Everyone is under surveillance now, says whistleblower Edward Snowden

[MADem]

107. DUH. You think a contractor can't be granted immunity from prosecution?

ANYONE can. There is no "ambiguity." Again, you ate the Big Lie.

It has nothing to do with "whistleblower protections." Anyone looking for that immunity had better have the damn goods, but it could be gotten.

Committees have broad power to grant immunity to enable witnesses to testify without fear of prosecution. This doesn't matter if the witness is a contractor, a government employee, or that bum down the street on the corner with the squeegee and the pail of dirty water. They can also hold a recalcitrant witness in contempt and subject them to criminal prosecution. You don't fuck with these people--they do have the power. All Snowden needed to do was sell them on the notion that there was Trouble, right there in NSA city and he would have been sheltered because that Intel Committee would have wanted to know just how much "dirt" the NSA ostensibly had on them. Their interests would most certainly have been piqued.

I suspect he didn't have the goods. THAT's why he's trying to muddy the waters with bullshit about whistleblowing.

Congress possesses broad and encompassing powers to engage in oversight and conduct investigations reaching all sources of information necessary to carry out its legislative functions. In the absence of a countervailing constitutional privilege or a self-imposed statutory restriction upon its authority, Congress and its committees have virtually plenary power to compel production of information needed to discharge their legislative functions. This applies whether the information is sought from executive agencies, private persons, or organizations. Within certain constraints, the information so obtained may be made public.

These powers have been recognized in numerous Supreme Court cases, and the broad legislative authority to seek information and enforce demands was unequivocally established in two Supreme Court rulings arisingout of the 1920s Teapot Dome scandal. In McGrain v. Daugherty,10 which considered a Senate investigation ofthe Department of Justice, the Supreme Court described the power of inquiry, with the accompanying processto enforce it, as “an essential and appropriate auxiliary to the legislative function.”

http://www.constitutionproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/175.pdf