The long arm of US law: what next for Edward Snowden?

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/02/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-us-law



The long arm of US law: what next for Edward Snowden?
Ewen MacAskill in New York
The Guardian, Sunday 1 December 2013

After an eventful six months, Edward Snowden will be hoping for a quieter time ahead – but not as quiet as life in a maximum-security American jail. In Russia since fleeing Hong Kong in June, the NSA computer specialist-turned-whistleblower is living under fairly restrictive conditions. But at least he still has access to the internet – crucial to him – although the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, made it a condition of granting Snowden temporary asylum that he do nothing to embarrass the US further.

Snowden has said he no longer has the documents he leaked, having passed all of them to the journalists he met in Hong Kong in June.

On 21 June, his 30th birthday, the US indicted him on three charges, including two under the Espionage Act: theft of government property, unauthorised communication of national defence information and wilful communication of classified intelligence to an unauthorised person, with a possible combined sentence of up to 30 years in jail. Further charges could be added. The death penalty is also available under a section of the act but the US attorney general, Eric Holder, said in July that Snowden would not face execution.

America would "do everything in its power short of snatching him from Russia to try to have Edward Snowden put on trial in the US", said Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Brennan Centre's liberty and national security programme at New York University law school. If he was to try to move somewhere other than Russia, the US would go to great lengths to intercept him, she said.