'Should Assange and Snowden be pardoned?': Twitter CEO Elon Musk launches another poll

Twitter's new owner and CEO Elon Musk on Sunday launched another poll to know whether WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and Edward Snowden should be pardoned. "I am not expressing an opinion, but did promise to conduct this poll. Should Assange and Snowden be pardoned?" he asked in a tweet on Sunday. This is his third such poll after taking over the micro-blogging site.

Assange and Snowden are facing serious criminal charges for disclosing classified information related to the US Army. In 2010, Assange published a series of leaks linked to the US Army while Snowden, a former employee of the 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 (US).

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 NSA.

Assange and Snowden have fled the US and currently are in the UK and Russia, respectively. In September this year, Russian President Vladimir Putin granted citizenship to Snowden.

In October 2020, then-US President Donald Trump said that he was considering a pardon for Snowden. He said there were many, many people who thought that Snowden should be somehow treated differently and other people thought he did very bad things. “I’m going to take a very good look at it,” he had said.

Today, again, Musk raked up the issue by launching a poll. Replying to his poll, a user said they should not be pardoned as they were a threat to national security and sold the country's secrets to China and Russia.

Peter Pullar, another user, said he agreed that there was a national security risk in Assange and Snowden disclosing that secret information. "I personally believe the national security risks of not disclosing it would have in the long term been much greater," he wrote on Twitter.

Actor Terrence K Williams, however, said they did nothing wrong by exposing the corrupt criminals in the United States Government.
 
Last month, Musk launched a poll to reinstate the social media account of former President Donald Trump. After this, he launched another 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-plus million people participated in the poll. Of these, 72.4 per cent voted in favour of amnesty. Trump's account was also reinstated following the poll.