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Edward Snowden, National Security Whistleblowing, And Civil Disobedience, David E. Pozen
Edward Snowden, National Security Whistleblowing, And Civil Disobedience, David E. Pozen
Faculty Scholarship
No recent whistleblower has been more lionized or vilified than Edward Snowden. He has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and denounced as a "total traitor" deserving of the death penalty. In these debates, Snowden's defenders tend to portray him as a civil disobedient. Yet for a range of reasons, Snowden's situation does not map neatly onto traditional theories of civil disobedience. The same holds true for most cases of national security whistleblowing.
The contradictory and confused responses that these cases provoke, this essay suggests, are not just the product of polarized politics or insufficient information. Rather, they reflect …
The Leaky Leviathan: Why The Government Condemns And Condones Unlawful Disclosures Of Information, David E. Pozen
The Leaky Leviathan: Why The Government Condemns And Condones Unlawful Disclosures Of Information, David E. Pozen
Faculty Scholarship
The United States government leaks like a sieve. Presidents denounce the constant flow of classified information to the media from unauthorized, anonymous sources. National security professionals decry the consequences. And yet the laws against leaking are almost never enforced. Throughout U.S. history, roughly a dozen criminal cases have been brought against suspected leakers. There is a dramatic disconnect between the way our laws and our leaders condemn leaking in the abstract and the way they condone it in practice.
This Article challenges the standard account of that disconnect, which emphasizes the difficulties of apprehending and prosecuting offenders, and advances an …