Tuesday, June 02, 2015
'He Should Get the Nobel Peace
Prize': Ellsberg Champions Snowden's Profound Impact
"[T]he first time...this mass surveillance that's been going
on is subjected to a genuine debate, it didn't stand up."
Renowned whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg spoke with The
Guardian about the changing landscape of U.S. surveillance. (Photo: Steve Rhodes/flickr/cc)
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden should be credited with helping
change U.S. surveillance law, Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon
Papers, said Monday in an interview
with The Guardian.
"It's interesting to see that the first time... this mass
surveillance that's been going on is subjected to a genuine debate, it didn't
stand up," he said.
Ellsberg was charged under the Espionage Act for disclosing
secret U.S. military documents related to the Vietnam War in 1971. Snowden, who
leaked a trove of classified NSA documents in 2013 and has been living in
political asylum in Russia for the past three years, also faces prosecution
under the Espionage Act.
Asked what should happen to Snowden, Ellsberg replied, "He
should get the Nobel peace prize and he should get asylum in a west European
country."
Although "there is much more support for him month by month
as people come to realise how little substance in the charges that he caused
harm to us...that does not mean the intelligence community will ever forgive
him for having exposed what they were doing," Ellsberg continued.
Ellsberg is currently on a week-long European speaking tour with
several other renowned U.S. whistleblowers, including Thomas Drake, who helped
expose fraud and abuse in the NSA's Trailblazer program; Coleen Rowley, who
testified about the FBI's mishandling of information related to the September
11 attacks; and Jesselyn Radack, who disclosed ethics violations committed by
the FBI and currently serves as the director of National Security & Human
Rights at the Government Accountability Project.
Although the sunset of the Patriot Act on Sunday has forced the
NSA to end its domestic phone records collection program, the agency will
likely retain much of its surveillance power with the expected passage of the
USA Freedom Act, a "compromise"
bill which would renew modified versions of Section 215 and other provisions.
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled
last month that the NSA's bulk phone records collection program "exceeds
the scope of what Congress has authorized" under the Patriot Act.
Referring to that decision, Ellsberg said Monday that "even the USA
Freedom Act, which is better than the Patriot Act, still doesn't really reflect
the full weight of the circuit court opinion that these provisions have been
unconstitutional from their beginning and what the government has been doing is
illegal."
Drake also spoke to The Guardian on Monday, stating,
"This is the first time in almost 14 years that we stopped certain
provisions... The national security mindset was unable to prevail."
The USA Freedom Act, meanwhile, "effectively codifies all
the secret interpretations, a lot of the other authorities they claimed were
enabled by the previous legislation, including the Patriot Act," Drake
continued.
In a press briefing on Monday, White House press secretary Josh
Earnest said
that despite the sunset of the Patriot Act, the Obama administration would not
change its view that Snowden "committed very serious crimes."
But the importance of the Senate's rejection of the legislation
cannot be discounted, said Ellsberg, and Snowden's influence on the changing
political landscape in the U.S. deserves credit.
"This is the first time, thanks to Snowden, that the Senate
really stood up and realized they have been complicit in the violation of our
rights all along—unconstitutional action," Ellsberg said. "The Senate
and the House have been passive up until now and derelict in their
responsibilities. At last there was opposition."
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"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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