According to Wikileaks.org, Snowden has also submitted asylum requests to Austria, Bolivia, Brazil, China, Cuba, Finland, France, Germany, India, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, Norway, Poland, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Venezuela Ecuador and Iceland. 

CBS News reports on some of his rejections:

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The statement in full:

One week ago I left Hong Kong after it became clear that my freedom and safety were under threat for revealing the truth. My continued liberty has been owed to the efforts of friends new and old, family, and others who I have never met and probably never will. I trusted them with my life and they returned that trust with a faith in me for which I will always be thankful.

On Thursday, President Obama declared before the world that he would not permit any diplomatic "wheeling and dealing" over my case. Yet now it is being reported that after promising not to do so, the President ordered his Vice President to pressure the leaders of nations from which I have requested protection to deny my asylum petitions.

This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile. These are the old, bad tools of political aggression. Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me.

For decades the United States of America have been one of the strongest defenders of the human right to seek asylum. Sadly, this right, laid out and voted for by the U.S. in Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is now being rejected by the current government of my country. The Obama administration has now adopted the strategy of using citizenship as a weapon. Although I am convicted of nothing, it has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person. Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right. A right that belongs to everybody. The right to seek asylum.

In the end the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake. We are stateless, imprisoned, or powerless. No, the Obama administration is afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised — and it should be.

I am unbowed in my convictions and impressed at the efforts taken by so many.

Edward Joseph Snowden

Monday 1st July 2013

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Clapper, you may recall, unequivocally said "no, sir" in response to Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., asking him: "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" Clapper's response was shown to be a lie by Snowden's disclosures, as well as by reports from the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Associated Press and Bloomberg News (among others). This is particularly significant, considering lying before Congress prevents the legislative branch from performing oversight and is therefore a felony.

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If Snowden wants to stay in Russia he "must stop his work aimed at harming our American partners".

Snowden "is not a Russian agent", Putin said, repeating that Russian intelligence services were not working with the fugitive American, who is believed to remain in the transit area at a Moscow airport eight days after arriving from Hong Kong.

He said Snowden should choose his final destination and go there.

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The Cold War defection of the two code breakers made global headlines like those Snowden is making, albeit without today’s blow-by-blow tweets and cable coverage. When the two longtime buddies surfaced months later at a press conference in the Soviet Union, they announced they’d been granted asylum and had become Soviet citizens. Standing before 200 reporters at Moscow’s theater-styled House of Journalists, the defectors said they hoped to expose what they called the government’s lies – similar to Snowden’s stated motives in revealing NSA’s megadata collection of the public’s phone calls. The NSA panicked; a secret study from 1963 by the agency declares that "Beyond any doubt, no other event has had, or is likely to have in the future, a greater impact on the Agency's security program."

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Facing threatened investigations and sanctions from Europe, U.S. intelligence officials plan to discuss the new allegations — reported in Sunday's editions of the German newsweekly Der Spiegel — directly with EU officials.

But "as a matter of policy, we have made clear that the United States gathers foreign intelligence of the type gathered by all nations," concluded a statement issued Sunday from the national intelligence director's office.

It was the latest backlash in a nearly month-long global debate over the reach of U.S. surveillance that aims to prevent terror attacks. The two programs, both run by the National Security Agency, pick up millions of telephone and Internet records that are routed through American networks each day. Reports about the programs have raised sharp concerns about whether they violate public privacy rights at home and abroad.

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From Der Spiegel, translated to English by Google Translate:

In a "top secret" classified NSA paper in September 2010 describes how the intelligence attacked the EU's diplomatic representation in Washington.

Thus, not only bugs were installed in the building in the U.S. capital, but also the internal computer network was infiltrated. In this way, the Americans not only get access to meetings at the premises of the EU , but also to e-mails and internal documents on the computers.

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"He communicated a very courteous request from the United States that we reject the (asylum) request," Correa said during his weekly television broadcast, praising Biden's good manners in contrast to "brats" in Congress who had threatened to cut trade benefits over the Snowden issue.

Biden initiated the phone call, Correa said.

"When he (Snowden) arrives on Ecuadorean soil, if he arrives ... of course the first opinions we will seek are those of the United States," Correa said.

Snowden is reportedly in Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport after flying to Russia from Hong Kong.

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Huffington Post’s Michael Calderone extensively detailed this week's NSA media counteroffensive against Snowden, as officials have tried to explain — anonymously and without real proof — that Snowden's leaks have hurt national security. On Wednesday, intelligence officials described to ABC News, Washington Post, Reuters and AP how terrorists are allegedly “changing their tactics” now that they've been tipped off that the U.S. is monitoring the Internet.

Essentially, the government leaked a bunch of classified information in an attempt to prove leaking classified information is dangerous.

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In this way, Snowden is a quintessential American outlaw hero, albeit updated for the modern era. With many Americans cheering him on as he evades the law -- moving from Hong Kong to Moscow and possibly some other nation, seemingly outwitting the U.S. government all the while --  it echoes the reception many other fugitives like Whitey Bulger, O.J. Simpson (during the famous Bronco chase), and Bucky Phillips all received.

All of which raises a key question: Why do Americans so often root for outlaws on the run?

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under the program, launched in 2001, a federal judge sitting on the secret surveillance panel called the Fisa court would approve a bulk collection order for internet metadata "every 90 days". A senior administration official confirmed the program, stating that it ended in 2011.

The collection of these records began under the Bush administration's wide-ranging warrantless surveillance program, collectively known by theNSA codename Stellar Wind.

According to a top-secret draft report by the NSA's inspector general – published for the first time today by the Guardian – the agency began "collection of bulk internet metadata" involving "communications with at least one communicant outside the United States or for which no communicant was known to be a citizen of the United States".

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During a January 2009 chat, on a " public Internet Relay Chat" run by the site Ars Technica, which first reported it, the screen name Snowden used, TheTrueHOOHA, was discussing a New York Times article about classified U.S. dealings with Iran with an unidentified user:

< TheTrueHOOHA> HOLY SHIT
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/washington/11iran.html?_r=1&hp
< TheTrueHOOHA> WTF NYTIMES
< TheTrueHOOHA> Are they TRYING to start a war?
Jesus christ
they're like wikileaks
< User19> they're just reporting, dude.
< TheTrueHOOHA> They're reporting classified shit
< User19> shrugs
< TheTrueHOOHA> about an unpopular country surrounded by enemies already engaged in a war
and about our interactions with said country regarding planning sovereignity violations of another country
you don't put that shit in the NEWSPAPER
< User19> meh
< TheTrueHOOHA> moreover, who the fuck are the anonymous sources telling them this?
< TheTrueHOOHA> those people should be shot in the balls.

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On Sunday, Gregory asked Greenwald, the Guardian reporter who published Edward Snowden's NSA leak, "Why shouldn't you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?" New York magazine points out that Gregory's question "all but accused the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald of aiding and abetting Edward Snowden's fugitive travels."

But Rich rebuts: "Is David Gregory a journalist?"

"As a thought experiment, name one piece of news he has broken, one beat he’s covered with distinction, and any memorable interviews he’s conducted that were not with John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Dick Durbin or Chuck Schumer."

"Presumably if Gregory had been around 40 years ago," Rich adds snidely, "he also would have accused the Times of aiding and abetting the enemy when it published Daniel Ellsberg’s massive leak of the Pentagon Papers."

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After it was revealed two weeks ago that the National Security Agency collects domestic emails, chats, photos, and call records through two surveillance operations, PRISM and BLARNEY, hundreds of Americans filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to find out what of their personal data has been gathered.

If the NSA’s response to one such request from San Francisco-based web developer Jarrett Streebin is any indicator, those FOIA filings will likely be in vain.

“To the extent that your request seeks any metadata/call detail records on you and/or any telephone numbers provided in your request, or seeks intelligence information on you, we cannot acknowledge the existence or non-existence of such metadata or call detail records,” the agency wrote Streebin.

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The criticism of Silicon Valley is long overdue and some of the critiques are both thoughtful and scathing. The New Yorker, for example, has explored how start-ups are undermining the purpose of education at Stanford University, addressed the Valley’s messianic delusions and political meddling, and considered Apple’s massive tax avoidance.

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Snowden left Hong Kong earlier this week, where he had been staying in "a safe place" when he was charged with espionage by the US government. Snowden then reportedly flew to Moscow, and from Moscow to Havana, Cuba. But when journalists boarded a flight they suspected that he was on, there was no Snowden. The media then reported on the fact that Snowden was nowhere to be seen. "They were literally reporting on nothing," joked Oliver.

"Stop guessing," where he is, exclaims Oliver. "News is not a game show!"

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The two say they are motivated by a desire to expose human rights and civil liberties violations by the American government, but allying with Correa is like jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. Many have cursorily noted that Ecuador has a poor record when it comes to freedom of the press, but a closer inspection is even more troubling.

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“My position with Booz Allen Hamilton granted me access to lists of machines all over the world the NSA hacked,” he told the Post on June 12. “That is why I accepted that position about three months ago.”

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