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Snowden is charged [1] with: * 18 USC 641 - Theft of government property * 18 USC 793(d) - Unauthorized communication of national defense information *

Snowden is charged [1] with: * 18 USC 641 - Theft of government property * 18 USC 793(d) - Unauthorized communication of national defense information * 18 USC 798(a)(3) - Willful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person None carry the death penalty. All carry a prison sentence of "not more than ten years." [1] http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/documents/world/us-vs-edward-j-snowden-criminal-complaint/496/ http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/documents/world/us-vs-edwar... [EDIT formatting]

cheald 13y ago
Of course, we're talking about a government that is in this predicament precisely because they just ignore the law when convenient.
- meepmorp 13y ago
  > Of course, we're talking about a government that is in this predicament precisely because they just ignore the law when convenient. No. The NSA surveillance is, at least putatively, permitted by the current laws in the US. You can argue about the appropriateness of the laws, even their constitutionality, but the NSA (and larger federal government) is almost certainly not ignoring the law in this case.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
    - meepmorp 13y ago
      > constitutionality = legality Show me where any of this has been ruled unconstitutional. I'm not making a claim about morality, nor about the ultimate acceptability of the NSA's surveillance program, nor the laws and,and court decisina that permit it - I'm saying that it is legal (in that it is allowed by law) and that laws are assumed to be constitutional unless a court rules otherwise.
      - cheald 13y ago
        http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/12/18925384-secret-court-wont-object-to-release-of-opinion-on-illegal-surveillance http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/12/18925384-... http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/us/01nsa.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/us/01nsa.html?_r=0 http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/06/justice-department-electronic-frontier-foundation-fisa-court-opinion http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/06/justice-departme...
  - pyrocat 13y ago
    Well, not exactly true. They ignore the law until they can get someone to secretly reinterpret the law so that what they've done is no longer illegal.
  - tareqak 13y ago
    Compare this situation to the US government not considering events in Egypt to be what they are: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23351997 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23351997.
    - mpyne 13y ago
      If the people rise up and the military moves in behind (with popular support) to make the actual arrest, is that still a coup? Certainly it seems there's more to this than a classic ousting... consider that people on both sides are blaming the U.S. for their troubles, as per the normal. Either way, they've blocked F-16 deliveries now, so it's not as if the U.S. is acting as if things are all hunky-dory.
      - dkhenry 13y ago
        The state department _officially_ stated they will not look into if it was a coup or not. They are not looking into it because if it turns out it was ( which it was ) then they theoretically have to obey the law on whom they can give money to. Think about that. It would be like them saying we are not investigating if someone tortured snowden because then we might need to admit to torturing him
  - DannyBee 13y ago
    Actually, they kind of are. There are no cases directly on point, and they are arguing by analogy to existing cases where it was held retrieving small amounts of phone data about one or two individuals did not violate a reasonable expectation of privacy, and thus, not a search This is not the same as "what they are doing is permitted by the current laws of the united states". I'm aware folks like Orin Kerr think this doesn't make a doctrinal difference: http://www.volokh.com/2013/07/17/metadata-the-nsa-and-the-fourth-amendment-a-constitutional-analysis-of-collecting-and-querying-call-records-databases/ http://www.volokh.com/2013/07/17/metadata-the-nsa-and-the-fo... The thing is, he's an academic (prior to his current job, his job at the DOJ CCIP division was being an expert in those notices you see when you access government computer systems). He likes to think in academic terms about whether things should matter. For example, he also believed the "mosaic theory" was a bunch of bullshit and would be struck down by every level right up until the supreme court fully endorsed it (see, e.g, http://www.volokh.com/2010/08/06/d-c-circuit-introduces-mosaic-theory-of-fourth-amendment-holds-gps-monitoring-a-fourth-amendment-search/ http://www.volokh.com/2010/08/06/d-c-circuit-introduces-mosa... and other posts) So while i certainly trust his view of "the state of the caselaw as it currently exists", i take his view of "what a court is likely to decide" with a huge grain of salt. On that front, IMHO, he's been wrong more than he's been right. For example, when he says "If obtaining pen register information on one user is not a search, the obtaining that pen register information for 100 or 10,000 or 1,000,000 or more users is still not a search. Katz tells us that the Fourth Amendment protects “people, not places,” and it’s not clear how surveillance that is not a search when provides information about one person can become a search when it provides information about many." This tells you everything you need to know. It is a typical ivory tower viewpoint. He doesn't see how a judge is going to decide that there is some line that has been crossed when you do something to a million people instead of 1. As the saying goes, "bad facts make bad law". If everything was doctrinal and academic, bad facts wouldn't matter. FWIW: The FISA authorization is completely and totally irrelevant in this case. Entirely. The fact that the FISA court said "sure, whatever" does not make something legal, only authorized, because they are not ruling on a constitutional challenge, only the validity of a search warrant. These are not the same, no matter how much the government wants it to be. This is the same as a valid search warrant that later turns out to have been facially invalid; It is not a legal search warrant that has "gone bad". It is illegal. It was authorized, but illegal.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
DannyBee 13y ago
ITYM "Snowden is currently charged with" The words you are looking for is "superseding indictment" (admittedly, i only know CA/MD rules about this, and I know Fed Crim Procedure allows them, but i didn't look at when)
- mpyne 13y ago
  Are there plausible charges that would carry the death penalty in a superseding indictment? Assuming you happen to know off hand, of course, don't want you wasting time to look it up.
  - DannyBee 13y ago
    not that i can think of. They want to keep this low profile, i'm sure they'd rather file 1000 charges they believe can keep him in prison forever than generate more press about it by filing for treason or whatever. If it was anything else, a prosecutor trying to make their bones would do that on principle.

cheald 13y ago

Of course, we're talking about a government that is in this predicament precisely because they just ignore the law when convenient.

meepmorp 13y ago
> Of course, we're talking about a government that is in this predicament precisely because they just ignore the law when convenient. No. The NSA surveillance is, at least putatively, permitted by the current laws in the US. You can argue about the appropriateness of the laws, even their constitutionality, but the NSA (and larger federal government) is almost certainly not ignoring the law in this case.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
  - meepmorp 13y ago
    > constitutionality = legality Show me where any of this has been ruled unconstitutional. I'm not making a claim about morality, nor about the ultimate acceptability of the NSA's surveillance program, nor the laws and,and court decisina that permit it - I'm saying that it is legal (in that it is allowed by law) and that laws are assumed to be constitutional unless a court rules otherwise.
    - cheald 13y ago
      http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/12/18925384-secret-court-wont-object-to-release-of-opinion-on-illegal-surveillance http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/12/18925384-... http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/us/01nsa.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/us/01nsa.html?_r=0 http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/06/justice-department-electronic-frontier-foundation-fisa-court-opinion http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/06/justice-departme...
- pyrocat 13y ago
  Well, not exactly true. They ignore the law until they can get someone to secretly reinterpret the law so that what they've done is no longer illegal.
- tareqak 13y ago
  Compare this situation to the US government not considering events in Egypt to be what they are: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23351997 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23351997.
  - mpyne 13y ago
    If the people rise up and the military moves in behind (with popular support) to make the actual arrest, is that still a coup? Certainly it seems there's more to this than a classic ousting... consider that people on both sides are blaming the U.S. for their troubles, as per the normal. Either way, they've blocked F-16 deliveries now, so it's not as if the U.S. is acting as if things are all hunky-dory.
    - dkhenry 13y ago
      The state department _officially_ stated they will not look into if it was a coup or not. They are not looking into it because if it turns out it was ( which it was ) then they theoretically have to obey the law on whom they can give money to. Think about that. It would be like them saying we are not investigating if someone tortured snowden because then we might need to admit to torturing him
- DannyBee 13y ago
  Actually, they kind of are. There are no cases directly on point, and they are arguing by analogy to existing cases where it was held retrieving small amounts of phone data about one or two individuals did not violate a reasonable expectation of privacy, and thus, not a search This is not the same as "what they are doing is permitted by the current laws of the united states". I'm aware folks like Orin Kerr think this doesn't make a doctrinal difference: http://www.volokh.com/2013/07/17/metadata-the-nsa-and-the-fourth-amendment-a-constitutional-analysis-of-collecting-and-querying-call-records-databases/ http://www.volokh.com/2013/07/17/metadata-the-nsa-and-the-fo... The thing is, he's an academic (prior to his current job, his job at the DOJ CCIP division was being an expert in those notices you see when you access government computer systems). He likes to think in academic terms about whether things should matter. For example, he also believed the "mosaic theory" was a bunch of bullshit and would be struck down by every level right up until the supreme court fully endorsed it (see, e.g, http://www.volokh.com/2010/08/06/d-c-circuit-introduces-mosaic-theory-of-fourth-amendment-holds-gps-monitoring-a-fourth-amendment-search/ http://www.volokh.com/2010/08/06/d-c-circuit-introduces-mosa... and other posts) So while i certainly trust his view of "the state of the caselaw as it currently exists", i take his view of "what a court is likely to decide" with a huge grain of salt. On that front, IMHO, he's been wrong more than he's been right. For example, when he says "If obtaining pen register information on one user is not a search, the obtaining that pen register information for 100 or 10,000 or 1,000,000 or more users is still not a search. Katz tells us that the Fourth Amendment protects “people, not places,” and it’s not clear how surveillance that is not a search when provides information about one person can become a search when it provides information about many." This tells you everything you need to know. It is a typical ivory tower viewpoint. He doesn't see how a judge is going to decide that there is some line that has been crossed when you do something to a million people instead of 1. As the saying goes, "bad facts make bad law". If everything was doctrinal and academic, bad facts wouldn't matter. FWIW: The FISA authorization is completely and totally irrelevant in this case. Entirely. The fact that the FISA court said "sure, whatever" does not make something legal, only authorized, because they are not ruling on a constitutional challenge, only the validity of a search warrant. These are not the same, no matter how much the government wants it to be. This is the same as a valid search warrant that later turns out to have been facially invalid; It is not a legal search warrant that has "gone bad". It is illegal. It was authorized, but illegal.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

DannyBee 13y ago

ITYM "Snowden is currently charged with" The words you are looking for is "superseding indictment" (admittedly, i only know CA/MD rules about this, and I know Fed Crim Procedure allows them, but i didn't look at when)

mpyne 13y ago
Are there plausible charges that would carry the death penalty in a superseding indictment? Assuming you happen to know off hand, of course, don't want you wasting time to look it up.
- DannyBee 13y ago
  not that i can think of. They want to keep this low profile, i'm sure they'd rather file 1000 charges they believe can keep him in prison forever than generate more press about it by filing for treason or whatever. If it was anything else, a prosecutor trying to make their bones would do that on principle.