Edward Snowden Asks for Amnesty After Court Rulings; White House Says No

Edward Snowden says a recent judge's ruling vindicates him for leading NSA documents. The White House won't be granting Snowden amnesty though. A top National Security Agency (NSA) official brought up the idea of granting Snowden amnesty if he stopped leaking documents.

The White House ruled out any suggestion of granting amnesty to Edward Snowden, the intelligence contractor who leaked classified documents to a filmmaker. Edward Snowden has been granted asylum in Russia for one year.

Edward Snowden says a recent ruling by Judge Richard Leon vindicates the whistleblower's NSA surveillance disclosures. The judge recently said that the phone surveillance program was likely unconstitutional. Edward Snowden has been quoted as saying "the American public deserves a chance to see these issues determined by open court."

White House spokesman Jay Carney said in a press conference that if Snowden returns to the United States he will face felony charges. Carney says if Snowden "will be accorded full due process and protections in our system." Carney confirmed that the head of the NSA task for on the damage that Snowden's leaks have caused, Richard Ledgett, was called in to give "his personal opinion."

Edward Snowden said the ruling justified the leaks. In comments released through former Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, Snowden said "I acted on my belief that the NSA's mass surveillance programs would not withstand a constitutional challenge, and that the American public deserved a chance to see these issues determined by open courts. Today, a secret program authorised by a secret court was, when exposed to the light of day, found to violate Americans' rights. It is the first of many," said Snowden, whose statement was first reported by the New York Times. Greenwald was the journalist who received the documents from Snowden.

Judge Richard Leon wrote "The government does not cite a single case in which analysis of the NSA's bulk metadata collection actually stopped an imminent terrorist attack. Given the limited record before me at this point in the litigation - most notably, the utter lack of evidence that a terrorist attack has ever been prevented because searching the NSA database was faster than other investigative tactics - I have serious doubts about the efficacy of the metadata collection program as a means of conducting time-sensitive investigations in cases involving imminent threats of terrorism."

Senator Mark Udall said "The ruling underscores what I have argued for years: [that] the bulk collection of Americans' phone records conflicts with Americans' privacy rights under the US constitution and has failed to make us safer," said Udall, a Democrat.

White House, spokesman Jay Carney said he had no comment on the case.

Justice Department spokesman Andrew Ames said "We've seen the opinion and are studying it. We believe the program is constitutional as previous judges have found. We have no further comment at this time." 

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