The annual Academy Awards were presented this weekend, and for the 20th year in a row I didn’t watch. The pomp and circumstance of these types of award shows just aren’t my cup of tea, but I understand from those who did watch it that "Citizenfour" won best documentary. For anyone else who watched neither the Oscars nor "Citizenfour" while it was in theaters, it’s a documentary about Edward Snowden and his role in the 2013 leaks about the National Security Administration (NSA) mass surveillance programs.
I didn’t see "Citizenfour," but I did have the opportunity to watch Snowden in a live Skype call over Valentine’s Day weekend, along with about 1,700 other students at the International Students for Liberty Conference in Washington, DC. Snowden was accepting an award from the Students for Liberty and gave a short speech on the importance of truth in a democracy before taking questions from the audience.
Of course, Snowdencouldn’t be there in person; he’s currently in Russia, where he will likely remain as long as the United States government continues to try persecute him. In the words of Secretary of State John Kerry, “Edward Snowden is a coward, he is a traitor, and he has betrayed his country. And if he wants to come home tomorrow to face the music, he can do so.”
When Kerry speaks of, “facing the music,” we have to assume he means that Snowden would be given a show trial, at the end of which he’d be locked up for life (if not executed). That was the case with Chelsea Manning, who was sentenced to 35 years in prison for playing a part in the WikiLeaks scandal, which seems so trivial in comparison to the NSA scandal that most of us have forgotten it even happened. At trial Manning wasn’t allowed to present any defense regarding why she did what she did until after she had already been convicted.
Snowden faces even more serious charges: he and the reporters who worked with him in bringing out this story are among the very few Americans ever to be charged under the Espionage Act, which was originally passed during WWI to punish foreign spies for sharing sensitive information with our nation’s enemies during wartime.
Letting the American people know that their government is secretly collecting their emails and other electronic communications is tantamount to spying for a nation we’re at war with, at least according to President Barack Obama's administration. Apparently Obama thinks charging whistle blowers with espionage in order to silence them makes this “the most transparent administration in history.”
Ron Paul’s quote, “truth is treason in an empire of lies,” is far more applicable here. Snowden didn’t send his information to North Korea or China; he sent it to the American people. His actions brought to light programs whose constitutionality is questionable even by the most conservative legal standards and absolutely Orwellian in the eyes of a civil libertarian. In a democracy, important questions like how much liberty and privacy we should sacrifice in the name of security are meant to be open to public debate and deliberation — not decided in secret by nameless government officials.
Edward Snowden put his life and liberty on the line to preserve that democracy. Traitors don’t make that kind of sacrifice for such noble goals, but patriots do. It’s wonderful to see that, even though no court of law will give him a fair trial, the court of public opinion is swaying in Snowden’s favor.