Three Months After It Cleared The 100K Signature Threshold, 'Pardon Snowden' Petition Still Unanswered

from the 100K-signatures-plus-if-we-feel-like-it dept

Please hold your feigned shock until the end of the post, but the administration has yet to respond to the We the People petition to pardon Edward Snowden. Despite the fact that the petition cleared the (recently increased) 100,000 signature hurdle easily and with plenty of time to spare (it currently sits at 137,000), it still has not been addressed by the White House.

According to the spokeperson contacted by US News, the administration will get to it when it gets to it.

"Response times vary," National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden told U.S. News in an email Friday, responding to a request for White House comment on the two-month [now three-month] delay. "We're not in a position to comment on the substance of a response before it has been issued," she added.

Nope, can't comment on this one, not even nearly four months from the initial leak. But the White House hasn't held off on commenting on other, more recent petitions, even those that fell severely short of the arbitrary 100,000-signature mark. It answered one on saving the Johnson Valley OHV area, even though it topped out at 29,500 signatures. It took time to offer its thoughts on protecting the rights of non-religious military members, something 24,393 signatories were concerned about. Fighting pediatric cancer? The administration bravely confronted this controversial issue head-on, even though less than 30,000 signatures were gathered.

Does "We the People" greatly resemble a masturbatorial excercise in talking points and easy wins? Yes, yes it does. And yet, the administration could have, at the very least, responded with a marginally-justified "no comment," as it has in other highly-controversial cases.

However, it's also possible for the administration to duck the issue by giving a response similar to the one used by White House spokesman Josh Earnest Wednesday on Bradley Manning's 35-year prison sentence for providing documents to WikiLeaks. Manning has since self-identified as a woman, and is seeking recognition under the name Chelsea.

"I'm not going to get ahead of that process," Earnest said. "If there is an application that's filed by Mr. Manning or his attorneys, that application will be considered in that process like any other application."

Considering the administration has charged Snowden with espionage and Obama himself has said he doesn't consider him a hero, it seems unlikely that this will receive any consideration at all. If anything, the response will soft-peddle the administration's angle and point at various legal rationales that justify punishing the whistleblower. It's not that we don't know the response (if it ever comes) will be jargon-heavy and unsatisfactory -- it will -- it's the fact that the administration upped the signature limit simply to make it harder to receive a response, and yet it continues to ignore anything that clears the mark but it doesn't want to deal with.

Filed Under: ed snowden, petition, signatures, we the people, white house

White House Petition To Pardon Edward Snowden Zooms Past 100,000 Signatures

from the that-didn't-take-long-at-all dept

A petition set up on the White House's "We the People" petition site asking the Obama administration to pardon Edward Snowden has already passed 100,000 signatures, and shows no signs of slowing down, with a few weeks still left to go. That means that, in theory, the White House is supposed to issue a response to the petition. Of course, that response could be "hell, no" but it seems more likely that it will be something about letting the DOJ investigation, indictment and charges go through their due course. Still, it is worth noting -- especially in comparison to other petitions -- just how quickly this one got to 100,000 signatures. There are an awful lot of Americans who think that Snowden did something brave and important in revealing how the NSA was spying on us all. Having politicians continue to refer to him as a "traitor" seems like a really short sighted position. A fairly large number of people clearly feel quite the opposite is true.

Filed Under: ed snowden, edward snowden, pardon, we the people, white house petition

White House Responses To 'We The People' Petitions Slowing To A Hand-Picked Crawl Of Canned Responses

from the could-dismiss-1/3-of-petitions-with-'lolwut'-response dept

The administration's goal of becoming the "most transparent" in history still needs a lot of improvement to get anywhere near the lofty goals announced during the (first) inauguration. One of the few steps in the right direction has been the "We the People" website, which allows anyone to post a petition and have it answered by the White House if it reaches 25,000 signatures within 30 days.

While the aim is noble, in practice the site has become a bit of joke, both in terms of participation and response. Most responses so far have been canned administration talking points that double down on whatever the current position is on the issue. And from the looks of the petitions currently sitting above the 25,000 threshold, there's no shortage of ridiculous ideas searching for presidential validation.

But among the multiple requests for state secession and Death Star construction are some issues that the administration should be responding to -- like marijuana legalization/regulation, repealing the Defense of Marriage Act, free access to tax-funded scientific research -- but clearly is choosing not to. A US News and World Report article points out that the White House's hit-and-miss approach seems to treat the petition site as another soapbox for cherry-picked issues.

The White House's "We the People" website just got its most popular petition to date: a request to officially designate the Westboro Baptist church as a hate group. The petition was started on Dec. 14, the same day a shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., left 27 people dead, 20 of them children, and the day the fringe church announced it would picket the victims' funerals.

The petition now has more than 260,000 signatures, far and above the 25,000 signature needed for official response.

But the White House has not yet responded to the Westboro petition—or to any of the rather uncommon requests that have flooded the site over the last few months (to secede from the Union, to make American Sign Language an official language or to nationalize Twinkies).

The White House immediately responded, however, to a petition calling to reduce gun violence after the Newtown shooting, an issue President Barack Obama has said he's keen to address. In a sit-down video response, Obama carefully explained the ways in which he'd work to make children's schools more safe.

Looking through the archives, many petitions that have been answered fall well below the 25,000 signatures needed to "force" a response, while many others well over the limit continue to be ignored. For every ignored secession request (Texas holds the lead with 123K signatures), there's a response for White House beer recipes (12,240 signatures). For every request to strip the Westboro Church of its tax exempt status (multiple - leader has 70K+ signatures), there's a response to a petition for ending "pet homelessness" (11,729 signatures).

While many of the current leaders have dubious import (deport Piers Morgan for attacking the 2nd amendment - 88K signatures), the simple fact is that the responses are being doled out in a fashion that makes a majority of the site's offerings nothing more than colorful wallpaper. The rationale behind the White House's general lack of response is unsurprising:

J.H. Snider, a fellow at Harvard University's Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, predicted in The Huffington Post in October 2011 that "We The People" would "probably only have a short life ... because the interests of the public and elected officials differ."

Those few that have been answered have generated their own criticism. In response to multiple petitions concerning the legalization of marijuana, the administration handed the "reply" duties over to its current drug czar, who was more than happy to reassert his position's normal talking points.

On the plus side, the administration has responded to 87 petitions so far and has even spent some time explaining why it cannot respond directly to certain requests. And it's a step in the right direction that the site is still up and running. But as long as the White House continues to address only its pet issues, while ignoring a majority of the posted petitions, the more this site becomes nothing more than the internet version of the supervisor who asks for suggestions from the staff before implementing his own ideas -- lots of nodding and thoughtful noises, but very little in direct response or action. 

Filed Under: petitions, politics, we the people, white house

White House's Weak Response To Petition Against ACTA

from the bad-petition,-bad-result dept

Earlier this year, we wrote about two different petitions on the White House's official petition platform concerning ACTA. We noted that one of the petitions was very oddly worded, talking about getting the US to "end ACTA." It's description was a bit confused, and didn't seem to understand the process or history behind ACTA. There was a second one that was focused more accurately on asking the White House to submit ACTA to the Senate for ratification, as required by the Constitution. Unfortunately, only the first, oddly worded, petition reached the official vote threshold to require a response from the White House. The other petition has since been disappeared from the site.

However, while it took a while, the White House has finally responded, in the form of Miriam Sapiro, who is the deputy US Trade Rep -- i.e., second in command to USTR Ron Kirk. So, it's no surprise that her response is the usual mix of misleading to downright questionable statements:

As you may know, the proliferation of counterfeit and pirated goods poses considerable challenges for legitimate trade and economic development. Protecting intellectual property rights helps to further public policies that are designed to protect the public. ACTA will help authorities, for example, protect against the threat posed by potentially unsafe counterfeit goods that can pose a significant risk to public health, such as toothpaste with dangerous amounts of diethylene glycol (a chemical used in brake fluid), auto parts of unknown quality or suspect semiconductors used in life-saving defibrillators.

Yup. Start out with the usual misleading crap of focusing solely on "health" risks from physical counterfeiting... totally ignoring that physical counterfeiting is an entirely different issue than copyright infringement of digital goods. But never bother to separate out or differentiate, even though the bulk of ACTA is targeted at dealing with digital infringement. As ACTA supporters have done since day one, they figure that if they just keep talking about counterfeit physical goods causing harm enough, perhaps they can avoid addressing the real issues -- which is exactly what Sapiro does here. Weak.

ACTA specifically recognizes the importance of free expression, due process, and privacy. It is the first -- and only -- international intellectual property rights agreement to provide explicitly that enforcement of intellectual property rights in the context of the Internet "shall be implemented in a manner that … preserves fundamental principles such as freedom of expression, fair process, and privacy." No provision in ACTA requires parties to disclose information "contrary to … laws protecting privacy rights." This includes the protections already in place in U.S. law.

This, unfortunately, is because of the oddly worded original petition, that focused on "privacy," rather than the many other more serious problems with ACTA. It gave Sapiro an out by pretending that ACTA deals with the "problems" people are raising, while avoiding addressing any of the real problems, which aren't really about privacy.

In addition to the United States, approximately thirty countries have signed the Agreement, including Australia, Canada, Korea, Japan, New Zealand, Morocco, Singapore, and a majority of European Union member states, as well as the EU itself.

This is a nice bit of trickery. While many countries did "sign" the agreement, signing and ratifying are completely different issues, and as we've seen, the EU Parliament is hopefully very, very close to rejecting ACTA. That Sapiro doesn't even acknowledge this true state of things is really rather incredible. As with her boss, she seems to be actively insulting the intelligence of people who are concerned about ACTA, by pretending (completely falsely) that there is worldwide acceptance of ACTA already.

We believe that ACTA will help protect the intellectual property that is essential to American jobs in innovative and creative industries. At the same time, ACTA recognizes the importance of online privacy, freedom of expression and due process, and calls on signatories to protect these values in the course of complying with the Agreement.

[citation needed]

This whole response is pretty insulting. Yes, part of the problem was the poorly worded original petition, but the fact that Sapiro doesn't address any of the actual concerns of ACTA, and then pretends everything's just peachy with the agreement (and totally ignores the major constitutional question about how the Executive Branch can sign a treaty covering powers only granted to the Congress without Congressional approval), suggests a White House and USTR that still thinks it's pulling a fast one over on the American public.

Filed Under: acta, miriam sapiro, ron kirk, ustr, we the people, white house