14 DAY TRIAL // During an intervention over this past weekend, Edward Snowden has once more reiterated that he would like to come back to the United States, if a fair trial were guaranteed.
“I’ve told the government again and again in negotiations, you know, that if they’re prepared to offer an open trial, a fair trial in the same way that Dan Ellsberg got, and I’m allowed to make my case to the jury, I would love to do so. But to this point, they’ve declined,” Snowden said, putting the US authorities in an even worse light.
The whistleblower has admitted that there’s plenty of irony in the fact that he’s taken shelter in China and Russia, two countries that aren’t exactly known for their spotless record in defending human rights or people’s privacy. Even so, he’s stuck in Russia after his passport was suspended, preventing him from boarding a flight to Latin America in June last year.
US officials have slammed the whistleblower for his actions, after he chose to share the truth with the world, exposing the mass surveillance apparatus the NSA has set in place in partnership with its international allies in the Five Eyes.
They argue that Snowden should have just gone through the official channels and report the issues he found to his higher ups. The whistleblower said he had tried to do just that, but to no avail as he was shut down and told to stop interfering.
Of course, the NSA now claims that there is absolutely no proof that Snowden did that at all, that they’ve searched his email through and through and couldn’t manage to find anything. Since about everything that has come out of Snowden’s mouth in the past 16 months has proven to be true, it’s doubtful that he would have lied about this.
No protection for whistleblowers
Furthermore, using government channels didn’t provide proper protection for whistleblowers. Even after all this time, Snowden believes it was worth doing what he’s done, even if he is now hunted by the US authorities and in hiding in a country far away from home and far from his family.
“It was about getting the information back to people so they could decide if they cared about it. I could not have been more wrong in thinking that people wouldn’t care,” Snowden said.
And he’s right about that because his revelations haven’t just sparked a debate in the United States, but everywhere around the world, especially since there’s no constitutional protection for foreign citizens, which means that the NSA can violate people’s right to privacy as long as they live abroad.
“These programs themselves are unconstitutional. I am confident the Supreme Court will agree these programs went too far,” Snowden said.