14 DAY TRIAL // The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Amnesty International, and the Human Rights Watch are preparing to launch a new campaign to raise signatures for Edward Snowden's pardon.
The new campaign will launch on Wednesday, September 16, on the same day the Snowden movie premieres in the US.
Campaign coincides with Snowden movie release
The movie chronicles the early life of Edward Snowden and what drove him to steal NSA documents and provide them to a group of journalists. The documents revealed a secret surveillance program conducted by the NSA against its own citizens and other countries abroad.
The movie is directed by Oliver Stone, stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Snowden, and premiered last week at the Toronto Film Festival in Canada.
The ACLU and its partners hope to raise public awareness for Snowden's cause and improve the whistleblower's image in the US, where a considerable number of people still consider him a traitor.
First Snowden pardon attempt failed in 2013
The campaign website, hosted at pardonsnowden.org, is still down at the moment but is expected to become available tomorrow.
This new ACLU-backed campaign is the second attempt at getting Snowden pardoned, after the White House shut down a petition signed by almost 168,000 people in June 2013.
It took over two years for the White House to answer the petition. In July 2015, Homeland Security Advisor Lisa Monaco responded that Snowden should "come home to the United States, and be judged by a jury of his peers - not hide behind the cover of an authoritarian regime."
This new petition needs to gather over 100,000 signatures to warrant an official response from the White House.
Bleak chances for a Snowden pardon
Neither Barrack Obama nor current presidential candidates Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton have expressed interest in pardoning Snowden in the past.
The US government has answered questions about Snowden in the past saying they run whistleblower programs, but Snowden broke the law by stealing data and then publishing it online. In their view, he was supposed to alert the proper departments of abuse inside NSA's program.
In Snowden's defense, the program was institutionalized and looks to be more of a national policy rather than a rogue division operating inside the US government.
In July, Snowden together with Andrew Huang launched a case for iPhone devices that alerts users when the phone starts sending data from their phone without their approval. The case is meant to detect surveillance attempts and is marketed for dissidents and journalists.