--- title: Edward Snowden Pardon: White House Responds to Petition description: “He should come home to the United States, and be judged by a jury of his peers -- not hide behind the cover of an authoritarian regime." canonical: https://time.com/3974713/white-house-edward-snowden-petition/ author: Maya Rhodan article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-07-28T14:42:09.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:58:23.731Z article:section: Politics og:title: White House Responds to Petition Calling for Edward Snowden Pardon og:description: The two year old petition asked Obama to pardon the former NSA contractor og:url: https://time.com/3974713/white-house-edward-snowden-petition/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte58149c9fbd462ba/69885cc80a4a2230ec9c5584/ap_910445753616.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2716 og:image:height: 1528 og:image:alt: Edward Snowden og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: White House Responds to Petition Calling for Edward Snowden Pardon twitter:description: The two year old petition asked Obama to pardon the former NSA contractor twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte58149c9fbd462ba/69885cc80a4a2230ec9c5584/ap_910445753616.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # White House Responds to Petition Urging Obama to Pardon Edward Snowden > Sponsored content. 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TIME White House correspondent, Michael Scherer delves into the motivation behind Snowden, Manning and a generation of hacktivists._ by [Maya Rhodan](https://time.com/author/maya-rhodan/) ## Maya Rhodan Jul 28, 2015 2:42 PM UTC  This file photo image made from video released by WikiLeaks on Friday, Oct. 11, 2013, shows former National Security Agency systems analyst Edward Snowden smiles during a presentation ceremony for the Sam Adams Award in Moscow, Russia. This file photo image made from video released by WikiLeaks on Friday, Oct. 11, 2013, shows former National Security Agency systems analyst Edward Snowden smiles during a presentation ceremony for the Sam Adams Award in Moscow, Russia. Uncredited—AP by [Maya Rhodan](https://time.com/author/maya-rhodan/) ## Maya Rhodan Jul 28, 2015 2:42 PM UTC The White House responded to a petition calling for President Obama to pardon Edward Snowden on Tuesday by calling for the former National Security Agency contractor to “come home to the United States, and be judged by a jury of his peers.” Snowden, who released classified government documents detailing the widespread surveillance activities of the U.S. intelligence agencies, fled to Russia soon after the documents were released. The White House commissioned Lisa Monaco, the president’s advisor on homeland security and counterterrorism, to pen the official response, which was posted to the White House’s [We the People website](https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/edward-snowden). “If he felt his actions were consistent with civil disobedience, then he should do what those who have taken issue with their own government do: Challenge it, speak out, engage in a constructive act of protest, and — importantly — accept the consequences of his actions,” Monaco [writes](https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/edward-snowden). “He should come home to the United States, and be judged by a jury of his peers — not hide behind the cover of an authoritarian regime. Right now, he’s running away from the consequences of his actions.” Snowden’s Russian attorney [said in March](http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/edward-snowden-wants-to-return-us-115697.html) that the whistleblower would be willing to return to the United States if he was “given a guarantee of a legal and impartial trial.” A petition to have Snowden pardoned was launched in 2013 and gained a total of [167,954 signatures](https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/pardon-edward-snowden)—well over the 100,000 required to warrant an official response from the White House. “Edward Snowden is a national hero and should be immediately issued a full, free, and absolute pardon for any crimes he has committed or may have committed related to blowing the whistle on secret NSA surveillance programs,” the petition [reads](https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/pardon-edward-snowden). The White House responded to the petition on Tuesday as a part of a wider effort to clear the backlog of petitions awaiting response on We the People and [alter the way the White House responds](https://medium.com/@Goldman44/how-we-re-changing-the-way-we-respond-to-petitions-74ed0ffd1d77). ## Transcript When you're in positions of, of privileged access, like a, a systems administrator for these sort of intelligence community agencies, you're exposed to a lot more information on broader scale than the average employee. And because of that, you see things that may be disturbing. The leader's name is Ed Snowden. He's a twenty- nine year old former NSA contractor, and a former CIA employee. And for the last several months, he has been trying to figure out how to leak documents about programs he thinks are unlawful and outrageous to the press, as a way of sparking a debate in the United States about the reaches of government surveillance. We don't know the full extent of what he's leaked because not all of it has come out. But the, the two big things that have come out are a NSA program to collect metadata telephone information on every phone call made from a U. S. phone carrier. It's not the information in the calls, it's basically the phone numbers, how long they lasted, so the NSA can build a historical database that would aid them in investigations. The second program was called Prism. It allows the NSA to access information from companies like Apple, Google and Yahoo about specific individuals when they have federal warrants to get that information. I think he considers himself a whistle blower. The legal definition of a whistle blower usually does not allow though someone with classified clearance to steal documents and, and the law has traditionally punished this type of whistle blower. Part of this I think comes as a backlash to the rules that were put in place after September 11th. And the result is, you have a, a sort of hacktivist culture of individuals who feel it is their responsibility to protect the personal liberty of Americans and people around the world, and to expose things that they do not think should be secret. I, I think that the public is owed an explanation of the motivations behind the people who make these disclosures that are outside of the democratic model. People like Snowden and Bradley Manning present a different kind of threat to the national security infrastructure of the United States, which was built to defend itself against foreign threats, against the Russian spy or the Chinese hacker. These are people who are willing to release secrets, not because they mean harm to the United States, but because they believe policies and laws of the United States are wrong. And its proven to be a real challenge both for the people who, in charge of making sure these secrets don't come out, and also for law enforcement who's had to wrestle with how to prosecute and punish these people. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3974713/white-house-edward-snowden-petition/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3974713/white-house-edward-snowden-petition/"},"headline":"White House Responds to Petition Urging Obama to Pardon Edward Snowden","datePublished":"2015-07-28T14:42:09.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:58:23.731Z","description":"“He should come home to the United States, and be judged by a jury of his peers\"","url":"https://time.com/3974713/white-house-edward-snowden-petition/","keywords":["White House","russia","Barack Obama","Edward Snowden","Snowden"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte58149c9fbd462ba/69885cc80a4a2230ec9c5584/ap_910445753616.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Maya Rhodan","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/maya-rhodan/"}],"articleSection":"Politics","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte58149c9fbd462ba/69885cc80a4a2230ec9c5584/ap_910445753616.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Edward Snowden","caption":"Edward Snowden","creditText":"Uncredited—AP","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/politics/","name":"Politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/white-house/","name":"White House"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3974713/white-house-edward-snowden-petition/","name":"White House Responds to Petition Urging Obama to Pardon Edward Snowden"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Snowden, Manning and the New Generation of Hacktivists","description":"TIME White House correspondent, Michael Scherer delves into the motivation behind Snowden, Manning and a generation of hacktivists.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/lx3s0VfJ/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2013-06-13T12:29:47.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/lx3s0VfJ.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/3974713/white-house-edward-snowden-petition/","duration":"PT2M48S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/3974713/white-house-edward-snowden-petition/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```