What would have happened to Edward Snowden or Julian Assange if they had given themselves over?

On April 27, 2016, the official trailer for “Snowden” was published on YouTube. The film is stacked with big time names like director Oliver Stone and a cast that includes Shailene Woodley, Zachary Quinto, Nicholas Cage and Scott Eastwood in an effort to portrait the big time and ongoing saga of the most notorious whistleblower in recent memory. Edward Snowden, former CIA/NSA employee and intelligence professional, is our protagonist. And just like in any epic story of daring and danger- there has to be an antagonist.

I haven’t seen the film, so I don’t know how they are going to present the story- But assuming Snowden is the “main character,” audiences will be inclined to cheer for him. The investigation of this saga does not have to end in a binary classification of good and evil; in fact, it most certainly shouldn’t. The overwhelming body of the intelligence community is composed of loyal, hardworking, brave and patriotic Americans who care deeply about keeping us safe. However, loyalty to the inhabitants does not equal loyalty to agency, and this sort of faction identification is where we can have two sides, both by in large trying to do the right thing, failing to recognize the merits of the other. The public can’t move to change an agency’s violation of their rights if they don’t know it is happening, and simply assuming these agencies will always work these things out internally and unfettered is naive. External regulatory/civil rights groups are a key part of the equation, but they can fail or be bypassed.

The truth is that our civil rights are too important, and there does come a point where we need a failsafe in the form of a whistleblower. Obviously, the other side to this is that we cannot have a robust and effective intelligence apparatus if people are constantly leaking information under this pretext. These are opposing notions, and it is impossible to have a healthy balance if we focus on one while ignoring the other. So, once again, our onlooker asks, “Where are we on the scale?”

According to the BBC, in an article published on January 17 of 2014:

“The scandal broke in early June 2013 when the Guardian newspaper reported that the US National Security Agency (NSA) was collecting the telephone records of tens of millions of Americans…

That report was followed by revelations in both the Washington Post and Guardian that the NSA tapped directly into the servers of nine internet firms, including Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, to track online communication in a surveillance program known as Prism.”

Another film, a documentary titled “Edward Snowden- Terminal F” depicts the epic escape to asylum by Snowden once the government knew he released this information. The United States went so far as to use its European allies, and their command of airspace, to forcibly land the plane of another nation’s head of state under suspicion that he was accompanying the person who made known the civil liberties dilemma the nation faced. This is unprecedented.

Edward Snowden was not on that flight. After submitting his entire life to the wrath and relentlessness of the American government, he escaped the hunt, and reached relative safety. He and the US federal government have been at a standstill since this time- With Snowden unable to leave his place of sanctuary, and the United States unable to detain him. In this period of time, the “USA Freedom Act,” legislation that reduced the power of the NSA, was passed in light of the public’s awareness of the circumstances. Though this seems to be contradictory to what we explored earlier, it may be that limitations being put on federal agencies in this way doesn’t upset big-money donors; proving an explanation for the legislative body’s responsiveness to their constituency: but I digress. Given all of this information, what is “justice” for Edward Snowden?

In Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter From a Birmingham Jail,” he writes:

“I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the very highest respect for the law.”

Mahatma Gandhi said in “Non-Violence in Peace and War 1942-49:”

“An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so. Now the law of nonviolence says that violence should be resisted not by counter-violence but by nonviolence. This I do by breaking the law and by peacefully submitting to arrest and imprisonment.”

These are writings that capture the height of ideological and strategic brilliance in civil movements. They certainly have to be kept closely in mind when exploring any pursuit of justice such as this. However, we have to ask, “What would have happened to Edward Snowden or Assange if they had given themselves over?” What happens to people who dare to defy the American government in the way they have, who do not escape?

Chelsea Manning is possibly the second most influential American whistleblower to Edward Snowden, and a recipient of the Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence. She is also, according to the United Nations, a victim of human rights abuses by the U.S.

According to the Guardian:

“Mendez, who runs the UN office that investigates incidents of alleged torture around the world, told the Guardian: "I conclude that the 11 months under conditions of solitary confinement (regardless of the name given to his regime by the prison authorities) constitutes at a minimum cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in violation of article 16 of the convention against torture. If the effects in regards to pain and suffering inflicted on Manning were more severe, they could constitute torture.” [Chelsea Manning is formerly Bradley Manning with gender pronoun “he”]

Sadly, it gets much, much worse. The article goes on to state:

“Manning was initially held for almost three months at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, and then transferred in July 2010 to the Marine corps base at Quantico in Virginia. He was held there for another eight months in conditions that aroused widespread condemnation, including being held in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day and being made to strip naked at night [sexual abuse].

In an interview with amnesty international in 2015, published by the Guardian and addressed in an article published by, Chelsea Mannings tells us:

“The military had total control over every aspect of my life. They controlled what information I had access to. They controlled when I ate and slept. They even controlled when I went to the bathroom. After several weeks, I didn’t know how long I had been there or how much longer I was going to be staying. It’s an overwhelmingly terrifying feeling. I became very, very sad. At one point, I even gave up on trying to live any more…

On July 5, Manning attempted suicide by hanging. She subsequently received a flood of sympathetic messages and letters, and she instructed supporters by phone to issue a Twitter message: “I am okay. I’m glad to be alive. Thank you all for your love <3 I will get through this.”

The military authorities’ response was to serve Manning on July 28 with notice that she was under investigation for numerous “administrative offenses,” which include “resisting the force cell move team,” possessing “prohibited property,” and for “conduct which threatens.” She has also been unable to meet regularly with a psychologist.

These spurious administrative charges were rebutted in an August 1 article by journalist Cory Doctorow and the Chelsea Manning Support Network. With respect to the charge that Manning “resisted a force cell move team,” her alleged “resistance” consisted in being unconscious when the prison guards found her. The “prohibited use of property” charge is based on the use of items in her cell to attempt suicide. The theory behind the “conduct which threatens” charge is that Manning’s suicide attempt “interferes with the orderly running, safety, good order and discipline, or security of the facility.”

Yes, Chelsea Manning is being charged for having been pushed to take her own life after being tortured. Now, let’s be entirely clear. To any objective observer, this is pure savagery- as were the abuses put upon the people of the civil rights and Indian independence movement. What Gandhi and MLK Jr. said was that in moving to alter society, to replace patterns of abuse with justice in law and in life, while respecting the rule of law itself, they would give themselves over to accept the penalty for their advocacy. However, as a society, to take lessons from the abuses of the past is to not perpetuate them. What “justice” is for Edward Snowden will continue to be debated, but what happened to Chelsea Manning is not justice. In fact, it is an insult to the concept of justice.

So, in addition to addressing the preservation of the rights of the citizenry in a Democracy, how does our discussion of whistleblowers tie into the 2016 election? What do the major candidates for President have to say? The Democratic nominee for President has said:

“He broke the laws of the United States. He could have been a whistle-blower. He could have gotten all of the protections of being a whistle-blower. He could have raised all the issues that he has raised. And I think there would have been a positive response to that.”

She went on to say that “I don’t think he should be brought home without facing the music.”

The Republican nominee, in an interview with Fox “news” said when the topic of Snowden came up:

“There is still a thing called execution.”

The nominee of the Green Party:

“Yes. I have called for pardoning Snowden. Not only pardoning him, but, welcoming him home as a hero, because he has done an incredible service to our country at great cost to himself for having to live away from his family, his friends, his job, his network, to basically live as an expatriate.

And the Libertarian Party nominee:

"This is someone who has divulged information that we would not know about currently — and that's the United States government spying on all of us as U.S. citizens… I don't want to see him in prison."

These are the positions of the major candidates running for leader of the free world. Serious consideration being taken to what sort of relationship between government and the people these statements lend to; what does it say about our Democracy that the Democrat and the Republican are presently the leading candidates, with the Green and Libertarian parties as the up and coming challengers? This leads us to our onlooker’s final expedition into American political society. We would be remiss if in this inquiry we did not look at the most basic tool that people have in a nation that renders it Democratic. This examination of the nucleus of our public societal structures needs to be thorough, both in terms de jure and de facto; in broad theory, and fundamental execution. We spoke earlier about the rise of candidates according to media influence and party handling of primaries. In part three, we will take a look at the mechanism of the vote itself, and how it selected these candidates and will choose the next government in November.