Russia: Snowden can stay

[Maedhros]

69. One must weight the respective benefit to the people

of adhering to the law or of breaking it. In the case of Snowden, we have two competing potential benefits:

1. The information regarding the activities of the NSA, now widely regarded as illegal and anti-democratic, being made available to the American people so that they can make educated decisions regarding whether to continue or end such activities. This is of great benefit to the citizens of a democracy, since an informed electorate is necessary to ensure democratic governance.

2. The information regarding the activities of the NSA being kept secret so that the agency can continue to act with no oversight or accountability to the American people. This is of great benefit to the Surveillance State, because if the agency's activities were to be made known to the public then there would be demands to end them.

We can discount any notion that the primary benefit of the NSA's activities is to protect American citizens from terrorism, since even the hand-picked White House panel concluded that no terror attacks were stopped by the NSA's program. (http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/12/20/21975158-nsa-program-stopped-no-terror-attacks-says-white-house-panel-member?lite)

So which of the above is of greater benefit to the American people? Most Liberals and Progressives would probably select #1, since they are concerned primarily with civil rights and advancing democratic principles over dubious national security interests. In that context it makes little sense from a Liberal or Progressive point-of-view to concentrate one's efforts toward bringing Snowden to justice for his alleged crimes, since the benefit of prosecuting Snowden is miniscule compared to the benefit of being able to take action based upon the information he made available to us. Indeed, prosecuting Snowden would serve to further suppress other whistleblowers who, in the future, may decline to reveal governmental abuse to the detriment of the citizenry.

The NSA surveillance program unequivocally intrudes upon the American citizens' personal freedom. Howling for Snowden's head on a pike for defying the law, i.e. disobeying authority, when by doing so he was acting in the defense of personal freedom, is textbook Authoritarianism.

au·thor·i·tar·i·an

adjective: authoritarian

1. favoring or enforcing strict obedience to authority, esp. that of the government, at the expense of personal freedom.