Jesselyn Radack is national security and human rights director of the Government Accountability Project. She is a legal adviser to Edward Snowden.

The wheels of justice have turned swiftly in the past few days for Edward Snowden, proving that he is a whistle-blower who exposed abuse and illegality of the highest order by the National Security Agency, and that he does not deserve having the United States government threaten him with the crushing silence of a jail cell.

The significance of Judge Richard Leon calling the N.S.A.’s phone surveillance program “almost certainly” unconstitutional, and a White House panel recommending that the program be “terminated” cannot be overstated.

A judge and a White House panel show real concern about government overreach, not fear about imaginary damage by Snowden.

The White House review panel — hardly a bastion of liberal progressivism — amplified Judge Leon’s sweeping indictment of a post-9/11 surveillance state run completely amok. Despite the government’s rampant fear-mongering about Snowden’s disclosures over the past six months, both Judge Leon (a George W. Bush appointee) and the review panel (commissioned by President Obama) found that the N.S.A.’s bulk-collection metadata program failed to thwart any terrorist attacks.

Already, bipartisan Congressional leaders have proposed legislation, the U.S.A. Freedom Act, to rein in surveillance.

Judge Leon’s monumental opinion provides an eloquent, well-reasoned road map for civil libertarians, privacy advocates and ordinary citizens to use the Snowden revelations to challenge N.S.A. overreach in court, to resuscitate the Fourth Amendment guarantee against illegal search and seizure and restore our surveillance state to a democracy.

“I cannot imagine a more ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘arbitrary invasion’ than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without judicial approval,” Judge Leon wrote, mincing no words.

Loud calls for reform are no longer just the “lone voice” of a “traitor” who “took it upon himself” to reveal “what he thought was illegal.” Rather, they are the collective clarion voice of both aisles of Congress, the judicial branch, industry and the White House’s own independent task force singing in harmony. Snowden became a whistle-blower when he made his revelations, and the thundering calls for reform cement his status as one. A whistle-blower reveals what he believes to be waste, fraud, abuse, mismanagement, illegality or a danger to health and public safety. Judge Leon’s decision and the review panel’s recommendations establish in the strongest terms not only that Snowden was reasonable, but that he was absolutely correct.



Unfortunately, rather than listening to the clamoring cries for change, the Obama administration has appealed Judge Leon’s decision and indicated that the president will reject his own panel’s recommendation to sever the N.S.A. from the Pentagon’s Cyber Command.

I submit that President Obama’s legacy rests not on kowtowing to the national security and intelligence establishments, which he was elected to reform and has done everything to appease, but on whether he has the courage to rein in the surveillance state and the humility to pardon Edward Snowden.



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