In 2013, Edward Snowden shook the world with his revelations about NSA (short for National Security Agency, Ed.) mass surveillance, but even then, in Italy, I was among the very few who grasped the magnitude of those revelations. For me, it was not just an espionage story, but a warning about how Orwellian Big Brother was now a reality. In the years that followed, I told this story through dozens of articles and conferences, trying to raise awareness in Italy of the very profound implications of a society in which every communication is intercepted and every action tracked.
A path that led me to write, in 2014, the novel The Predestined, strongly inspired by the Snowden affair. That book was not just a novel, but an attempt to use fiction to explain how technology, instead of making us freer was becoming a very powerful tool to control us.
Between 2015 and 2016, The Predestined became the antechamber to one of my boldest initiatives: the fake candidacy in the U.S. presidential election under the guise of Alex Anderson, the novel’s protagonist, with Edward Snowden as the vice presidential candidate. That campaign, which was talked about in more than 20 countries, helped bring the issue of mass wiretapping to the center of public debate, an issue that until then had been deliberately sidestepped by the mainstream media, in part to cover up the Emailgate scandal-involving Hillary Clinton and the entire Obama administration-which epitomized the arrogance of a system that believed it could violate the privacy of others without consequence while protecting its own secrets.
Edward Snowden is a symbol of rare courage in our time, as he decided to sacrifice everything to reveal to the world a global surveillance system that, under the guise of national security, violated the fundamental rights of millions of people. His revelations revealed how the NSA had turned the Web into a huge spying network, monitoring emails, phone calls, Web histories and even Gps data. It was not just surveilling suspects, but indiscriminately intercepting all forms of communication, creating a society in which privacy was now a thing of the past.
Despite the gravity of those revelations, the political and media establishment attempted to discredit Snowden, labeling him a traitor. But the real threat was not Snowden: it was the system he exposed. His action exposed the hypocrisy of a government that, while preaching democracy and human rights, systematically trampled them underfoot with mass surveillance programs.
Today, nearly 12 years after his revelations, the issue of surveillance is more urgent than ever. Technology has continued to evolve, giving government agencies and Big Tech increasingly sophisticated tools to monitor and control. Elon Musk’s release of the Twitter Files demonstrated how social platforms have become complicit in a system of censorship and manipulation in which dissident voices are systematically silenced. This is exactly the future that Snowden had tried to warn us against with his revelations.
In addition to having been a victim himself, President Trump has consistently denounced the abuses of the Deep state and the authoritarian drifts of a system that uses security as a pretext for restricting individual freedoms. In this light, pardoning Edward Snowden would not only be a gesture of justice, but a message to the world, a way of saying that American democracy does not tolerate abuses of power and that constitutional rights are non-negotiable. Moreover, by doing so, Trump would send a strong signal to Big Tech and government agencies about a sacrosanct concept: mass surveillance and censorship will never be normalized.
Snowden is not a traitor, but a patriot who acted to defend the Constitution. He sacrificed everything to warn the world of the dangers of a system that is slowly turning our democracies into authoritarian regimes. His figure represents a hope, a warning and a call to action.
Donald Trump has built his political identity on the struggle against the establishment and single-mindedness. Granting Edward Snowden a pardon would be a decisive step in this direction. It would be a very hard blow to the Deep state and a tangible signal demonstrating that, after the historic victory on November 5, America is once again the beacon of democracy and freedom for the entire West.
This is a battle that affects us all. It is a battle for privacy, freedom of thought and democracy. Edward Snowden has shown us the danger; now it is up to each of us to put his teaching to good use. Restoring his freedom would be not only a recognition of his courage, but also a demonstration that America is back – finally – to stand up for the values on which it was founded.
