If I remember right pardon day is right before the transition.

Because the sitting president doesn&#x27;t leave office on voting day.  The actual hand-off (Inauguration Day) doesn&#x27;t happen until January.

Why does it show four months of countdown if voting&#x27;s in a bit more than two months?

Well, from a political point of view, Snowden is just a guy, and he did what he could do already. Pardoned or shot dead, makes little difference now (well, chilling effect is certainly even worse if the latter happened tomorrow, but its bad enough as it is).The important thing would be wistleblower protection laws changes that would protect a future Snowden from this situation.

&gt; Isn&#x27;t Obama at risk if he pardons him?Isn&#x27;t Obama on his way out of office soon anyway? Pardoning Snowden might at least be something (even if after the fact) to justify his Nobel prize

Pardoning is already a good step. It&#x27;s acknowledging that leaders don&#x27;t know whether he did something right or wrong, and that it&#x27;s up for the citizen to decide. It may change the mind of many citizen who currently view him as a traitor. Articles will have to defend their position (such as &quot;E.S, that we view as a traitor&quot;) rather than be credited with government force (currently written as &quot;E.S., a traitor that is the world&#x27;s most wanted criminal&quot;).But I was wondering: Isn&#x27;t Obama at risk if he pardons him? Wouldn&#x27;t he be interrupted if he started a speech about Snowden? That&#x27;s been the #1 interest of his most powerful agencies during his mandate, of course they&#x27;ve thought about the risk that Obama pardons him. He could try to secure the pardon beforehand, by sending the pardon papers to Snowden, but in which kind of letterbox would he post it given NSA&#x27;s and FBI&#x27;s reach on communications? He could try to communicate with journalists, but do we still have journalists left after Hillary&#x27;s body count? etc.

I think that they&#x27;d prefer to send the message of &quot;Nothing you did has any consequence whatsoever, but you&#x27;re still an exile for life.&quot; It could deter future whistleblowers from following his example.As ineffective as the outrage has been, the NSA and US government definitely would have preferred that the issue never came up to begin with.

It would make sense, though, in a twisted way - it would send the message &quot;Nothing you did has had any consequence whatsoever, and to show you how little we care, we are not even sending you to jail for it&quot;.(I consider that highly unlikely, though.)

Pardoning would at least validate and justify what he did.

Lying to Congress isn&#x27;t a crime? Hmm. I&#x27;ve clearly been misled.Please consider finding something else to do with your time and&#x2F;or career. You&#x27;re helping bad people do bad things, the full scope of which won&#x27;t become apparent until it&#x27;s far too late.

&gt; Pardonning Snowden while allowing the NSA to continue their business as usual would be strange.It would certainly not be symmetrical, since Snowden committed a crime while NSA has not (despite the rather theatrical claims of some).

The pardon itself could undermine &quot;business as usual&quot; at NSA, because it would embolden others with knowledge of NSA crimes to alert the public.

Not necessarily.One could take the position (not mine) that the NSA&#x27;s &quot;business as usual&quot; was appropriate, that Snowden was mistaken in his adjudging it something that needed leaking, but that he was operating in good faith, honestly - mistakenly - believed it needed disclosure, and honestly believed internal channels would be ineffective at best. If we&#x27;re going to have a massive secret surveillance apparatus, of course we need to encourage people in-the-know to blow the whistle if they suspect it is being misused.

Pardonning Snowden while allowing the NSA to continue their business as usual would be strange.

Nope, it definitely existed. I googled &quot;snowden hero not traitor amnesty international&quot; and the first link is a press release from the Amnesty International itself (the press release is also down) that links to that page: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;3Ttfjc5" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;3Ttfjc5</a>

I did some search it appears that it doesn&#x27;t exist now or that it never existed in the first place.

At least some of us living outside the US are still US citizens, whom he presumably ought to care about (at least a little).My actual experience, though, is that emigrants are viewed with some disdain by a good portion of US citizens. Then again, viewpoints like that are one part of why I&#x27;m an emigrant...

I suspect Obama won&#x27;t care too much about what people living outside the US think on this one.

For those outside of the US the link (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amnesty.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;get-involved&#x2F;take-action&#x2F;Edward-Snowden-hero-not-traitor&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amnesty.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;get-involved&#x2F;take-action&#x2F;Edward-S...</a>) does not work. Anyone know what the correct link should be?

Because they&#x27;re not links, they&#x27;re images.

I&#x27;m in agreement. Despite what I might think about their cause (I support their cause), I can&#x27;t get a bead on who actually is behind the site. The site is constructed in a very non-transparent way, a very scammy feel to it.I have found that the ACLU links from their site to the Pardon Snowden site. Interestingly, Human Rights Watch does not link to the site, but seems to have their own petition (maybe connected?) and that&#x27;s as far as I went.Even with that bit of confirmation that this site is legit. I am not that promiscuous with my information.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amnesty.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;latest&#x2F;news&#x2F;2016&#x2F;09&#x2F;leaving-edward-snowden-in-limbo-will-be-a-stain-on-president-obamas-legacy&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amnesty.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;latest&#x2F;news&#x2F;2016&#x2F;09&#x2F;leaving-edwar...</a>

I&#x27;m kinda suspicious of this site -- none of the ACLU, HRW , Amnesty International links work at the bottom. And none of those organizations use whoisguard.

I doubt Hilary would consider it seriously and I strongly doubt Donald would even give it a second thought because of his primary voter base.

Doesn&#x27;t matter. Bernie will take care.

Donald Trump wants Edward Snowden executed, extrajudicially if necessary.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.techdirt.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;20130624&#x2F;17270323599&#x2F;donald-trump-thinks-extradition-process-is-too-slow-suggests-just-killing-edward-snowden.shtml" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.techdirt.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;20130624&#x2F;17270323599&#x2F;donal...</a>

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;news&#x2F;comments&#x2F;52r6im&#x2F;bernie_sanders_daniel_ellsberg_former_members_of&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;news&#x2F;comments&#x2F;52r6im&#x2F;bernie_sanders...</a> &quot;Bernie Sanders, Daniel Ellsberg, former members of the NSA and more weigh in: &#x27;Edward Snowden did this country a great service. Let him come home&#x27;&quot;For those who have downvoted me!

If it doesn&#x27;t happen now, what &#x27;s the probability that Hilary&#x2F;Donald would grant pardon?

This isn&#x27;t about signatures or authentication, the site says outright that those people are supporters.

According to the comment just above yours, those &quot;signatures&quot; are unauthenticated?

You&#x27;re surprised to see Chomsky there?

The only one I find surprising among those three is Soros. He&#x27;s a pretty Janus-faced individual though in general, so... maybe shouldn&#x27;t even find that surprising anymore.

Holy hell! Looking at the supporters page (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pardonsnowden.org&#x2F;supporters" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pardonsnowden.org&#x2F;supporters</a>) I do have to admit that they&#x27;ve acquired support from some people that I never thought to see there, like Steve Wozniak, Noam Chomsky, and George Soros.

Ford pardoned Nixon for whatever he had done against the country. It&#x27;s possible despite unlikely.

In the case of Ford&#x27;s pardon of Nixon, the pardon covered &quot;any crimes he might have committed against the United States while president,&quot; as Wikipedia currently has it: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Pardon_of_Richard_Nixon" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Pardon_of_Richard_Nixon</a>As the entry goes on to state, that was controversial, but it worked. So it should be able to work in a case like this as well.

Clinton pardoned Marc Rich [0] who was, at the time of the pardon, a fugitive in Switzerland.[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Marc_Rich" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Marc_Rich</a>

can he do that? pardon someone that hasn&#x27;t been apprehended nor trialed yet?

It&#x27;ll be odd if he comes back, safer to remain in exodus.

The UK is even more one-sided totalitarian in their views on state surveillance, so you got a point there.

But he didn&#x27;t just leak information concerning his homeland. He actually leaked information about allies of his homeland e.g. the UK.I&#x27;m pretty sure that alone will ensure he won&#x27;t get pardoned. It could cause one of the biggest diplomatic incidents in history between the US and UK. Particularly with Theresa May as PM - who has been instrumental for years in building up the security services powers.

AIUI petition drives are sometimes used to build mailing lists and drive further actions by signers.

To prevent ballot stuffing I would assume. With a name and email address you might check the validity of a petition by randomly mailing some of the petition signers to validate that they did sign it themselves.

I know. Notice my complaint was about the lack of verification or other genuine need of the information. Not about the request for personal information itself. If they made legitimate use of it (and ONLY legitimate use), I would understand. However, the ones I have tried do not seem to verify anything, and instead use your contact info as a way to send you campaign materials and advertise to you in the future. That&#x27;s the part that rubs me the wrong way - it feels like a scam designed to  get your personal information. And in this age of identity theft, I really have little incentive to risk it.

Petitions cannot&#x2F;should not be anonymous.The fact that your name and address is known to the entity receiving the petition shows that you really mean it. Also, for some entities it might be illegal to be moved by petitions signed by non-citizen. Unfortunately, those petitions systems only ask for your address, not for your citizenship. But we can assume citizenship from the address for the first order.

&gt; The thing I hate about all petition sites is that they ask for my personal informationYes, that&#x27;s how any petition works. People really need to learn the basics of citizenship at school.

The thing I hate about them is that they don&#x27;t also recorded dissenting views and register numbers of dissenters.A petition only works if each vote is tied to a real individual.

The thing I hate about all petition sites is that they ask for my personal information for... what purpose exactly? They don&#x27;t even seem to try to verify anything. They just look like scams to me, which is a shame because I really think they shouldn&#x27;t be...

Descriptive vs normative statements. Surprisingly difficult for people to differentiate between the two.

Interviewer questions have shown more care about Snowden&#x27;s personal drama instead of focusing on the issues of growing censorship and surveillance.I wish people would stop donating money to twitch gamers and instead support journalists who investigate, setup tor-relays&#x2F;seed-boxes and reduce the dependence on centralization.

That&#x27;s just the news cycle right?Until another terrorist attack happens on a favored Western city, Westerners will be ambivalent about ISIL.Until a newspaper prints another photo of a child dead in the sand, Westerners will be ambivalent about refugees.

I think people are confusing your statement of the situation as endorsement of the situation.The reality is, I think you&#x27;re right. Sadly, for the majority of people, this is not an issue they care about.

Trump would, in all likelihood, further attempts to hunt him down - given his stance on spying on Americans.

Sure, that is bad. But on a grand scale of things the president or whether or not one man will be pardoned is not really what matters for the American people. To me it is an important issue, but things like wars, mass surveillance and so on are even more important. And you cannot fix them with a broken parliament. However the parliaments are broken, because its members are invincible [0]. Name recognition beats everything. They do not have to fear to do something wrong but for their names to not be recognized anymore. So money talks.Hard to imagine how this could be fixed. I guess you would have to restrict the amount of money to be used, but who would shoot himself in the foot? You would need shitloads of money from a source, who does not care - rare combination. Also the topic is not as sexy as &quot;curing X&quot;.After that the even bigger problem would be to find a way to get the media to actually report on things and&#x2F;or the people to actually pay attention to such reports. A glimmer of hope to me is Jon Stewart (and the group around him, especially Last Week Tonight).[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.opensecrets.org&#x2F;overview&#x2F;reelect.php" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.opensecrets.org&#x2F;overview&#x2F;reelect.php</a>

The if Hilary claimed she would pardon Snowden I&#x27;d vote for her in a heartbeat. I hate her because to me she seems to want to expand the surveillance state. I hate Trump because with a surveillance state anyone who makes fun of his hands would&#x2F;could be arrested...Hence, at the moment I&#x27;m voting Gary Johnson, who I actually think is the most qualified, but also made it clear he wants to downsize the NSA

And you know what&#x27;s also awful? We expect neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump to pardon Snowden in the future. In this sense, Democrats and Republicans are not all that different. It&#x27;s still all about the interest of the powerful.

Even Snowden agrees that surveillance is necessary. However it is done outside of the public&#x27;s eye and as we have seen without legal authorization. That&#x27;s the part that made him blow the whistle.Mass surveillance is deeply contrarian to our core values as a democratic society. If it is to happen there needs to be a discussion and a public decision. That&#x27;s exactly what is set into motion by the Snowden revelations.

In my opinion, for the sake of security, it is necessary to &quot;cache&quot; the whole Internet communication to prevent terrorists attacks and other dangers.Except you know, it doesn&#x27;t prevent terrorist attacks. At all.All it does is make the pile of hay with the needle in itthat much bigger. And a hell of a lot more expensive to the tax payer that is paying for the privilege of being spied on by their own government.

If you include other agencies or even the whole military-industrial complex, it seems to me that they are both source and solution to the problem. With Saddam still in Iraq, ISIS would not be a thing and there would not be a need for intelligence on them. Doing less can be more.The usual justification for invading becomes ridiculous in that context: We need to restrict the people&#x27;s freedom by spying on them, because we tried to bring freedom to another country.

&quot;...they didn&#x27;t have any big attack...&quot;&quot;Big attacks&quot; are vanishingly rare. But, just for the sake of argument, they haven&#x27;t had an attack until they do.The point of this is the US is actually harvesting way more data than the U.K., and we have so-called &quot;lone wolf&quot; attacks every couple of months.Mass surveillance doesn&#x27;t keep you safe.

&gt; ... it is necessary to &quot;cache&quot; the whole Internet communication to prevent terrorists attacks and other dangers.Keep in mind that while we&#x27;re trying to prevent terrorist attacks against us, we&#x27;re actively and have actually used those same terrorists to further our goals in other countries.

It doesn&#x27;t stop terrorist attacks. You undermined your entire comment by implying that it does.

If you are so sure that this sort of surveillance is effective due to the non happening if a rare event, then I have a tiger repelling rock to sell you. It is garunteed to stop tiger attacks.

And then there are people like me, who don&#x27;t see the situation as black&amp;white, i.e. I am not signing that petition. In my opinion, for the sake of security, it is necessary to &quot;cache&quot; the whole Internet communication to prevent terrorists attacks and other dangers. Like what the Brits are doing and currently they didn&#x27;t have any big attack after the London bombings.I am not an American and I don&#x27;t have a motivation to defend NSA or whoever, I just think that what Snowden did was partially wrong. Of course, caching the Internet like NSA and others are doing has human rights consequences, and those should be discussed publicly. But question the very existence of such practices is unreasonable in the situation the world is in nowadays. There are LOT of people in the world today who would want to wipe off the whole Western civilization, if they could... there must be a protection from them.

I agree.  It&#x27;s like he wasted his efforts.

One could argue, that it was really the press acting here, which as the 4th power is also part of the machine. Also the Nazi trials largely ended legal positivism [0].[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Legal_positivism" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Legal_positivism</a>

Snowden&#x27;s actions were effectively an attack on the mechanisms of governance: if they let him off the hook, they fear they will encourage more people to act like him, and that affects the solidity of the lever of governmental power.If government is a tool, it&#x27;s a rare politician that votes to make the tool less reliable. Note that this is distinct from changing the scope of what the tool can affect: this is about the reliability of the tool. Even politicians that were in favour of what Snowden did, who thought he contributed positively, and voted against surveillance, would still likely baulk at making life too easy for more people like him. That&#x27;s because government is supposed to flow from the top down, and policy change is not supposed to emanate from the machinery. The machinery is supposed to execute the orders of government.

I think the problem is, people do not care anymore. The scandal is over, business as usual. Only a small percentage of the population still cares about Snowden. I think the image of the NSA has been hurt and a change in legislation might get you some positive press in the future, but I do not think that pardoning Snowden would be worth the effort for a politician. On the other hand: Obama probably does not have to care.Edit: I normally don&#x27;t do these edits, but seriously, why am I getting downvoted for this? Obviously this is bad, that does not make it any less true. You must be the ones downvoting sad YouTube videos and the reason why Facebook had to introduce multiple like variants.

To literally see the pardon:<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.historyplace.com&#x2F;speeches&#x2F;speechgfx&#x2F;ford-pardon1.jpg" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.historyplace.com&#x2F;speeches&#x2F;speechgfx&#x2F;ford-pardon1....</a><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.historyplace.com&#x2F;speeches&#x2F;speechgfx&#x2F;ford-pardon2.jpg" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.historyplace.com&#x2F;speeches&#x2F;speechgfx&#x2F;ford-pardon2....</a>

Not true.  See Ford&#x27;s pardon of Nixon.

completely incorrect in regards to a presidential pardon in the US.

You can&#x27;t pardon someone until they&#x27;ve been convicted. Snowden hasn&#x27;t been tried and convicted and so can&#x27;t be pardoned.

You think every IT person in the government should have the ability to disclose any Top Secret programs based only on their own personal opinions about their legality?

The internal mechanisms actually work, if you use them. Snowden has admitted in subsequent interviews to not even trying to report through any channel. Something most people that are not government don&#x27;t realize about whistleblowing is that your options are not just your boss. We can report to any supervisor (given the proper clearance), a branch specifically designed for whistleblowing (including a 24 hour 1-800 number), or to any member of Congress. Do you really think all 600+ members of Congress would have turned him away? Being the Senator or Representative that brought that info forward would have guaranteed re-election... But instead, he handed thousands of pages of classified info over to a news organization and trusted them to sort through it (when he had probably never read through it in full). Now, he is begging for a pardon because it has been hinted that his stay in Russia will be up next year (when his status expires) since he decided to speak out against Putin.

They should be condoning it. For that, a lot of things would have to change first though, like, for example, the community has to come to the realization that the (supposed) ends do not justify the means and that it&#x27;s therefore the right thing to do to whistle-blow about them. They also need to realize that the internal mechanisms to whistle-blow are &quot;not effective&quot;, to say the least.

Technically, whistle-blowers are already supposed to be protected by the law, though in practice they are often not.

Whatever your opinion on the actual Snowden case - I think pardoning someone is seen to active condone whistle-blowing within the miltary &#x2F; intelligence community, which I can&#x27;t see the Government wanting to do.

Treason has a specific two point definition in the US Constitution and it is hard to see how his actions rise to the criteria enumerated therein.Personally, I think he should be criminally pardoned but left open to civil proceedings for breach of contract should his former employer seek to bring forward a suit.

I completely understand what is going wrong and I assume you do too by your vivid explanation. Yet, you spend all your energy explaining it to people on the internet. What I don&#x27;t get is, why don&#x27;t you funnel that energy into making change? Everybody understands what is wrong about being permanently spied on, yet nobody does something.Whether Snowded committed treason cannot be stated in one sentence or even a paragraph - I made a minor edit. He should be put to trial because he evidently broke laws and employee contracts with government institutions.

&gt; Snowden committed treasonThe only people that behaved in a treacherous fashion are the one that are spying on you because for them you&#x27;re just a criminal by default.Furthermore he didn&#x27;t commit treason, he didn&#x27;t spy for a 3rd party country. He revealed to the world the scope of NSA spying and did everybody a big favor. There is nothing democratic with secret laws and spying. Today you cannot say you don&#x27;t know and deny reality. But you can choose to ignore it... until the system turns against you. Today if you accept PRISM you become a willing participent and a slave to that system.What you don&#x27;t understand is one day, an irresponsible administration will come to power and use all this system for its own personal gain. There is nothing stopping that right now. It&#x27;s funny how people get all worked up by Facebook censoring some insignificant content when they directly collude with the government to hand over data. So does Google, Yahoo and all big tech companies in US.

&gt;What he exposed are policies of the United States by people put in power in a democracy and free country.Voting politicians into office does not legitimize any and all potentially illegal and&#x2F;or un-Constitutional activities they or Government agencies carry out.&gt; If you don&#x27;t want that shit happening in your country, let the people in power know.Isn&#x27;t that the point of this petition?&gt; Sadly, American citizens and the West in general have been trained from a young age to be apathetic and those that have the audacity to fight back have been systematically beaten down. They rather create parallax websites with fancy countdowns than actually trying to change something.Whereas you find it more productive to post brave internet messages about how other people should face off with the National Guard, while simultaneously arguing that &quot;no matter how bad&quot; a state behaves, someone who exposes that badness&#x2F;illegality should be tried for treason.

I agree with you that he should stand trial. That&#x27;s what we do in law-based democracies, however justified we consider the individual&#x27;s actions. The best, but unlikely, outcome is that he is given a fair trial, and a fair sentence if he&#x27;s found guilty. But there&#x27;s the rub - there&#x27;s no way he&#x27;ll get either a fair trial or sentence (or indeed a pardon). Whistleblowers everywhere would be encouraged if they believed they&#x27;d get fair treatment after leaking state secrets.So we&#x27;ll continue with what we have. Some people saying he&#x27;s completely innocent, others saying he&#x27;s completely guilty, and he himself will probably spend the foreseeable future right where he is.

Kind of difficult to let your elected sycophants know you don&#x27;t want it happening when nobody knows it&#x27;s happening.

Snowden should be put on trial for committing treason. No matter how bad it is what he exposed. He broke the law[0]. What he exposed are policies of the United States by people put in power in a democracy and free country.If you don&#x27;t want that shit happening in your country, let the people in power know. Go on the streets. Millions of poeple are not happy with what is going on, but literally nothing changed. Sadly, American citizens and the West in general have been trained from a young age to be apathetic and those that have the audacity to fight back have been systematically beaten down. They rather create parallax websites with fancy countdowns than actually trying to change something.When&#x27;s the last time they&#x27;ve had to mobilize the National Guard because there was a protest? The entire American economy could collapse because of a giant banking scandal and people wouldn&#x27;t even raise a fist in anger.[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Edward_Snowden#Criminal_charges" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Edward_Snowden#Criminal_charge...</a>

It&#x27;s a shame you&#x27;re being downvoted for something that&#x27;s entirely possible.

Maybe he would have a tragic car accident, or commit suicide.

Even if he gets pardoned, I think he will just disappear.

Yep, she was front page news on the BBC only this morning.

Just last night on the radio they were talking about Manning ending a hunger strike and getting some medical attention and having the surgery suggested by her psych doctor.

Snowden carte blanche stole and gave up &quot;TONS of data about TONS of things&quot;, trusting only Greenwald, et al to filter out sensitive data.

Basically same thing Snowden did except he leaked to fewer people who were a bit more reliable. The problems were two fold:1. A pile of unredacted, classified, and legitimate operations in the hand of foreigners which included at least two being targeted by them. They should&#x27;ve never had this information. He could have cherry-picked it to whistleblowing stuff during time he organized all of it but didn&#x27;t. I&#x27;d have done the opposite to protect legit ops and sources.2. He put all that at risk of foreign agencies, esp in Russia or China, getting it given their hackers are badass while reporters&#x27; IT groups are... average. After seeing Citizenfour, I was pretty confident his stuff could&#x27;ve been grabbed multiple times if he didn&#x27;t have the element of surprise. It was also clear his tradecraft was weak vs what I read about in espionage non-fiction. I bet the journalists more so.So, definitely parallels to Manning. I expected it from Manning over Snowden given Manning was a stressed-out youth going through an identity crisis in a war zone whereas Snowden was a trained spy claiming moral high ground in general and aiming to protect decent people. I&#x27;m not letting him off on dumping the foreign stuff. Especially while many of the targets do the same shit to us with local, legal protections for their own spies doing it. He needs to own up to that.

I&#x27;m for a pardon for Snowden, but not Manning. Snowden released info on a deeply classified and unethical program, targeted to dismantle the programs in question. Manning carte blanche released TONS of data about TONS of things, trusting only Wikileaks to filter out sensitive data.

&gt; What did she release that made this country &quot;better&quot;.The truth. You deserve to know what crimes are committed in your name.

The journalists&#x27; leaks were (arguably, I think I&#x27;d agree though) controlled and focussed. Snowden gave them the entire lot and handed judgement over to them.Didn&#x27;t he?

I have mixed feelings about Manning.  What did she release that made this country &quot;better&quot;.  Snowdon&#x27;s leaks were controlled, and focused.  The content has had a meaningful impact.

Also don&#x27;t forget about Manning who actually went to prison and is not getting any publicity now.

I hope that was sarcastic.Otherwise it&#x27;s hilarious, especially in this context.

As an US citizen, you don&#x27;t have to fear, you have freedom of speech.

You&#x27;re allowed your quota of one medium-impact dissident action per week, just like everyone else. As it helps to keep up maintaining the illusion of democracy and free speech, you are actually doing your country a great service.If you start to do more, however... Consider yourself warned. ^^In this case, I can reassure you though:Online petition clicktivism has been shown to be very ineffective, so it&#x27;s only considered a minor-impact dissident action. You are allowed five of those per week. ;)

the number of chilling-effect style questions I have to ask myself increases every damn week.you know what&#x27;s even scarier? I&#x27;m scared to to even write about what those situations were for the same reason they arose in the first place. Now some friends tell me there is a threat to the legality of tor in the US, I&#x27;m actually starting to become a bit panicked by it.

Precisely.And even as a non-U.S. national I worry if it would land me in trouble if I wanted simply to visit the U.S. on holiday again.

But it&#x27;s also worse in a way because many people who sign these petitions think they are actually helping so they are less likely to do something more which might actually help. If they forward it to five people and create awareness then they are helping a little. If they just sign and go on their way they are doing no more than the guy who does nothing.

When I was a kid in the 70s, you could listen to distant shortwave stations and if you heard them on a certain time and freq, you could send a note and get a postcard to collect. So we picked up Moscow and thought that would be cool for the collection. We wanted to make sure we weren&#x27;t going to get in trouble or a watchlist (McArthy was very fresh on our minds) so we called the FBI office first; they were amused we&#x27;d ask.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;QSL_card" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;QSL_card</a>

Quite. I find this short interview with Pete Seeger is interesting in this context:&quot;Pete Seeger on being Black Listed in America, 1965: CBC Archives | CBC&quot;
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Y0_IME9WsHQ" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Y0_IME9WsHQ</a>I find it hard to believe anyone would seriously say that Pete Seeger should be on the list of people that should be feared for their &quot;un-American&quot; leanings today, but in the past apparently several people thought he was worthy of that label.

You know what? I don&#x27;t think that&#x27;s an unreasonable concern and it&#x27;s exactly why this situation is so horrible. It&#x27;s the return cold war communism paranoia. &quot;Of course I&#x27;m allowed to do this, but will this get me on some watchlist?&quot;I guess the ethical answer is that, the more people will sign this (think a million?), the less likely it is to be used as some kind of filter. Even though what&#x27;s one million names in a database? Sigh... Awful.

The UK&#x27;s &quot;peak &#x27;socialism&#x27;&quot; time was in the past. Depending on how you apply metrics to socialism it would either be the good parts (Attlee&#x2F;Bevan establishing schools and NHS after the war) or the bad parts (&quot;winter of discontent&quot; 78&#x2F;79).UK surveillance is part of the permanent state and is imperialist in nature.In some ways, the UK is less authoritarian than in the past - the Human Rights Act has had a real effect, along with the Good Friday Agreement. There are no longer troops deployed in the streets with live ammunition nor elected MPs who are forbidden to speak on television.

I am reasonably certain signing this petition would increase your bad karma with NSA. This in itself may not cause a problem but next time you come on their radar this might hurt you.&gt; A mode of thought I would expect in socialist countries, not the US...USA is moving rapidly towards socialism though it is much behind than say UK or France. This sort of government overreach is inevitable.

Sadly you&#x27;ve almost certainly been added to a list simply for commenting on this article.

The link to the international campaign is broken and results in a 404 not found for me... did it work for you?

It&#x27;s awful that you are thinking about this, imho, as am I. I signed it, because I&#x27;d prefer not to live under an unaccountable surveillance superpower.Being in Australia, I&#x27;m at best, someone that kowtows to a surveillance superpower. Sucks to be me, I can&#x27;t even vote to not be surveilled.

Okay, not to break up the tinfoil hat party here, but you&#x27;re not going to get dragged off to US prison for following Birgitta Jónsdóttir (Icelandic, not Swedish) on Twitter.

About 3 years ago, a story broke up about a three-letter agency requesting from Twitter (subpoena IIRC) the list of handles who were following a particular Swedish Pirate Party politician.I remember reading the article via twitter and after a while watching a tweet from the politician in question appear in timeline.I didn&#x27;t even recall following her, but at some point in time I did. I froze and panicked, my twitter account is eponymous.What will happen to me when I cross the US border? Hopefully&#x2F;Probably nothing, but the thought lies in the back of my mind.

The NSA most likely already knows this about you if you have a twitter or facebook.

At the very least you&#x27;ll be placed on some form of watch list and labelled a domestic extremist.

Drawing attention is not an effective remedy against abuses by people who aren&#x27;t held accountable:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.techdirt.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;20130923&#x2F;11543424624&#x2F;border-patrols-horrific-treatment-medias-producer-family-friends-highlights-lack-accountability-dhs.shtml" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.techdirt.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;20130923&#x2F;11543424624&#x2F;borde...</a>

&gt; I don&#x27;t understand how an American citizen could be afraid of exercising their free speech rights -- if they are violated, then one can vocally draw attention to their situation. I&#x27;m really not afraid of repercussions as a random American.Because some random American has no practical recourse in such an event.

I signed it and to be honest I&#x27;m not the biggest fan of Snowden but think he deserves an opportunity for pardon.I&#x27;m honestly not the slightest bit afraid of retaliation, and if I was targeted it would be evidence in favor of Snowden&#x27;s cause.I don&#x27;t understand how an American citizen could be afraid of exercising their free speech rights -- if they are violated, then one can vocally draw attention to their situation. I&#x27;m really not afraid of repercussions as a random American.

I accept that I&#x27;ve probably said enough nice or not-bad things about Ed Snowden that I&#x27;d probably never get a security clearance as a U.S. citizen; and as a dual citizen I have no hope at all to begin with.

To quote a man who was actively surveilled by the US government for much of his later life and no one believed him...&quot;They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one&#x27;s country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.&quot;-Earnest Hemingway

Your comment puts Snowden&#x27;s actions in perspective. He risked his liberty, if not life, so that we could learn about the scope of US mass surveillance.You worry about the risk of being registered as a Snowden sympathizer if you voice your support and the discomfort that might bring with it.Democracy and rule of law doesn&#x27;t come for free.

In fact, not being on any list is a reason for being on a watchlist all by itself. What is that person trying so hard to hide?

Assuming any of those lists exist, you&#x27;re not trying hard enough if you&#x27;re not already on them.

According to a journalist who gave a talk here (Stuttgart, Germany) last week, there is a speed radar and license plate scanner at the local NSA installation, and going by too slow gets you on the &#x27;suspicious people&#x27; list.

If you aren&#x27;t willing to risk being on the NSA&#x27;s shit list, we will never be able to break free of their oppression. Action breeds confidence.

I think signing that petition is the least of your worries, the amount of data already collected about you including this comment here will be used to profile you for years to come.

&quot;You shouldn&#x27;t change your behavior because a government agency somewhere is doing the wrong thing. If we sacrifice our values because were afraid we don&#x27;t care about those values very much.&quot; ~ Edward Snowden<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=XEVlyP4_11M#t=1840" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=XEVlyP4_11M#t=1840</a>

&gt; By logging into &quot;hacker news&quot; regularly, mentioning the NSA (and probably other key terms: data collection, US citizen) I&#x27;m sure you are already on a list.If the NSA really does maintain these macabre &quot;lists&quot;, it&#x27;s kind of hard to believe they&#x27;d be so unsophisticated as to put you on one for visiting a website called &quot;Hacker News&quot; that has nothing to do with the definition of &quot;hacking&quot; that they care about.

By logging into &quot;hacker news&quot; regularly, mentioning the NSA (and probably other key terms: data collection, US citizen) I&#x27;m sure you are already on a list.

In socialist countries... they sign it all for you already.

I had the same thought, but I signed it, because he did a helluva lot more for me than sign a petition, and also because &quot;failing to do the right thing because of concerns about your personal safety&#x2F;convenience&quot; is known more succinctly as cowardice.(Whether &quot;signing an online petition&quot; is &quot;doing the right thing&quot; is outside the scope of this comment.)

I don&#x27;t think the paranoia is unreasonable, however, it is exactly this sort of self censorship that dictatorships bank on to stay in power. People don&#x27;t speak out for fear of repercussions. Snowden sacrificed almost everything to do what was right by not only the people of the U.S. but what was right for the people of the world.I think it&#x27;s only right that we all put our neck out for him, the same as he did for us - if only to say thank you for having our backs. I&#x27;m signing it.Edit: I have signed it

Nazi and socialist ideology is quite close. After all, the S in NSDAP stands for Socialist, and they targeted same voters.

Most Americans have no idea that socialism != communism.The latter meaning is mostly used when referring to the former. But this is only kind of interesting if you&#x27;re not American. :)

&gt; A mode of thought I would expect in socialist countries, not the US...It&#x27;s ironic that given all the valid concerns in your post, you also fell for the oldest piece of propaganda in the book by the very government you&#x27;re concerned about and that you think that socialism has something to do with dictatorships, rather than it being just an idea that itself has nothing to do with dictatorships in itself, but was in the past implemented by dictators, same as capitalism was in Latin America and elsewhere.Nazi ideology is much more inherently tied to strongmen and dictatorships than socialist ideology is.You also seem to be talking about communism, rather than socialism as such and fail to see the distinction between these two, or indeed between communism and Stalinism, but that&#x27;s for a longer discussion...

Normally I&#x27;d call that paranoia. But after reading about the case in which a Goldman Sachs programmer aroused suspicion [0] from the FBI for using &quot;Subversion&quot; and occasionally erasing his &quot;bash history&quot;, I think it&#x27;s reasonable to remember that anything you say can and will be used against use in the eyes of the law[0] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.vanityfair.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;2013&#x2F;09&#x2F;michael-lewis-goldman-sachs-programmer" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.vanityfair.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;2013&#x2F;09&#x2F;michael-lewis-goldman...</a>

All acts of resistance have consequences. That&#x27;s because it&#x27;s important, and &quot;they&quot; know it&#x27;s important. I think it&#x27;s reasonable to assume this gets you put on a watchlist if you&#x27;re not already.As others have (snarkily) pointed out, this is a pretty mild form of resistance, so I&#x27;d imagine the consequences would be pretty mild.

That&#x27;s exactly what they want you to think! :tinfoilhat:

Which country would you suggest is the most free today? Not trolling, just wondering if I was going to move somewhere else, where would I go?

Noam Chomsky talks a lot about &quot;Manufacturing Consent&quot; (he wrote a book with this title). He says that in a democratic society you can&#x27;t use force to control people, so you have to control them by controlling attitudes an opinions instead.It works well, and the people of the United States are heavily controlled by the elite, who in this case are the corporations and the media companies they control.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=WG5YTEOWCpE" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=WG5YTEOWCpE</a><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=kusAX4Th4N8" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=kusAX4Th4N8</a>

I think you are mistaking the resulting meta-consciousness created from the game theory in society and government with individual&#x27;s based consciousness and some internal intent to deceive. While I would agree the government may try to deceive us, it does so by formally rationalizing government individual&#x27;s actions as needed to &quot;protect&quot; us from threats. There is likely not one or two people &quot;plotting&quot; out what is happening. It&#x27;s more probable that something like the angry meme phenomenon[1] has taken root in our government and is now attempting to isolate itself from harm. I think this came about because we tend to become fearful about things that may happen if we don&#x27;t do X, Y and Z to stop them before they happen and those X, Y and Z things are now hard coded into our government and affecting the game theory around it. As a result, you get a meta-govt-conscious thing acting irrationally and making everyone very nervous as a result.Or as Gene Belcher put it, &quot;Everything is randomness and chaos.&quot;[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc</a>

As an US citizen, I no longer salute that piece of cloth or sing the national anthem at sports games. I don&#x27;t even bother standing for it and encourage others to do the same to show our distaste for how our own government treats us.I was disgusted in the 2000&#x27;s when being against the Iraq war was not only being flaunted unpatriotic but not supporting our troops. That&#x27;s BS. I support our troops and would rather not have seen them deployed to conduct Cheney&#x27;s bidding.I will sign the petition and if some asshole gives me trouble at the border for it, so what? I&#x27;m a US citizen and entitled to re-enter my country. F them.&quot;If patriotism is &#x27;the last refuge of a scoundrel,&#x27; it is not merely because evil deeds may be performed in the name of patriotism, but because patriotic fervor can obliterate moral distinctions altogether”
~ Ralph B. Perry

hacker news is becoming crazier every day

&gt;We salute the flag and sing the national anthem at games. We have the presidents&#x27; pictures on the walls of our classrooms. We chant &quot;USA&quot; at political rallies.That does sound very authoritarian, honestly. Maybe that&#x27;s why there are so many libertarians in the US - it&#x27;s a reaction to the authoritarianism in American culture.

Yeah, destruction of evidence and seafood smuggling are just everyday activities.(those are both real examples from the book...whether there was a great deal of intent in the lobster tail case is disputed, but it was a pattern of shipments involving thousands and thousands of pounds of tails)

&gt; A mode of thought I would expect in socialist countries, not the US...The United States government has done an excellent bit of propaganda to convince the bulk of the public that they are the most free people on earth. We salute the flag and sing the national anthem at games. We have the presidents&#x27; pictures on the walls of our classrooms. We chant &quot;USA&quot; at political rallies.But the government of the United States has perpetrated terrible violence and destruction of liberty against its own citizens and many more abroad. Through endless military engagement abroad to harassment, detainment, and imprisonment at home, the government serves its own interests first, and enhancing and preserving your liberty is not among them.I should be very concerned about coming to the attention of anyone within government -- at any level. Even the local code enforcement board can extract time, energy, and money from you should you come under scrutiny.But as others have said, you&#x27;re already on the lists. No need to be paranoid. Go ahead and sign the Snowden petition. It&#x27;s just one more data point on your dossier. The government already has enough on you to put you away for life if you become inconvenient to the state. Three Felonies a Day[1] and all that.[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent&#x2F;dp&#x2F;1594035229&#x2F;ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1473864155&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=three+felonies+a+day" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent&#x2F;dp...</a>

It&#x27;s not so much about mass surveillance but rather things like the TSA and stupid immigration policies which are at play here.Really, spotting your name on a petition isn&#x27;t mass surveillance. It&#x27;s not even a breach of privacy in any sense, because that&#x27;s exactly what petitions are for.

This chilling effect has a counterpart which would be directly amplified by pardoning Snowden.In short, if Snowden gets pardoned, it will encourage further people to leak confidential documents and violate the Espionage act since they will be emboldened by the thought they might get pardoned down the road.

chilling effects need to be kept in perspective; for example, while I&#x27;m completely fearless about telling off the govt whenever I wish, no way I&#x27;m going to reveal how I feel about Snowden to the HN community: I&#x27;d be ostracized!

Hold on... How is this a chilling effect from mass surveillance? Signing a petition is an act of public announcement that you support something.

Got me wondering if one&#x27;s PGP fingerprint (or other cryptographic fingerprints) are &quot;selectors&quot; in XKEYSCORE

I used to work for the UK National Council for Civil Liberties - the UK ACLU if you like. (I was trying to prevent legislation removing right to silence in UK).The organisation was well respected and had before I got there forced Britain&#x27;s Security Services to admit and release to holding files on all the workers there - people who later became cabinet ministers under Blair &#x2F; brown.I have always assumed I also have a very thin file.I am not ashamed of having that file or have having taken democratic action to change my society. What I am ashamed of is having done it so badly - the campaign did not really use web or email (This was the when of Internet cafes), I had no suit when I went to the Lords and got flustered on radio interviews.So in answer to you, sign the petition. Be proud of your dissent and mostly do your best to make an effective protester. there is plenty of time to turn the ship around before western democracies become irredeemable. But we do need to Start. Why not here?

What is especially worrying (as partially evidenced by the OP) is that it&#x27;s difficult--if not impossible, due to the proliferation of secret laws and secret courts--to know what is legal, both for oneself and for the government. Most people are not willing to test the legality of the no-fly list, so they will self-censor to avoid the risk of being added to it. The recent raid of Tor exit node operators in Seattle is enough to discourage future operators even if the raid was illegal. The government leverages a massive power and information asymmetry in the ability to argue its case in court and in the consequences for breaking the law.

nailed it.i appreciate the parent&#x27;s frank concern regarding signing this Petition &quot;God, I hate how quickly you can get paranoid these days. A mode of thought I would expect in socialist countries, not the US...&quot;your response is the body punch that reminds us who is the person at the heart of this petition and that whatever the risks referred to in the parent, they are minuscule by comparisonas you said &quot;the least we can do&quot;

This is the so-called &quot;chilling effect&quot; that&#x27;s one of the most worrying implications of mass surveillance on a society... people feel afraid to speak out due to a concern they may be added to a list of some sort, and face negative real-life repercussions due to expressing their free speech.There were a couple of times where I actually called the public contact numbers for NSA &amp; GCHQ regarding particular stories about which I was especially upset, identifying myself by name and politely but firmly expressing my views. NSA told me to go away, but surprisingly the woman at GCHQ heard me out for several minutes and let me finish my rant. That&#x27;s the British establishment for you I guess - they can be assholes, but polite assholes.Snowden risked everything to inform us all of the crimes of the FVEY governments and the least we can all do is take inspiration from his actions and stand up and publicly make our views known, whatever they may be. The day people stop being willing to express their political views publicly is the day we lose something very important.NSA - my name and XKEYSCORE selectors are in my profile. Feel free to add me to whatever lists I&#x27;m not already on.

North Koreans see themselves as &#x27;The Cleanest People&#x27;. We see ourselves as the freest. We&#x27;re both wrong.

&gt; A mode of thought I would expect in socialist countries, not the US...What is your definition of &quot;socialist&quot; ? A lot of European countries are &quot;socialists&quot; in a way (always a nuance) but they don&#x27;t have an aggressive kind of local NSA (even if some have a local NSA).

I tend to doubt your fear is to have your &quot;terrorism points&quot; incremented in some database, but rather the cold and distant nature of the federal government makes it nearly impossible to reason through how you&#x27;re _not_ a terrorist (assuming you&#x27;re not). There&#x27;s no organized mechanism by which you can disprove your terrorism affiliations. Otherwise, being put in a database would be as much an issue as changing the wrong address on your insurance policy.

Risks aside, signing this is useless. President Obama hates whistleblowers and will not pardon Mr. Snowden. I would be willing to put money on it.

&gt; what would the risk be for me to sign this?You could end up in prison. It&#x27;s not likely, but it&#x27;s possible. Signing this petition could get your name on a secret list of people who are likely terrorist sympathizers, and that in turn could lead to your arrest on trumped-up charges, or perhaps even non-trumped-up charges based on coincidental circumstances that would never have been noticed had you not signed. There are also a whole host of other less serious possible consequences. You could end up on the no-fly list. You could be denied a government job. Who knows?And that is exactly why you must sign. Ed Snowden put a lot on the line so that we can know for sure that we are facing risks like this, and possibly even do something about it. The least we can do IMHO is to take a small risk to help him come home. That&#x27;s why I signed (and made a modest donation).

&quot;They seem to have learned the habit of cowering before authority even when
not actually threatened. How very nice for authority. I decided not to
learn this particular lesson.&quot; -- Richard Stallman (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.donhopkins.com&#x2F;drupal&#x2F;node&#x2F;109" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.donhopkins.com&#x2F;drupal&#x2F;node&#x2F;109</a>)

When you start to feel that way is when you need to stand up the most. We get further into this mess by staying silent out of fear and we get out of it by being millions strong and protesting the state of things.

The fact that the United States government can indiscriminately designate people as being &quot;in trouble&quot; and then use this as an excuse to trample upon their rights. The real trouble is a situation in which Snowden is not pardoned.

First the pardon will never happen. Neither Obama nor any other President can or will pardon him, lest they encourage the next Snowden. So signing it will not actually help Snowden.Second, it&#x27;s entirely possible that your fears will come true - obviously the government will receive your information and they can use it how they see fit. Not only that, but they appear to be running a co-registration campaign with the ACLU, and you don&#x27;t know exactly who else will get your name, email, and physical address, or who those people will sell it to. I would be also curious to see what kind of remarketing cookies they are using. You can easily be put in the bucket of &quot;HN users that visited the support Snowden page&quot; and be stalked accordingly by advertisers across millions of Adsense-supported sites, Google search, Facebook, and the general web with just two or three remarketing cookies.The creators of this site undoubtedly know that their stated goal will never be accomplished. So this looks more like an attempt to build a marketing database of people with a specific viewpoint than anything else.

If you signed a petition in Thailand, and it had anything to do with the royal family, then you would be arrested and imprisoned under the lese majeste laws. If you signed a petition in North Korea or Syria, you would be tortured and killed.Be thankful that you can exercise your right to sign this petition in the US, and the only thing you might need to worry about is increased scrutiny from the IRS.

For a non-US citizen it might be a case, especially if they are thinking about moving there eventually.

I&#x27;ve literally never seen anything like that being trotted out in a case.

Literally millions of Americans think Snowden should be pardoned. Expressing that belief won&#x27;t make me a target.That being said, I could see the government trotting it out if there were ever a separate case against you. &quot;captainmuon is already known to harbor sympathies for known traitor Edward Snowden.&quot;

I don&#x27;t think they would have a problem with people signing this. It lets the people blow off steam with no real effect. Once you sign it, you think &quot;well, I&#x27;ve done my part. I signed the online petition, and changed my Twitter&#x2F;Facebook icon.&quot;

The fact that you, the US citizen, asks this questions and has these worries says everything about what US has become, unfortunately.

Why do you think this won&#x27;t happen if you write that exact comment here? Quite sure for writing here we are all added to the database or our attention factor gets slightly increased if we already are in it, maybe depending on how critical the word cloud of our comment looks to their analytics software. And don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s different if you are a US citizen or not. They probably add people from everywhere. A few billion data sets are probably not as big a deal anymore nowadays.

I don&#x27;t know what to make of this. We lose if Snowden is &quot;pardoned&quot;, because that would mean he did something morally wrong. Snowden loses his life in the US if he&#x27;s not pardoned.I&#x27;m not American, but the issue cuts across all countries and Snowden is a representative.

A lot of Germans had this attitude back in the late 30s early 40s.

This exactly why I think we should sign it.  The fact that you now second guess everything shows this is very wrong.  It will only get worse if we keep our mouths closed.

Even if there is some correlation between signing this petition and some of the things you say, the expected (in the statistical sense) damage to you is tiny compared to the cause in question and the principles, so frankly I think it is lame of you to even be writing about this, and I don&#x27;t think it should be the top comment. It makes HN readers look like a bunch of #firstworldproblemers lacking perspective and fretting about minor inconveniences to their privileged lifestyles.

Pretty sure I was denied clearance because I had made pro-Snowden remarks in public.

I think you&#x27;re being ridiculous. This is being run through the ACLU, which has over 500,000 members.I just signed and donated $50.

I think about this sort of thing quite often, actually: Your fears are exactly why i&#x27;ve not signed it. I&#x27;m American, living in Norway. I don&#x27;t really plan on living in the states again, but I very much want to be able to visit family. I already wonder if that doesn&#x27;t put me on some sort of secret list, but there isn&#x27;t a decent way for me to find out. I don&#x27;t even feel I have adequate representation anymore - I can vote based on my previous address in the US, but I highly doubt I&#x27;d be listened to. Not that it was adequate to begin with, but I at least had the facade.It is really unnerving truth be told.

&gt; I wonder if I (a US citizen) might get trouble the next time at the border?I would be hugely surprised to learn that anybody would spend any time or attention to whoever votes how on a petition. There are thousands of those and only so many border agents, and making trouble to an US citizen carries a non-zero risk. Your profile is too low for that.&gt; Or get a higher score in some database, that combined with other things might get me into trouble?Possible, but other things should be like donating to known ISIS front or frequenting a Hezbollah darksite, or something like that. Otherwise it&#x27;s just noise.&gt; Increased scrutiny from the IRSUnlikely, IRS is interested in money, not online petitions. You&#x27;d need to do something more spectacular to deserve special scrutiny, that puts you out of the crowd. Voting on online petition puts you in the crowd.&gt; but &quot;they&quot; might say hell why not?Customized treatment on these scales is rather expensive. If voting on online petition had triggered customized treatment, they&#x27;d have to do a lot of useless &quot;increased scrutiny&quot;. If they did, you won&#x27;t be different from millions of people, but most probably they don&#x27;t.&gt; Inability to get security clearances in future?Security clearance is one area where such scrutiny could be warranted. But given who gets clearances, at least at low levels (like terror operatives working at airports and security companies, etc.) not likely unless we&#x27;re talking about very high clearance levels.&gt; Being targeted for more intense data collection by the NSA?Unlikely, again, you&#x27;d have to get out of the noise level for that and voting on a petition does not do that. If you&#x27;d be a close personal friend of Snowden then it&#x27;d be a different thing...If Snowden revealed something is that the NSA and accompanied services are very smart, very powerful and very resourceful in achieving their goals. Nothing suggests they are so stupid as being unable to distinguish between signal and noise. They may be collecting a lot, but it all would be useless if they couldn&#x27;t distinguish between interesting things and noise. Signing an online petition is noise.

There might be a risk. But if you do not act the risk is much higher. I am not talking about social good or sacrifice. Just think about the state in which your children&#x27;s and their children&#x27;s will live in. It is not worth living in a state like that. Its like we are being prepared for breeding future slaves.

Asking, &quot;Will the government persecute me if I democratically voice my
opinion against a crime executed by the same government?&quot;, is exactly
the type of questioning that should be avoided.It is same as asking, &quot;Will the mafia kill me if I speak the truth about
the murder as an eyewitness?&quot; Government is not supposed to operate like
a mafia. (But sure they can violate Human Rights and the Constitution, and
public will not even care.)However, I am afraid by asking that very question we are already talking
from within the context of a regime that is &quot;totalitarian&quot;. The various
degrees to which an average US citizen believes that they are not in a
totalitarian country unlike those &quot;other&quot; &quot;socialist&quot; or whatever
countries out there, is irrelevant:Surveillance is Totalitarianism.It is no surprise for people get paranoid in a country with large-scale
surveillance technology. And that&#x27;s the point. Because it has never been
merely about the &quot;terrorists&quot; who are &quot;out there&quot;...For people who are concerned about getting a &quot;high score&quot; in whatever
threat inventory, we are all a threat already. That&#x27;s the very basic
rationale behind mass-surveillance. For the record, a majority of HN
members would hypothetically get pretty &quot;high scores&quot;...Back to the topic of the thread, Obama will not pardon Snowden.

&gt; A mode of thought I would expect in socialist countries, not the US...what does socialism have to do with this? maybe you meant to say &quot;a mode of thought I would expect in totalitarian police states...&quot;it&#x27;s true that some totalitarian police states have, nominally if not really in practice, also been socialist. however, there have been just as many fascist, capitalist, monarchist, and theocratic totalitarian police states as well.so I ask again...what does socialism have to do with this?

I had a similar thought, but it was more just normal internet guardedness: I don&#x27;t know who these people are that are asking for my PII.

Uhm... Bernie Sanders signed this. I think you&#x27;ll be okay.

Paranoid? Naah. I&#x27;m working on the assumption this site (pardonsnowden.org) is run by the CIA, or one of it&#x27;s proxies, whatever, to gather the names of Snowden sympathisers.Surely, right. If history has taught us anything. I mean, we know some of the things the CIA has gotten up in the past.

I made a small donation to Glenn Greenwald, back when he was writing for Salon. (Back when concerns were hanging chads, weapons of mass deception, and the like.)I&#x27;ve had occasion in recent years to speculate how many lists that has put me on. And to explain to a few friends &quot;three degrees of separation&quot; and what that might imply for them, as well.I don&#x27;t particularly like being listed. But I really don&#x27;t like and fear the utter lack of transparency and accountability, and how such information can and apparently is &quot;weaponized&quot; against individuals for personal, political, and financial objectives.Not only is it scary. It is, ultimately, a wasteful mis-use of resources. All this dirt digging and slinging and lawyering up takes away from more useful activity. Like fixing blight and illness before it engenders disfunction.Call me an optimist. I believe -- or at least hope -- that we can do better.I&#x27;m tired of living in perpetual fear.

The problem seems to be that you use &quot;socialist&quot; as a replacement for totalitarian. And since you don&#x27;t even know your enemy...

They would have to man in the middle the petition site to log you as it is in https. Can they do that for everybody just like that? I am not sure.

Better to be on the right side of history. I mean, if you are asking the question, you have already made a personal decision that you would like to sign it. Not doing so would be betraying yourself.  That would be worse than not getting a security clearance I would have thought.  In any case, I doubt the spooks would be really that bothered. You can still spy AND take the moral high road :-)

I&#x27;d be more worried about the consequences of not signing it.

&gt; A mode of thought I would expect in socialist countries, not the US...I hate this notion. I stay in India -- a socialist nation, which has its own problems but &quot;lack of freedom&quot; compared to any other nation in the world is not one of them.

I think the point is, the reason you are doing this is to mitigate the very same effects you are afraid from.You are now concerned about getting on the no-fly list.Think about being concerned doing a Google Search, Buying this item, Putting much money into this and this.

Maybe a naive question, but what would the risk be for me to sign this? I wonder if I (a US citizen) might get trouble the next time at the border? Or get a higher score in some database, that combined with other things might get me into trouble? Increased scrutiny from the IRS (which should have nothing to do with this, but &quot;they&quot; might say hell why not?)? Inability to get security clearances in future? Being targeted for more intense data collection by the NSA?God, I hate how quickly you can get paranoid these days. A mode of thought I would expect in socialist countries, not the US...

Not at all (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Social_anarchism" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Social_anarchism</a>).

Of course not a single one of the countries you are referring to consider their countries to be communist, but socialist.

Socrates is a philosopher.Socrates is a man.Conclusion, all philosophers are men.

They meant &quot;communist&quot;, I assume, and communist countries are always totalitarian, I can&#x27;t think of an exception.

Not sure it’s a fair argument to exclude dozens of the wealthiest countries in the world because they own definition of socialism —that they practice— does not meet your imagined one.The definition is not complicated: have key industrial assets, notably transport infrastructure, owned by public authorities.

&quot;Socialist&quot; is too general a descriptor, and has been deliberately ruined by overgeneralisation. The distinction should be between &quot;Social Democrat&quot; and &quot;Communist&quot;. The former believe in normal multi-party states with free elections.

In practice any countries that tried going the socialist route were immediately sabotaged and undermined by capitalist countries, notably the United States. When you are threatened from outside, authoritarianism becomes easy to take hold.There were plenty of authoritarian capitalist countries, even those deemed &quot;successful&quot;, e.g. modern Singapore or South Korea, Argentina, and others during periods of 20th century.And on the other hand, there are democratic non-authoritarian socialist countries like Bolivia or even Venezuela.

Those were all the cases where socialism was installed through some form of revolution or war. It&#x27;s not  specific just to socialism, basically any movement that has risen to the power by force will try to use that same force to stay in power (there are exceptions, of course, but rare).

Everyone disagrees what socialism is. Is Nordic or German social democracy not socialism? Maybe it isn&#x27;t. But what about all the millions people in those countries that proudly claim to be &quot;socialists&quot; but never ever want to abolish the free market or parliamentary democracy?&quot;Socialism&quot; can either be a common name for ALL the ideologies that branched from the original throughout history, or it can be a specific ideology that is closer to what we today would call &quot;Communism&quot;. It&#x27;s not entirely clear which is meant, if someone says &quot;socialism&quot; or that they are &quot;socialists&quot;.

Whenever anyone from the US is involved, there is invariably some confusion between socialism as defined by Marxists and Leninists, and socialism as defined by social democrats. Most people in Europe mean social democracy when they talk about socialism, except when they talk historically, say, about the GDR.You must always assume that a US citizen does not know that social democracy existed before communism was even invented, and that liberalism has right-wing and left-wing branches.It is possible to roughly translate between the jargons, though:US progressive leftists ~ EU democratic socialistsUS libertarians ~ EU right wing nutcases, confused anarchists (ardent US libertarians) or slightly confused liberals (moderate US libertarians)US liberals ~ EU anti-capitalist scum (it&#x27;s what it means translated, but nobody says that in the EU, of course)I could go on but prefer to stop here, because there will always be some smartass who thinks he knows better and doesn&#x27;t realize that words are just words and it&#x27;s the concepts that count anyway. I&#x27;m prepared to get downvoted by butthurt Americans.

In theory those are different. In practice though there hasn&#x27;t been a single socialist country that hasn&#x27;t at least devolved into authoritarianism or even has been so right from the start (Scandinavian Socialism and modern day German
Social Market Economy could be considered exceptions but I doubt these can really be considered socialist.).People keep saying: &quot;This isn&#x27;t true socialism.&quot; Well, then true socialism seems to be nothing but a pipe dream that in reality can&#x27;t be implemented and hence should either be revised or replaced by a better concept.

I believe when you wrote &quot;socialist&quot; you meant &quot;authoritarianist&quot;? Please don&#x27;t mix-up those two concepts