources - Guardian, DU, videos, American newspapers etc.

[TakeALeftTurn]

24. The number of lawsuits is mounting

No wonder Obama is worried.

[TakeALeftTurn]

27. Here is a really good one for you, by someone else on DU started today

Constitutional? Legal? Not bloody likely. 100% political. - Democratic Underground

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023014331

[TakeALeftTurn]

28. It seems there are PLENTY of people on DU that support AMERICA, the Constitution

and what made America GREAT.
Even if we cannot count you as one of that number.

America took a MASSIVE wrong turn after JFK was assassinated.
The effects of those massive mistakes are only now just starting to become apparent to many people.

This is NOT a partisan issue.
It is a right from wrong issue.

It is about stopping the government from abusing their powers.

It is about taking America back from the large Corporations that now own it and making the "public servants" in Congress and the White House accountable to the great American public again.

It is about taking America BACK, to what made it great.

[Harmony Blue]

30. You are calling me an idiot?

Critical thinking is what is being attacked all the time by the capitalist drone zombies.

[TakeALeftTurn]

37. EXACTLY

The lack of critical thinking skills amongst the great majority of America's population, is a very major part of the reason we have now ended up here.

The next biggest reason is pure apathy.
The vast majority of Americans can't be bothered to find out or check anything out for themselves.

The attention span of most Americans is now limited to a 3 minute sound byte for a topic on TV.
Even that is greatly stretching it - let alone having any real discussion or thought.

[TheDebbieDee]

19. Even if Snowden was convicted in absentia and then pardoned.......

it doesn't mean the NSA, or whomever, won't have him whcked at the earliest opportunity!

[HappyMe]

25. Oy.

Don't you have to be convicted of something first, before you are pardoned?

[liberal N proud]

26. Jumping the gun a little?

How do you pardon someone who has not been convicted let alone indicted?

[TakeALeftTurn]

29. You grant them immunity from prosecution

You treat them as a whistle blower NOT a criminal.

Obama on warrantless wiretaps

http://washingtonexaminer.com/article/2531302#.UbDl2_Y7P7M.twitter

[Freddie Stubbs]

31. I'm sure that it'll be just as effective as the petitions to pardon Bradley Manning, Don Siegelman,

and Leonard Peltier.

[TakeALeftTurn]

33. The point is not to get anything directly from the petitions

Because nothing tangible will result - it will just get a dismissive response.

The POINT is to :-

Garner some more publicity for the real issues
Garner some more public awareness for what is going on, in their name

Politicians are always influenced by public opinion.
Let's make the population at large more aware and make the politicians in Washington more accountable to the great American public.

Let's try and take away the government from the large Corporations that now own it and give it back to the people.

It's a long uphill struggle to do that.
This is just one small step in order to do that.

But at least it's a step in the RIGHT direction.
There have been countless steps in the WRONG direction since JFK's assassination, 50 years ago - this November.

[Freddie Stubbs]

41. Have the petitions to pardon Bradley Manning, Don Siegelman, and Leonard Peltier had much success in

swaying public opinion?

[TakeALeftTurn]

42. No

But there is much more popular support for this because it affects people personally.

The vast majority of people still don't know what triggered Manning to release the documents - the wilful and indiscriminate spraying of gunfire from a helicopter on innocent Iraqi civilians.

It is also a world wide issue.
LOADS of people are upset about it in Europe.

Just wait until the Canadians and the Aussies get to hear that they are all being spied upon too.
This is making more enemies of America all over the world.

[SidDithers]

32. An interesting cross-section of sites promoting that particular petition...

independencedeclaration.org
Infowars.com
democraticunderground.com
ufppc.org
orlytaitzesq.com
ar15.com
davidicke.com
stormfront.org

Selected results from the first 5 pages of the google search. I'm sure there are other liberal sites in those results, but nothing immediately recognizable jumped out. The first 5 pages are mostly CT sites or right-wing boards

Sid

[TakeALeftTurn]

34. There are only 2 high traffic liberal sites, that I am aware of

Democratic Underground

Huffington Post
But Huffy Po toes the Dem government line / Dem leader line the vast majority of the time and any meaningful criticism of Dems in the comments gets censored.
Arianna Huffington got into bed with Lloyd Blankfein (Goldman CEO) at Davos this year.
It is now owned by AOL - big corporate media.
You cannot expect any meaningful debate on there.

The right wing sites are fragmented - there are many of them.
And they are ALL full of wingnuts and extremely ignorant people.

As are the conspiracy sites like David Icke.

So DU is the only meaningful site across the entire internet and media where meaningful debate on the issues, is allowed.
And for that I am truly thankful to the people who run DU and made it into such a great forum.
It's the ONLY one out there.

[Monkie]

47. the US is not the internet

not that im suggesting you think that.
but discussion boards on traditional news sites in the EU are buzzing due to this.
the guardian allows discussion on many articles, its quite lively there, and there are many others in europe, it is just that a lot of them are not even in english, so you would normally never ´see´ these places.
another reason you might not see this is that it is quite unusual, it does not really fit the european disillusionment with politics, people tend to discuss issues like this on their favourite forum, and not so much on specialised political forums set up for one political party only.

[TakeALeftTurn]

49. True

But how many Americans go to European sites?

One of the reasons so many have already signed the world wide petition is because European internet sites are buzzing.

[TakeALeftTurn]

50. Europe only has a slightly greater population than the US

Just over 400 million compared to 315 million in the US.

Over 800,000 have now signed the world wide petition.
Only 72,000 have signed the US one.

Why do you think that is?

[Monkie]

52. because the US is screaming its spying on foreigners, that is the EU

and we have had to confront our governments lies and oppression many times, its part of our history, and history books.
my great grandfather and father fought in ´the good vs evil´ wars and both came back disillusioned.

i think it may also have to do with population density in some ways, people live closer together here, are more exposed to people from other cultures, even if they might not mix well. you have silly things like the borderline racist getting on well with his turkish neighbour. even before the internet was popular, when i was a lot younger, without satellite or cable, we could pick up the TV signals and news from 3 or 4 different countries.

but mainly i think its to do with the fact that every time we see american politicians say its fine its ok we are only doing it to those evil foreigners, and we compare it to the PRISM slides and data that shows those evil foreigners, thats us, its just another nail in the coffin.
that is so damaging to the image the US tries to portray in the world. and nobody here is `invested´ in obama, or the democratic party.
its also being driven from the top this time, its not so much activists and the guy on the street screaming about it, its the ´elites´, they have been lied to too, the politicians and business leaders are being spied on, people that feel they are the allies of the US.

[Monkie]

45. but google filters search to show you what you want to hear

so you think our governments are run by lizard overlords?!!?!?!
only half kidding, but google´s results are know to be filtered based on your previous searches.

[MichaelMcGuire]

35. Signed

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/stop_prism_global/?wZumrcb

753,763

Glad I'm one of them

[randome]

36. We are ALL Ed Snowden now!

Wait, does that mean I lied about my resume, stole government documents, fled to Hong Kong after saying "I'm not trying to hide from justice." and can't offer any evidence of my ludicrous claims?

Then maybe I'll be some other guy.

[hr]
[font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font]
[hr]

[TakeALeftTurn]

39. Your colleague got up much earlier than you

Do I take it you don't need the overtime?

[99Forever]

38. K&R and signed.

[Monkie]

43. what do people expect, every time US politicians say its about foreigners

every time its said that this is about spying on foreigners, its another blow to the citizens in countries that are meant to be your allies, its not that complex.

[Dash87]

44. I don't agree.

Not enough is known about what he did and why he did it.

People are jumping the gun a bit on this. What if it comes out that he sold secrets to China, or something like that?

This should be about the leaker information and not Snowden. This is becoming like Wikileaks and Assange (who also should not have been cared about).

[Monkie]

46. that is a good point, i only care about snowden in the sense i hope he stays safe

is it human nature, is the media partly to blame, why create hero's only to destroy them.
personally i dont even care if he sells secrets to china, what does that matter, the world wont end?

[pnwmom]

48. He's got thousands of classified documents on his thumb drive.

We don't know what is in there, or what country might get infuriated by what's in them -- and wars have been started over less.

[Monkie]

53. i see the US spying on me as a act of war.

it is AS bad if not worse than the iranians or the chinese or whatever. the iranians dont spent $80 billion a year on their `national security`. i have nothing to worry about or fear from them. im more likely to die crossing the road than from terror.

i WANT him to release all the documents, unredacted, i am not a stakeholder in the US national security apparatus.
if it had been iran or china spying on me the way the US is it would be considered a act of war.

newsflash, europe is infuriated, the person who negotiated with the US in regards to FISA breaking EU law by spying on innocent people is now the VP of the EU, i have never seen a government official react as furiously as she did when these leaks appeared.

we need people like snowden to come forward, if you are a true believer in the equality of all peoples, if you truly wish for peace in this world, hate war, hate warmongering and war profiteering, then the USA is the greatest enemy to peace of the last 50 plus years.
i know its not a easy thing to do, but americans have to face up to their own history and their disastrous foreign policy, the support of dictators, the support of oppression , its not even a secret, the information is out there in the library or on the net if only you look and read with a open mind.

[pnwmom]

54. Other countries are spying on us, too. Welcome to the real world. n/t

[Monkie]

55. when the going gets tough the apologists go n/t or disappear

welcome to the real world is the best you can do, seriously?
the fact we are meant to be allies, the EU and US, that they supported the US in the war on terror almost without question, and all you can say is welcome to the real world, is that what you would of said to african americans in the 50´s?

its quite telling that those worried about these programs show up in threads both for and against, but the apologists are completely silent when the conversation does not fit their narrative, seem only interested in smearing, like this thread with a video of democratic Rep. Sanchez that shows her take on what this is about, after she had a secret briefing, one would think that would interest you or not?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023002263

why does this not interest you or others that are blind supporters of this?

[pnwmom]

56. There are two separate issues here.

One is, should the surveillance issues be debated? Yes, they should, undoubtedly.

The other is, did Snowden go about this the right way? No, he didn't; taking thousands of classified documents -- that he obtained after a month at Booz Allen and he couldn't possibly be familiar with -- to Hong Kong was reckless and criminal.

[Monkie]

58. then say he didnt go about it the right way and leave it, what point in the smears?

there are quite a few threads with new information directly relating the the surveilance debate, and many of the sink without a trace, and on the other hand we have the same hand full of people banging on and on and on about snowden and how evil he is, and the frantic search and crowing over new proof of his evil.

what is the point?
the thread i linked too, had a video of a representative of the american people, fresh from secret hearings, trying to tell the american public what she had witnessed without breaking secrets, something that is SO rare too see, she made some REALLY important points, but there is NO discussion at all, and that really scares me.

[marions ghost]

57. You have no idea what he's got

We don't know jack.

[TakeALeftTurn]

51. The best way to ensure that he is not forced into selling secrets to a foreign power

would be to grant him immunity.

Did you think about that?