Whistleblower Edward Snowden who leaked classified information of the Benghazi attack in 2012, revealing four most top profile American citizens, is now under the tussle of being pardoned or not.
The leaks created a huge chaos in the world media and thus resulted in a huge controversy. The documents that Snowden revealed provided the public with the information of the secretive information of the NSA and its intelligence partner's secretive mass surveillance programs and capabilities.
However, the reaction of the U.S. government to such events adjudicated him to be criminal, operating without any public oversight and outside the limit of the U.S. Constitution. Therefore, the U.S. government charged Snowden with "theft of Government property", and two more charges under the 1917 Espionage Act. Each carries a maximum 10-year prison sentence.
In the light of the actions that were carried out the US Government, Snowden reacted on the most liberal constitution by stating, "I don't want to live in a world where everything I say, everything I do, every expression of creativity and love or friendship is recorded."
The negative reaction of the U.S. government led to the outburst of the 'PARDON SNOWDEN' campaign worldwide.
Snowden himself made the "moral case" for why he should be pardoned, and Tim Edgar made a much more powerful case. On one side, the citizenry believed that the actions of Edward Snowden were for a good cause and bring to book the illegitimate activities of the people in power.
However, on the contrary, the government believed that such acts by a citizens amounted to actions against the larger interest of the US society. However, the moot question is whether the Obama government would pardon him or not?
As per scores of reports and rumours, it is predicted that Snowden could not be pardoned. It is hard even for the pubic to access the case for a pardon until we know the full extent of Snowden's crimes and the harms they caused.
