Edward Snowden Seeks 'Permanent Political Asylum'
Edward Snowden says "permanent political asylum" will give him the freedom to talk about U.S. surveillance programs.
The former contractor for the National Security Agency, who leaked a trove of information on the agency's vast surveillance operations, has written "an open letter to the people of Brazil" in which he says: "Until a country grants permanent political asylum, the U.S. government will continue to interfere with my ability to speak."
The letter was published by Floha de Sao Paulo and also on the Facebook page of David Miranda, the partner of columnist Glenn Greenwald, who was one of the first journalists to break the news of the Snowden leaks.
Snowden now lives in Russia, where he was granted temporary asylum until mid-2014.
In his letter, Snowden doesn't explicitly seek asylum in Brazil, but Floha de Sao Paulo, in a story accompanying the letter, reports that he doesn't have the freedom in Russia to "truly debate" the leaks.
"In Brazil, with permanent asylum status, he would have more liberty to do so," the newspaper says.
It adds: "Snowden takes care, in the letter, not to directly address [Brazilian President] Dilma [Rousseff]. The reason is to not offend the Russian government, who is currently hosting him. But, also according to Greenwald, he wants to come to Brazil."
Revelations that the NSA's surveillance targeted people across the world, and even the leaders of friendly nations, have embarrassed the U.S. government and strained relations with allies such as Brazil and Germany.
In the letter, Snowden outlines what he says are the NSA's activities in Brazil:
"Today, if you carry a cell phone in Sao Paolo, the NSA can and does keep track of your location: they do this 5 billion times a day to people around the world. When someone in Florianopolis visits a website, the NSA keeps a record of when it happened and what you did there. If a mother in Porto Alegre calls her son to wish him luck on his university exam, NSA can keep that call log for five years or more. They even keep track of who is having an affair or looking at pornography, in case they need to damage their target's reputation."