Criminal Law Law Controls Snowden Prosecution

Question :

Can Snowden be charged and arrested by a state law-enforcement officer? Can he be prosecuted in a state court? Why or why not?

Answer :

He was working as a NSA Intelligence Analyst when he leaked confidential documents of the US Federal Government about their surveillance programs. A criminal charge was lodged against him on June 14, 2013 and he fled to Hong Kong and eventually to Russia (Greenwald, 2013). 

The law that controls Snowden’s prosecution is the violation of Espionage Act, 1917. He was charged with theft for government property under section 641 which would give him a 10 years sentence and fine. Besides there were two more charges against him, unauthorized communication of national defense information and willful communication of classified communications intelligence information to unauthorized person. These charges were levied against him under section 798 with a similar 10 years sentence (Mulligan & Elsea, 2017). He can be arrested by a state law-enforcement officer because of the charges and the warrants against him but to make that possible he has to return to the United States because he had committed the crimes on the US jurisdiction. At the moment the state officers do not have the jurisdiction to arrest him. He did violate substantive laws but not any moral laws. He probably had good moral intentions behind leaking the documents as the NSA was randomly collecting phone records of people who they thought had terrorist connections. This was an invasion of privacy of common people by the government which Snowden duly leaked. While NSA’s act was unconstitutional it would be right to say that Snowden did not have the authority to leak those documents. Hence, he broke the law. The goal of the criminal justice system is to charge and arrest Snowden for leaking the documents. Therefore the goal is provide him the sentence he deserves by law and also to make this a moral lesson for other government officials that breaking the law is not an option even if they belief to have moral reasons.