Today according to Edward Snowden’s attorney, he was granted temporary asylum in Russia. This allowed Snowden, who had been trapped at the Moscow airport for the past many weeks, the ability to move about freely.
He is now free to travel in Russia, which does not suit those in Washington D.C. who would just as soon see him dead. Politically, this will put Russia and the U.S. at odds, but it was certainly the right thing for Russia to do. From denverpost.com:
“The White House said it was “extremely disappointed” and warned that the decision could derail an upcoming summit between President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin.”
This has happened at the same time as the great Glenn Greenwald has just released a story in The Guardian that exposes another National Security Agency (NSA) spying program called XKeyscore that was found out by Snowden. This is a top secret program that can search and collect nearly 100% of all Internet activity. This is all unauthorized, and can capture everything from social media, email and all browsing history!
The NSA boasts in training materials that the program, called XKeyscore, is its “widest-reaching” system for developing intelligence from the Internet.
Snowden said that he could sit at his desk and wiretap absolutely anyone simply by obtaining a personal email address. While the NSA has denied this capability, they no longer can do so given the evidence available.
I could not be happier about Edward Snowden, a true hero, being given asylum. I hope he is very cautious, because he could easily become the victim of some unfortunate or bizarre accident, even though he is on Russian soil!