“I don’t think that [Edward] Snowden was a patriot,” Barack Obama said in 2013 after the former NSA contractor leaked revelations of mass surveillance to a small group of journalists.
Obama’s argument then—one that has been made many times since—was that Snowden had legal channels available to him to address his concerns, which would have protected the classified information in his leaks and, by extension, U.S. national security. In particular, Obama said, Snowden could have made use of formal whistle-blower procedures within the U.S. government. “I signed an executive order well before Mr. Snowden leaked this information that provided whistle-blower protection to the intelligence community,” Obama said. “So there were other avenues available for somebody whose conscience was stirred and thought that they needed to question government actions.”
The idea that Snowden’s specific revelations could have been addressed in this way has always been a subject for debate. The broader notion that the U.S. intelligence community’s whistle-blower system is inadequate, however, is a common one among whistle-blower lawyers and advocates. And the new controversy surrounding a whistle-blower complaint involving Donald Trump’s communications with a foreign leader has highlighted one of the main problems: Too much power to decide the fate of such complaints lies in the hands o ..
Support the originator by clicking the read the rest link below.
