Nick Baumann: The Trump Whistleblower Scandal Is Proving Edward Snowden Right // Donald Trump has put whistleblower in danger, lawyers say
Edward
Snowden did it all wrong, his critics thundered. The former National
Security Agency subcontractor should have used “other avenues available for
somebody whose conscience was stirred and thought that they needed to question
government actions,” then-President Barack Obama claimed
in an August 2013 press conference, citing an executive order he had signed
that - in theory at least - gave intelligence officers some whistleblower
protections for the first time ever. “Snowden could
have come to me,” George Ellard, then the NSA’s inspector general, claimed
in 2014.
Donald Trump has put whistleblower in danger, lawyers say: “I want to know who’s the person who gave the whistle-blower the information because that’s close to a spy,” Trump said. “You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart? Right? With spies and treason, right? We used to handle them a little differently than we do now.”
Snowden did, in fact,
try to report his concerns through official channels. He questioned the
legality of surveillance programs 10 times, he later testified
before the European Parliament. He said he was brushed aside. So in 2013,
he leaked reams of
national security information to journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, revealing
the details of multiple surveillance programs and launching a global debate on
privacy. Thanks to Snowden, people all over the world now know far more than
they otherwise would have about the NSA’s collection
of millions of Americans’ phone records, its use
of data from internet giants like Google and its spying
on the phone calls of world leaders like Angela Merkel. Snowden’s reward was
criminal charges and effectively permanent exile from the U.S. But his concerns
were aired publicly and the proper scope and scale of massive government
surveillance programs was debated in the open.
So far, the latest
fight over an intelligence community whistleblower seems to be vindicating
Snowden’s decision. Recently, the intelligence community’s inspector general
received a whistle-blower complaint that he deemed “urgent and credible.” The
inspector general then sent it up to the acting director of national intelligence.
The law says the director of national intelligence “shall” at that point pass
the complaint on to Congress. But Trump and his administration
are blocking that complaint - which reportedly concerns a call Trump made to
the president of Ukraine in which he asked for Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe
Biden - from being seen by Congress.
That sort of politicization
“is precisely the reason so many [whistleblowers] go to the press,” said
Jesselyn Radack, a former Justice Department legal ethics adviser and
whistleblower who now works as a lawyer for whistleblowers....
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-whistleblower-edward-snowden_n_5d893bf8e4b0938b5932cde0see also
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