Elon Musk, the new owner and CEO of Twitter, launched a poll on Sunday to know whether WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and Edward Snowden should be pardoned. I am not expressing an opinion, but I promise to conduct this poll. Should Assange and Snowden be pardoned? He asked in a tweet on Sunday. This is his third poll after taking over the micro-blogging site.
Snowden and Assange have been charged with criminal charges for disclosing classified information related to the US Army. In 2010, Assange released a series of leaks linked to the US Army, while Snowden, a former CIA and contractor at the NSA, released confidential documents about the existence of the government's surveillance programmes.
In May 2019, the US Department of Justice said Assange was charged with illegally obtaining, receiving and disclosing classified information. The department said it had found Assange's role in one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States. In September 2019, the US filed a lawsuit against Snowden, who published a book entitled 'Permanent Record' in violation of the non-disclosure agreements he signed with both the CIA and the NSA.
Snowden and Assange have fled the US and are currently in Russia and the UK. In October 2020, US President Donald Trump said he was considering a pardon for Snowden. He said there were many people who thought Snowden should be treated differently and other people thought he did very bad things. He said that I'm going to take a good look at it.
Musk raked up the issue by launching a poll. A user said that they should not be pardoned because they were a threat to national security and sold the country's secrets to China and Russia.
Peter Pullar, another user, said there was a national security risk in Assange and Snowden who were revealing that secret information. He wrote on Twitter that he believes that the national security risks of not disclosing it would have been much greater in the long term.
Actor Terrence K Williams said that they did nothing wrong by exposing the corrupt criminals in the United States Government.
Last month, Musk launched a poll to reinstate the former President Donald Trump's social media account. After that, he launched a poll asking people whether Twitter should offer a general amnesty to suspended accounts, provided that they have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spam.
Three million people participated in the poll. 72.4 per cent of these voted for amnesty. After the election, Trump's account was reinstated.