Snowden is charged under Espionage Act, accused of theft of government property.
DHAHRAN, SAUDI ARABIA: Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee, and a contractor for the National Security Agency in the US, spilled the beans on the PRISM and the Tempora Internet Surveillance programmes, which allegedly intercept American and European public telephones and internet communications.
Snowden is charged under the Espionage Act, accused of theft of government property and of unauthorised communication of national defence information. After he arrived in Hong Kong on May 20, he gave an interview to The Guardian, in which he said that the leaks were an effort “to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them”. In a not-too-dissimilar vein, earlier in 2010, Julian Assange of Wikileaks published thousands of diplomatic and military documents, bringing embarrassment to the US government and many diplomats and politicians across the world on what continues to really transpire behind the scenes away from the public eyes. In that episode, a US army soldier was arrested on the suspicion of passing secret documents to the Wikileaks.
In this scenario, an important point deserves to be mentioned here. The West is very proud of its upholding of the notions of freedom of expression and rightly so, but this culture of unbridled freedom of expression is now biting back. You cannot give sermons on national security to an ardent believer of freedom of expression, who was brought up in an environment, claiming and at times practising, unresisted freedom of expression, and expect him to keep quiet over what he sees is a violation of the people’s fundamental rights.
Shaukat Ali
Published in The Express Tribune, June 27th, 2013.
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