Venezuela offers asylum to NSA source Edward Snowden

Venezuela's president Nicolas Maduro has offered to give asylum to Edward Snowden, the former contractor of the National Security Agency who leaked documents about the agency's surveillance programs.

Maduro said in a televised speech on Friday that his country would give "humanitarian asylum."

Neighboring Nicaragua has also said it is considering offering Snowden asylum if circumstances permit, according to reports.

But there are questions as to how he will get to Venezuela. Earlier this week, a plane carrying Evo Morales, president of Bolivia, was denied permission to enter airspace over some European countries as it was returning to Bolivia from Moscow. The countries had apparently been informed that Snowden was on board and their refusal to handle the aircraft sparked protests in Bolivia and the strong complaints from the Bolivian government.

Whistle-blower site WikiLeaks, which has handled Snowden's other asylum requests, said on Friday that asylum requests have been sent to six other countries, but their names were being withheld "due to attempted U.S. interference."

Earlier in the week it said that applications for asylum or asylum assistance were submitted on behalf of Snowden to about 20 countries including Venezuela and Nicaragua through an official at the Russian consulate at Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow. Snowden is thought to be in the transit facility of the airport, unable to enter Russia after the U.S. revoked his passport.

The American government has filed charges against Snowden in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia for theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information and willful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person.

A bill introduced Thursday by members of the Icelandic Parliament seeks to grant Icelandic citizenship to Snowden, but it won't be discussed until September after the house refused to take it up on the last day of the summer session of the Parliament.

"I have to announce that Snowden will not be getting any form of shelter in Iceland because the current government doesn't even have enough spine for the parliament to discuss Snowden´s request," wrote Birgitta Jónsdóttir, member of the Icelandic Parliament for the Pirate Party, in a blog post on Friday.

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Oliver Stone on NSA Leaker Edward Snowden: 'I Would Give Him Asylum'

KARLOVY VARY – It doesn’t give Edward Snowden options, but director Oliver Stone wants to grant the National Security Agency leaker asylum.

"If I were a country, I would give him asylum. I wish I could be a country," Stone told The Hollywood Reporter from the Karlovy Vary Film Festival where he is to receive a lifetime achievement award.

The filmmaker added that he can do no more to protect Snowden from prosecution by the United States than joining fellow Hollywood stars like John Cusack, Roseanne Barr and Danny Glover to sign a petition that urges President Rafael Correa to grant Snowden’s asylum request.

Having fled the U.S., Snowden remains holed up in the transit zone at Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport as a raft of international asylum requests so far go unanswered.

Stone said he was especially disappointed by leaders in Europe, and in Brazil and India, after they rejected Snowden’s asylum bids outright.

"I'm disappointed by Europe’s reaction, considering they are among the targets for the eavesdropping,” he said.

STORY: Edward Snowden: Hollywood Joins Asylum Petition to Ecuador

The director recalled the 1950s and 1960s, when an earlier generation of leaders like Indian prime minister Jawahartal Nehru, Ghanian president Kwame Nkrumah and French president Charles De Gaulle were more “neutral” about U.S foreign policy., and did not hesitate to voice criticism.

"That kind of independence has been lost in Europe,” Stone complained.

He was especially critical of German chancellor Angela Merkel who, while reacting angrily to claims of U.S. spying in Europe, has followed U.S. foreign policy as her country increasingly controls a beleaguered European Union framework.

"I do feel it has not been good for Europe," Stone said of the EU.

“It has led to the creation of a German financial empire. Now it’s just one big government out of Germany,” he added.

Stone, no stranger to political critique, is also in Karlovy Vary to introduce screenings of two episodes of The Untold History of the United States.

The 10-hour documentary series on Showtime was co-written by Peter Kuznick.

Stone said The Untold History captures an unrevealed history of the U.S. during the 20th century.

"It's all about 70 years that we have forgotten. When you see it in one piece – 10 hours – you get it," he argued.

The Bohemian spa town festival will also screen a new director’s cut of Stone’s Alexander, which expands on the original 2004 version from Warner Bros. that was two hours and 45 minutes.

"It's thre hours, 20 minutes now. I'm very happy with this version. It has a different flow,” Stone said.

The Karlovy Vary Film Festival continues through July 6.

Snowden seeks asylum from several countries, including China and Russia

Applications for asylum or asylum assistance were submitted on behalf of former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden to a number of countries including China, Russia, and India, whistle-blower site WikiLeaks said Tuesday.

Snowden, who leaked information about NSA surveillance programs, was charged by the U.S. in a federal court for theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information and willful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person. The complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia was filed on June 14.

The asylum-related requests were submitted by hand by Sarah Harrison, WikiLeaks' legal advisor in the Snowden matter, to an official at the Russian consulate at Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow late Sunday evening, WikiLeaks said.
 
Among the countries approached were Austria, Bolivia, Brazil, China, Cuba, Finland, France, Germany, India, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, Norway, Poland, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, and Venezuela. A Russian official has confirmed receiving an application for asylum in the country, according to reports.

"The requests join or update others previously made including to the Republic of Ecuador and the Republic of Iceland," WikiLeaks said in a statement.

WikiLeaks did not provide information on the outcome of the requests, except that the requests have started to be delivered by the Russian consulate to relevant embassies in Moscow.

Snowden's request for asylum in Ecuador hasn't moved because the government of Ecuador wants him to seek asylum from Ecuador territory, according to reports. U.S. vice president Joe Biden is also said to have spoken to Ecuador President Rafael Correa to ask him not to grant Snowden asylum.

Snowden, who is said to be in the transit facility of the airport in Moscow after the U.S. revoked his passport, on Monday criticized the "deception" of U.S. President Barack Obama who last week said that he would not permit any diplomatic "wheeling and dealing" over the Snowden issue.

"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," Snowden said in a statement released through WikiLeaks.
 
The Obama administration has now adopted the strategy of using citizenship as a weapon, Snowden wrote. "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."

The NSA was allowed by a court order to collect phone metadata of a large number of customers of Verizon, according to a report in the Guardian last month. The information was said to have been leaked by Snowden who also passed on documents that suggested that the NSA had real-time access to the content on servers of Internet companies like Facebook and Google.

26 U.S. senators, cutting across party lines, said on Friday they are seeking "public answers" on a number of issues related to the surveillance, including whether the National Security Agency collected in bulk other data such as credit card purchases and financial information in the U.S. besides phone records, and specific evidence of how the surveillance helped foil terrorist plots.

New legislation, introduced last week in the U.S. Senate, called the FISA Accountability and Privacy Protection Act of 2013, aims to reform the Patriot and FISA Amendments Acts to provide greater oversight and control to the government's surveillance programs.

Whistle-blowers, authors, academicians and actors have urged Correa to grant Snowden political asylum, stating that the Obama administration, U.S. Congress and most of the media have focused "their ire on the messenger," instead of focusing on the danger to citizens' freedom and privacy exposed by the revelations, and the reforms necessary to protect citizens' rights. A letter signed by Pentagon papers whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg, author Noam Chomsky and film director Oliver Stone, among others, was released Monday by organization Just Foreign Policy.

Ecuador Says NSA Leaker Has Asked For Asylum

A TV screen shows a news report of Edward Snowden at a shopping mall in Hong Kong on Sunday.

Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor accused of leaking classified surveillance information, has asked Ecuador for asylum, the country's foreign minister says.

Snowden left Hong Kong earlier Sunday bound for a "third country," the government in the Asian hub said. He later landed in Moscow.

Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino Aroca, who is on an official visit to Vietnam, said:

The Government of Ecuador has received an asylum request from Edward J. #Snowden
— Ricardo Patiño Aroca (@RicardoPatinoEC) June 23, 2013

Earlier, Russia's ITAR-Tass news agency quoted an unidentified official from Aeroflot as saying Snowden would fly to Moscow and from there to Cuba on Monday, with an ultimate destination of Caracas, Venezuela. The anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks also said it was giving Snowden legal counsel and had helped him leave Hong Kong.

The government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, or HKSAR, said in a statement that Snowden departed the territory "on his own accord for a third country through a lawful and normal channel." It did not say what his destination was.

CNN had a camera trained on the arrival area in Moscow for the Aeroflot flight Snowden was believed to be on, but there was no sign of him. However, The New York Times
reported that other passengers on the plane said a black car pulled up on the tarmac after the flight landed; Russia Today, Russia's English-language television station, later reported that the car belonged to the embassy of Ecuador.
On Saturday, the U.S. asked Hong Kong, a semi-autonomous Chinese territory, for Snowden's extradition after federal prosecutors filed a criminal complaint last week charging him with espionage, theft and conversion of government property in connection with leaks to The Guardian
newspaper about secret U.S. electronic surveillance programs.
June 5: The U.K.-based Guardian
newspaper reports that the National Security Agency has been collecting telephone metadata of U.S. customers of Verizon.
June 6: In its second expose on secret U.S. electronic surveillance efforts, the Guardian
reports on a 'highly classified' program called PRISM that allows the NSA access to servers of Microsoft, Google, Apple and other leading tech companies to collect emails and other data.
June 9: The Guardian
identifies Edward Snowden, a former NSA contractor, as the source of the leaks of classified information behind its exclusive reports. The newspaper says Snowden asked that his name be made public, and links to a video of the 29-year-old consultant justifying his actions. The newspaper says Snowden has taken refuge in Hong Kong.
June 20: The Guardian
reports that special Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, courts gave permission to the NSA to retain "inadvertently acquired" domestic communications "if they contain usable intelligence, information on criminal activity, threat of harm to people or property, are encrypted, or are believed to contain any information relevant to cybersecurity."
June 21: Federal prosecutors file a criminal complaint against Snowden, charging him with espionage.

June 22: The U.S. makes a formal request to Hong Kong to hand over Snowden for prosecution under the terms of a 1998 extradition treaty between Washington and the Chinese territory.

June 23: Snowden leaves Hong Kong on a plane that transits through Moscow, but his ultimate destination remains unclear.

Despite the extradition request, the HKSAR government said that documents from the U.S. asking for a provisional arrest warrant "did not fully comply with the legal requirements under Hong Kong law."

Hong Kong said it had asked the United States to provide additional information, but "has yet to have sufficient information to process the request for provisional warrant of arrest, [so] there is no legal basis to restrict Mr. Snowden from leaving Hong Kong," according to the statement.

Hong Kong said it had informed the U.S. of Snowden's departure.

Justice Department spokeswoman Nanda Chitre confirmed that Hong Kong told the U.S. that Snowden "departed Hong Kong for a third country.

"We will continue to discuss this matter with Hong Kong and pursue relevant law enforcement cooperation with other countries where Mr. Snowden may be attempting to travel," Chitre said.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki would not specifically confirm reports that Snowden's U.S. passport had been revoked, but said the practice was "consistent with U.S. regulations ... for persons with felony arrest warrants."

"Such revocation does not affect citizenship status," Psaki said. "Persons wanted on felony charges, such as Mr. Snowden, should not be allowed to proceed in any further international travel, other than is necessary to return him to the United States."

A State Department official said the U.S. has been in touch with countries in through which Snowden might transit or that could serve as "final destinations."

WikiLeaks — whose founder, Julian Assange has taken refuge in Ecuador's London embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden on sex crime allegations — said on its Twitter feed that it was assisting Snowden.

"Mr. Snowden is currently over Russian airspace accompanied by WikiLeaks legal advisors," it said in a statement issued shortly after Snowden's Aeroflot flight departed Hong Kong.

In a later statement, Wikileaks said Snowden "is bound for the Republic of Ecuador ... for the purposes of asylum."

The Sydney Morning Herald
quoted Assange as saying that he had "great personal sympathy for Ed Snowden's position" and that he was "thankful to the countries that have been doing the right thing in these matters."