Op-ed:
“Can You Hear Me Now?”
By: Diane Sori / The Patriot Factor / Right Side Patriots on
http://cprworldwidemedia.net/
“It’s our belief that the man put U.S. national security in great danger and he needs to be held to account for that.”
- State Department spokesman John Kirby in regards to whistleblower Edward Snowden
The European Union (E.U.) in urging its member nations to protect
American whistleblower Edward Snowden from extradition to the U.S. got it
right...NO ifs, ands, or buts about it.
You all remember Edward Snowden, the former U.S. government tech who,
in 2013, while working for the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilon,
'leaked' thousands of top-secret National Security Agency (NSA)
documents that exposed the U.S. global electronic surveillance program known as 'Prism' ...as in eavesdropping and wiretapping...by the U.S., the U.K., and
others. Now a fugitive living on a three-year residency permit in
Russia, paramount to temporary asylum as Russia refuses to extradite
him, Snowden is facing two counts of violating the 'Espionage Act of
1917'...an act which forbids the disclosure of state secrets meaning
Snowden is NOT allow to argue in his defense that his disclosures had a
public benefit...and one count of theft of government property. And
here's a little side note...this law has only been invoked a total of nine
times against whistleblowers, but with six of those times occurring during
the Obama administration...NOT unexpected as this administration has so
much that needs to be kept hidden.
Case in point...earlier this year a federal appeals court ruled that
the 'Prism' program was actually illegal, yet just last week the 2nd
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York struck down a preliminary
injunction brought by the American Civil Liberties Union that would have
brought an immediate halt to the above said NSA warrantless bulk phone metadata
program...the very program Snowden exposed...and instead allowed the NSA
to continue in operation for another 180-days to assure what they
called an
“orderly transition” period so the program could come to a
timely end. A timely end...I really don't think so...more like the
liberal court giving Obama and crew more time to 'dispose' of documents
they fear might reach 'We the People's' eyes.
"An abrupt end to the program would be contrary to the public
interest in effective surveillance of terrorist threats, and Congress
thus provided a 180-day transition period...under the circumstances, we
will defer to that reasonable decision," wrote Circuit Judge Gerard
Lynch, the very same judge who originally ruled what the NSA was doing
to be illegal. Quite interesting I would say.
And at the same time this particular ruling came down the European
Parliament tried to protect Snowden from prosecution by voting for a
symbolic nonbinding resolution that would have all pending charges
against him dismissed. In a vote of 285 to 281, the resolution called on
all 28 E.U. member nations to
“drop any criminal charges against Edward
Snowden, grant him protection and consequently prevent extradition or
rendition by third parties, in recognition of his status as
whistle-blower and international human rights defender.” And then in a
separate vote, the same body voted that
"too little has been done to
safeguard citizens' fundamental rights following revelations of
electronic mass surveillance" by passing in a vote of 342 to 274 with 29
abstentions, another resolution urging the E.U. Commission to make sure
that all data transfers to the U.S. have an
"effective level of
protection," while at the same time calling for more Internet technology
independence and online privacy among European nations themselves.
But can you really blame them, after all the documents Snowden
revealed showed one and all that the U.S. under the Obama administration
had spied...YES spied...NOT only on we American citizens, but on foreign
leaders, nongovernmental organizations, and on the United Nations as well. And
this has led the E.U. Commission to now consider the
ramifications of the European Court of Justice's ruling that struck down
the U.S./E.U. data-transfer agreement known as 'Safe Harbor'...the very
agreement that allows American companies to move personal data between
the European Union and the U.S...rendering it invalid because U.S.
surveillance of tech companies conflicted with E.U. privacy guarantees.
This translates into American tech companies financially being hurt
as foreign companies and governments have been forced to reject their
products out of fear that the NSA has, if you will, 'compromised' them, as well as their
now having to figure out how to legally transfer European employee and
customer data back to their U.S. servers.
And now according to his lawyers, Snowden, who currently is a
director at the 'Freedom of the Press Foundation,' would like to come
back to the U.S. if...and only if...he’s guaranteed a fair trial with
full due process...which is kind of a misnomer as Snowden is charged
under a law that allows for NO mitigating circumstances. And via a
newly opened Twitter account (
Edward Snowden@Snowden ...
https://twitter.com/Snowden)
Snowden called the E.U. Parliament’s non-binding vote a
“game-changer,”
while at the same time his lawyers called it a
“symbolic blow” to the
Obama administration’s efforts to get Snowden back to the U.S. to face
charges.
Remember, the U.S. has in place long standing extradition
treaties with all the European nations...except in death
penalty cases...and this vote sends a slap-in-the-face message that the
E.U. will, in Snowden's case, NOT honor this agreement, thus making it
clear to Obama that they feel that Snowden did NOTHING less then protect
democracy from itself...further translating into the fact that Snowden may soon
be granted 'safe passage' to travel freely throughout other countries
in the European Union...freely travel and freely talk to anyone he so chooses.
But why is the European Union really protecting Edward Snowden... to find
the answer to that we must go back to 2004, when the U.N. special
rapporteur (the person appointed to report on the proceedings of its
meetings) for freedom of expression, as well as his counterparts in the
Organization of American States and the Organization for Security and
Co-operation in Europe, issued a joint call to all governments to protect
whistleblowers from all
"legal, administrative or employment-related
sanctions if they act in 'good faith.” Then in 2010, the parliamentary
assembly of the Council of Europe stated in resolution 1729 that
"the
definition of protected disclosures shall include all bona-fide warnings
against various types of unlawful acts,” and that member countries'
laws
"should therefore cover both public and private sector
whistle-blowers, including members of the armed forces and special
services."
And to the members of the European Union, Edward Snowden fits the definition
of a whistleblower to a tee as what Snowden exposed, they felt, threatened their
very sovereignty, privacy, as well as their founding principles. So the
E.U. countries feel they owe, if you will, Snowden a debt of gratitude
for his revelations, which clearly and undoubtedly were in the public
interest...as they are here in America as well but which the Obama
administration could care less about as the public interest...as 'We the People'...be damned.
So in the E.U. now giving Snowden a form of legal protection they
have done two things, first being what our First Amendment failed to do
in Edward Snowden's case...protect the privacy of individuals in a clear case
of need-to-know public interest as it relates to the freedom of
information and second, the Whistleblower Protection Act...a federal law
that protects federal whistleblowers who work for the government and
report agency misconduct...seems to have been completely negated as it
did NOT protect Edward Snowden whose sounding the alarm was indeed an
act done in the public interest...an interest having NOTHING whatsoever
to do with national security issues being breached as would be interpreted by our
intelligence services.
And with Snowden tweeting that,
“This [E.U. ruling] is not a blow
against the U.S. Government, but an open hand extended by friends. It is
a chance to move forward,” the truth is it is indeed a well deserved blow to
an administration run amok that has NEVER been called to task for their
criminal actions. And you have to love that when Edward Snowden signed
onto Twitter that he chose to follow only one account...that being the
NSA...whose first tweet to them was
“Can you hear me now?” Yeah they can
and so too can 'We the People.'
