What are Rand’s fanboys going to say about this? It doesn’t get much clearer.In a letter to WSJ, Rand
wrote:
Edward Snowden broke the law. There are penalties for breaking the law, and I believe he should be prosecuted. I do not overlook or believe our country should condone people who have access to military secrets to reveal those secrets.
Rand does go on in the remainder of the letter to muddy his view above, but this is typical Rand, trying to take both sides of an issue:
You claim “in essence” I’ve asked for a plea bargain for Mr. Snowden. I’ve made no specific legal judgment other than to say that I do support laws against national security leaks. I have not argued, as you allege, that Mr. Snowden is a hero. I have stated that history will decide.
Further, his leaks that had nothing to do with unconstitutional domestic surveillance may have caused real damage to our national security and relations with other countries.
There are advantages to having Mr. Snowden face trial: We could determine how he breached our security and to what extent and how much information was shared with foreign countries. Ruling out the harsher end of the sentencing spectrum might encourage him to return for trial.
Standing trial would allow a judge to determine whether Mr. Snowden’s law-breaking served a higher purpose and thus sentence him accordingly and also whether some of his actions went too far in endangering our security and aiding our enemies, and also sentence him for that accordingly.
But legally and morally, the actions of the individual lawbreaker must be weighed against the government law-breaking that he went to great lengths to reveal. I do not believe we must give up this much of our liberty for security, nor do I apologize for standing up for the Fourth Amendment, which restricts such frighteningly unlimited power.
Note: The purpose of a trial is not to find out how someone was able to accomplish certain things, it is to determine guilt or innocence. Rand’s statement:
There are advantages to having Mr. Snowden face trial: We could determine how he breached our security and to what extent and how much information was shared with foreign countries.
is idiotic.