Can Snowden get the people's justice or would his crime go before a state tribunal, "the king's justice"? The article below, the genesis of the "fire in the movie theater" line of reasoning-
http://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_education/initiatives_awards/students_in_action/schenck.html
is worth considering. In the Schenck v. United States (249 U.S. 47, 1919) case the supreme court tackled the first amendment issues that govern the government's right to protect itself and held that the circumstances of the moment governed those rights. The use of secret courts http://www.acslaw.org/files/Prosecuting-Suspected-Terrorists.pdf (call them military tribunals) and sealed records is one way of handling these.
Let me make a quick aside to Abbie Hoffman who responded to the court's reasoning many years later by stating that he was (in a much different war and much different America) "Yelling theater in a crowed fire". What makes this relevant (other than the fact that it is witty) is that we need to recognize that the wars today, the world today and the America today is different and it will be different again tomorrow. Next we may find ourselves whispering theater because we are engulfed in Hoffman's fire and cannot breath louder. For those of you who feel this is unlikely, look at Snowden's recent concession to (at least temporarily) stop disclosing information.
Martin received the justice of the streets, and his sentence was for a crime created by the circumstances and one for which only one person gave the death sentence.
Zimmerman received the people's justice (see: http://www.oas.org/juridico/mla/en/usa/en_usa-int-desc-guide.html) for an article applicable to this; a court duly empaneled where a judgment call is reached based on disputed facts and one which, given an infinite series of potential outcomes, would probably break around 50/50 depending on attorneys and jury composition as much as the testimony. I can't say I watched anything but the summaries, and while many could argue it was a bungled prosecution as much as anything that led to the verdict in this case, that is the way that the people's justice works.
Long before 9/11 the government had the technology to monitor every phone call that was made. Voice recognition and high speed computers render this a relatively modest task. Further, large storage arrays mean that not only can the data be monitored, but it can be stored...forever.
George Orwell's ideas of government monitoring are relatively modest in a world where everyone carries a tracking device voluntarily. Most of us hesitate to leave our cell phones in the other room; much less farther away. If you wonder why all the large governments seem to be willing to have Snowden "shut up" it may be that all the governments in question are doing the same sort of monitoring of their own people.
The difference today is that Snowden has let everyone know that the government is doing what any of us would have suspected they were doing even without his disclosures. While we can assume that the below-average terrorist was too stupid to realize this; it's likely that the above average terrorist could explain this situation. There are other issues related to this that I am hesitant to discuss openly, but I've seen where this leads personally and no one would like it. If you think the monitoring of everything you say and do is right around the corner, suffice it to say that it is behind a corner that is behind and not in front of you.
The supreme court has allowed that "circumstances" allow it to curb first amendment rights (first in this case means most important). I.E. the government, in order to protect itself, can prosecute you for espionage and the relative need to protect itself is a sliding scale which will necessarily change with circumstances. We have imprisoned using war tribunals "suspected terrorists" without trial or constitutional protections for long periods of time in Guantanamo even though justice continues to trickle down in that direction using these "war powers" as applied to terrorism.
The movie theater argument in Schenck was applied to subversive materials designed, not to disclose sensitive information, but to discourage participation in the war. This means that active participation in direct harm is not a pre-requisite to the government arresting people.
In World War C, I discuss the use of technology to direct weapons and anyone who things that a determined government could not use your cell phone to fire a weapon directly at you, has not watched much war coverage. While lighting a target with a laser beam makes a lot of sense in a battlefield, the ability to target using signals from the enemy dates back to World War II and World War I in other cases. The fact that we all carry a bulls eye in our pockets today is just the latest twist in a headlong rush towards "1984" (the book not the year) and we have long since passed Orwell's envisioning in the future in many respects and can expect to pass it in all other respects as time goes on. In China's Weaponized Economy I give a method of dealing with the government on these issues; but that treatment is at best temporary and inadequate and those of you expecting a short answer will have to wait for me to come up with one which is unlikely to happen.
Would Snowden accept the people's justice is a good question. He has only been offered the King's justice and many would suspect a government inspired "justice of the streets" with the killer being a government agency in place of an individual like Zimmerman is not a stretch.
Snowden is a smart guy and when he decided to stand up and scream "theater" (thereby ironically creating theater) in this crowded fire, he must have had some idea of what he was doing. What type of justice he is offered will play a role in his future if he makes it there. We are listening, but he has screamed "George Orwell's 1984 has come to America" and not everyone is listening, although everyone has heard it.
More on this later.
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