One of the things that came out of Elon Musk’s Twitter Spaces chat last night was his promise to do a poll asking if Julian Assange and Edward Snowden should be given pardons. The poll is still ongoing as I write this, but it is clear that the vast majority believe both should be given pardons. Roughly 80 percent who participated in the poll believed they should be pardoned.
I am not expressing an opinion, but did promise to conduct this poll.
Should Assange and Snowden be pardoned?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 4, 2022
Assange has basically been imprisoned and tortured for doing journalism. He was given information from people inside governments and published that information on the Internet.
Snowden exposed specific details about all the illegal spying and surveillance that the United States government was involved in. He had to flee to Russia after leaking internal NSA documents and data to the press.
I agree that both should be pardoned. Assange was doing journalism and Snowden despite his previous ties to the CIA was at least on the surface level a whistleblower.
It was ridiculous that Donald Trump didn’t at least pardon Assange when he had the chance.
