Human rights organizations are calling on President Obama to issue a pardon to Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who exposed top-secret U.S. surveillance programs.
The U.S. government is seeking to prosecute Snowden, who is currently in exile in Russia, on espionage charges for sharing secrets about the NSA’s surveillance with journalists from The Washington Post and the Guardian.
The New York Times has in favor of pardoning Snowden, writing, “Itap time to pardon Mr. Snowden and bring him home, not to face the music but to work for the security and privacy of us all.”
The Washington Post took the opposite stance, against a pardon. The Post wrote, “Whether Mr. Snowden deserves a presidential pardon … is a complicated question, … to which President Obama’s answer should continue to be ‘no.’ ”
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