Each of these points is up for serious disagreement.

1. His celebrity could increase exponentially when he returned home and was available to do a press junket and book tour. He would appear on every morning talk show and radio show and then a tour of the campuses, libraries and malls of America. This idea is absurd on its face.

2. He had the resolve to make the initial release knowing he was destroying his life - it is clear this is a moral stance for him and the personal damage is done. If he came back to the U.S., expect him to be emboldened and wind up working for a lobby or a not for profit.

3. Lobbying dollars >> optics.

RE: US Government interests:

1. It would make the democrats look weak on terror and intelligence in the face of an upcoming and obscenely hotly contested election.

2. It would be bad for morale of our intelligence agencies - by no means a 'soft' consideration.

3. It would, in fact, set a precedent that whistleblowers will get pardoned.

This last point is the whole issue. Neither this administration, nor future administrations, is going to be particularly fond of intelligence whistleblowers. Financial and business whistleblowers is one thing - but in intelligence? That is another issue entirely. All politics aside, though we may, as citizens, want this to be precisely the case and hope that if we ever held political office we would feel the same way, it is just unlikely that this attitude is going to be found within the upper echelons of the intelligence or political community.

Unfortunately, the downsides are hugely substantial to those in power and the upsides are widely distributed among the general public. With a risk/reward-matrix like that, don't expect to see any pardons coming down for Snowden anytime soon.

" It would, in fact, set a precedent that whistleblowers will get pardoned."

The assumption here is that Snowden is a 'whistle blower'.

Yes - in some instances, especially with respect to his release of information regarding domestic surveillance - he is.

But Snowden released a lot of information that has nothing to do with domestic surveillance, for instance, how the US spies on Russia. This is not 'whistle blowing'.

Someone tell me how releasing that information does not constitute a crime?

I agree that he should be pardoned for his 'whistle blowing' activities. But not for the other stuff.

I like these counter arguments

Please comment civilly and substantively or not at all. We ban accounts that continue to post this way.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It's a little worrying that I should be concerned about the morale of TLAs who have been illegally drag-netting the entire world without repercussions.

The down-votes are absurd.

> This last point is the whole issue

Man, you guys are like scared little cretins, scared to leave site of the shore!

> - It would decrease Snowden's celebrity for him to return from exile.

I think it would be the opposite.

The longer the story drags on, the more people will forget it. Especially if he is cornered in Russia.

I'd be curious about Snowden writing a book about his late years at the NSA.

It will be interesting to see the reception that Oliver Stone's film Snowden[0] will receive when released later this week. Anecdotally, most of my friends never seemed to care as much as I do and certainly care less now.

0: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3774114/

I'm more curious about Snowden's reaction to its accuracy.

I wonder if he was contacted by Oliver Stone, and what story he did tell, because from the trailer you can't really see anything really new.

It would weaken the incentives against leaking national-security information. Of course, that assumes one cares about national security; if one doesn't, then that's irrelevant.

Given that the U.S. — whatever its faults and flaws — is the only guarantor of international order, though, a weakened U.S. is sure to lead to more international conflict.

The US govt has already weakened these incentives because of the decision not to prosecute Petraeus.

The US govt should not have strong incentives against revealing widespread human rights abuse like full-take surveillance of entire countries.

national security? guarantor of international order? Half of the world's conflicts are due to US intervention. Hell, we're giving weapons and training to both sides in some of them. Maybe we could use weaker "national security"...

I was predicting this from the "optics" of Snowden being a fake defector and feeding us precisely what the security establishment wanted the world to hear and know, whether the leak was truth or disinformation.

I maintain that the fake Snowden proposition is excellent news and should be seriously considered. It means they have run out of near realtime computation power and are drawning in data. :) If that is true, then

(a) Good news :)

and

(b) concentrate on getting secure comms for the 10%. (NSA does not care about dick pics and neither do those that engage in such activities.)

> It would improve the optics

Way off topic: is it just me, or did this particular usage of the faux-technical word "optics" spike this election cycle? To me, it reeks of punditry and/or snootiness (no offense) and rubs me the wrong way.

They would be mad too at the mean man who took their secrets and didn't follow the rules. How dare he do that you know? What cause could possibly be greater than the intelligence community?

> It would make the intelligence community feel hurt/ sad

these are people who literally hire death squads to get what they want. hurting their feelings has consequences.

>It would decrease Snowden's celebrity for him to return from exile.

Why would Snowden retire from the rabble-rouser personality he's become? He's passionate about the issues and I can't see him ever stopping. I also imagine hes deeply indebted to Putin's regime and probably doesn't want to wake up with a forced Polonium tea breakfast if he doesn't continue his anti-US commentary, even post-pardon or post-Russia.

I really don't see any practical way for anyone to do anything with Snowden but leave him in the bed he's made. Snowden won't just go back to work like a nobody if he got this hypothetical pardon. I'd be surprised to see any precedent of someone who fled to foreign power and became an anti-US mouthpiece for a hostile regime suddenly getting pardoned for treason.

Downvote away, but the 'Snowden == Hero' mentality is not shared with most and the idea that this pardon would be no big deal is a bit naive. It would be incredibly polarizing and controversial to the US public.