Elliott J. Schuchardt U.S.

Steel Tower, Suite 660 600 Grant Street Pittsburgh, PA 15219 Phone: (412) 414-5138 E-Mail: elliott016@gmail.com

June 23, 2013 President Barack Obama The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Re: Edward Snowden

Dear President Obama: I am writing to express my strong support for former NSA contractor, Edward Snowden, and his efforts to bring greater openness to our society. I am astonished and appalled that the government is seeking to prosecute Mr. Snowden. Any such efforts should be delayed until the programs disclosed by Mr. Snowden are fully investigated by the general public. For the past several years, I have heard rumors that the federal government is storing e-mails written by Americans in a large central computer. I long considered these stories to be nothing more than urban legends. It now appears, based on the documents released by Mr. Snowden, that there is some truth to these accounts. Mr. Snowdens documents indicate that the federal government is storing, saving and searching the content of e-mails and web queries in the United States . I have attached a copy of these documents to this letter. If this is true, then the governments conduct appears to be illegal. I am not aware of any law which authorizes such a large scale intrusion into the lives of ordinary American citizens. Unfortunately, Mr. Snowdens allegations appear to be presently feasible. According to news accounts, the National Security Agency is currently building a computer near Bluffdale, Utah that appears to have the capacity to store and search the entire national, e-mail database. As noted by Mr. Snowden, the existence of the Utah Data Center raises serious concerns about the future of our republic. It has long been illegal for the government to create a registry of firearms in the United States. However, we now have the ability to

President Barack Obama June 23, 2013 literally track the whereabouts and movements of the every person in the nation by means of cell phone records, license plate recognition software, and face-recognition software. If the government database were to fall into the wrong hands, it could be used to monitor and control the population for the wrong purposes. For this reason, I strongly encourage you to support a law making it illegal for the United States government to (a) search or data-mine the e-mail or social networking databases of American citizens without a warrant, and (b) to track the movement of American citizens without a warrant. I would like to remind you that wiretapping has long been the third rail of American politics. Forty years ago, the U.S. government filed criminal charges against Daniel Ellsberg after Mr. Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times. These documents indicated that the government was lying to Congress about the Vietnam War. A federal judge dismissed those charges after it became known that the Nixon administration was conducting warrantless phone surveillance of Mr. Ellsberg. Ultimately, it was Nixon and his administration who were prosecuted. I hope that this outcome can be avoided under the present circumstances. Very truly yours, Elliott J. Schuchardt cc: Senator Bob Casey, Jr. Senator Pat Tomey Congressman Mike Doyle Steve Ballmer (CEO of Microsoft) Marissa Meyer (CEO of Yahoo) Mark Zuckerberg (CEO of Facebook) Larry Page (CEO of Google) Eric E. Schmidt (Executive Chairman of Google) Sergey Brin (Co-Founder of Google) Tim Armstrong (CEO of AOL) Tim Cook (CEO of Apple)