Carson Supports Edward Snowden’s Work But Not Edward Snowden

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson said Tuesday that he would not grant Edward Snowden a pardon, despite speaking in positive terms about the information uncovered by the NSA whistleblower.

Carson said of pardoning Snowden, “It would set a very bad precedent… There are appropriate ways to reveal things, and that was an inappropriate way, because it jeopardized our country.”

In Carson’s new book A More Perfect Union, Carson wrote that “surreptitiously tracking phone calls, purchasing activity, web site visitation history, and a host of other activities is tantamount to the illegal search and seizure forbidden by the Fourth Amendment,” adding the government did not come clean about its involvement until “exposed by an informant.”

“Everyone is entitled to their private thoughts and musings without fear of exposure,” Carson wrote, noting that “creative thinking is much more likely to occur in a setting” where it cannot be seized arbitrarily by authority figures.

“In this cyber age, the right to privacy is more important than ever,” he wrote.

[h/t ThinkProgress]

[Image via screengrab]

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