From The World Can't Wait:
Indict the Criminals Responsible for Vast Government Spying
Hands Off Edward Snowden
June 30, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
For his courageous and principled action in revealing vast, unlawful surveillance by the United States, we defend Edward Snowden and call on others to join us in opposing the U.S. government's plans to gain custody of him, try him, and imprison him on espionage charges.
We join a large section of the U.S. population—and billions worldwide—in outrage at the unconstitutional, illegitimate surveillance of whole populations by the U.S. that has been covered up and lied about for years.
It is absurd that Snowden faces criminal charges while the U.S. government is caught red-handed breaking its own laws; while it flaunts international law by the use of targeted killing and indefinite detention, and refuses to investigate, much less prosecute, those responsible for the crimes of aggressive war and torture exposed by Bradley Manning, now on trial in another unjust U.S. prosecution.
Edward Snowden came forward on June 10 to claim responsibility for leaking National Security Agency documents that show that the U.S. government "targets the communications of everyone," a practice which he warned is going to "get worse with the next generation and the next generation who extend the capabilities of this sort of architecture of oppression."
Snowden's revelations show that the Obama administration and the NSA consistently lied about the scale of surveillance and how both the meta-data and the full contents of all electronic communications, both domestic and foreign, are being scooped up and stored, some for immediate use in real time and the rest for subsequent use by the current White House administration and all subsequent administrations. He revealed the scope of U.S. government electronic surveillance against whole populations, the ease with which agents can access actual content of such communication, and the lack of safeguards for individual privacy.
The architects of this vast surveillance system have been vacuuming up all electronic communications from people, and from governments across the planet, allies and rivals alike. They've been holding it all secretly, denying time and again that they have been doing it when asked by reporters and by Congress. These same people now have the audacity to charge Snowden with crimes "with intent or reason to believe that the information is to be used to the injury of the United States, or to the advantage of any foreign nation."
Imagine a person working in the government who becomes aware of towering criminal practices by that government. He or she steps forward at grave personal risk to expose those crimes to the public. The full weight of said government is brought down on the whistleblower, accusing the truthteller of espionage and endangering the people.
When this happens in a country not allied with the United States, Washington's message is that such exposure proves that [country] is authoritarian and outrageously repressive toward its citizens, and that "we" would never commit crimes on that scale, because "we" are a country of laws, the home of freedom and democracy, due process and innocence until proven guilty; not a country of spying, outrageous intimidation, secret courts, and torture.
The U.S. has indicted Snowden on three felony charges. He is the seventh person charged by the Obama administration's war on whistleblowers, under the 1917 Espionage Act, for "unauthorized communication of national defense information" and "willful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person," and also with theft of government property. Each charge carries 10 years in prison—potentially life in prison if there are multiple counts of each.
Snowden said recently in response to a question about U.S. government efforts to suppress and eliminate him: "All I can say right now is the U.S. Government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped."
Which will it be? The continued persecution of truthtellers by Official Liars or the truth made plain to the world and the sweeping away of these truly obscene actions by the United States?
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