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Comment by benevol | Hacker News Reader

“I credit Snowden for having a great deal of courage, because he’s ruined himself forever,” he told Salon.

“I don’t think he has a future,” the former Bush administration official added.

I'd say it depends on the American citizen/voter. What future do we want?

Not pressuring the government to bring him back means giving the government a clear thumbs-up for ever-increasing mass surveillance. And it sends any potential whistleblower a clear signal to turn a blind eye to corruption and out-of-control government activity.

Is that really what we want?

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I'm pessimistic, half of america is already fine with opening their iPhone to the Gov. So a traitor who has done something so altruistic that it's impossible for the majority to accept it for what it really is and above all who lives in Russia with their historical nemesys, there is no way there is a chance one day for him to be understood by the masses, I'm afraid.

Things change. No one expected Mandela to become President when he got arrested.

Let's just wait for the next major data breach or data leak.

Just look at whats going on with Bangladesh's central bank. If they can't protect their data, hard to imagine the rest of the developing world being in a better of position.

Accumulators of data in the west, sitting in ivory towers, disconnected from ground realities, are setting all kinds of precedents just waiting to breakdown elsewhere.

So, we might have President Snowden to look forward to? Has a decent ring to it.

He's got my vote. I ignore the texts from Bernie, but I'd walk door-to-door through a snowstorm canvassing for that guy.

In the meantime, no current presidential candidate is willing to pardon Snowden.

Which, I guess, says everything about the level of systemic corruption that we as a society have reached.

Actually, Sanders is pro-Snowden. Sanders has said that he will bring back Snowden and will make sure that a reasonable settlement is reached wrt. copying data and public benefit.

Edit: "In my view," Sanders continued, "the interests of justice would be best served if our government granted him some form of clemency or a plea agreement that would spare him a long prison sentence or permanent exile from the country whose freedoms he cared enough about to risk his own freedom." (added the actual comment)

I don't think this position qualify as pro-Snowden. The trial facing by Snowden is for "treason", which is by definition false because no third party government was involved.

I think it's pretty binary debate. It's not 5 years jail time vs. life sentence like Sanders seems to imply.

The US will not seek the death penalty for Snowden. [1] So functionally what Sanders is describing is the same.

[1] http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:LzcZPxv...

Any presidential candidate interested in doing so knows that the first step to pardoning Snowden is to get elected. Pledging to do so now is a pretty sure way to fail at that.

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