Despite The Media and Public Opinion on the Matter Snowden Will Not Be Pardoned

Edward Snowden, the famous ‘whistle-blower’ who uncovered the biggest surveillance program in the history of humanity, has been the center of a humanitarian campaign asking president Obama to give the computer system’s administrator a full pardon. 

Several human rights organizations –including International Amnesty– put forward an official campaign to raise support for a presidential pardon of Snowden’s alleged crimes. The initiative has quickly encountered a massive wall in the form of a report made by the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

The government’s agency –which has a committee appointed by the president himself to investigate and oversee NSA’s surveillance program– emitted yesterday a report stating that Snowden isn’t merely a ‘whistle-blower’:

[Snowden] perpetrated the largest and most damaging public disclosure of classified information in our nation’s history.

The lawmakers argue that because Snowden released over 1.5 million files –many of which weren’t related to NSA’s surveillance program, according to the comittie– he doesn’t qualify as a whistle-blower, but as a criminal. The report goes to great lengths to remind Obama of his own words and opinion on the matter, quoting a speech made by the president in 2013 where he called Snowden a criminal.

Julian Assange, another whistleblower and activist saw his arrest warrant over a rape accusation reaffirmed by a  Swedish appeals court:

After reviewing the existing investigative material and what the parties have stated, the Court of Appeal finds that Julian Assange is still suspected on probable cause of rape.

Per Samuelsson, Assange’s lawyer in Sweden, told Associated Press:

We are naturally disappointed that Swedish courts yet again choose to ignore Julian Assange’s difficult life situation

Julian Assange has been exiled in the United Kingdom’s Ecuadorian Embassy for over 6 years. Assange is also the founder of WikiLeaks an international non-profit journalistic organization that publishes secret information, news leaks, and classified media from anonymous sources.