RT is really doing a stellar job reporting on this story, while the BBC and Euronews are doing their best to pretend it's not even worth reporting on! I think Germany is the only European country to acknowledge how important this is. We who work in IT know that this is our worst nightmares confirmed, and if it's not 1984, it's certainly 1983...! It's just a matter of time. Double speak is already in full swing for those who have read the book.

Anyway; Apparently the reason that Ed Snowden didn't leave for South America, is that he was on some "no fly" list which apparently the USA is able to impose on ALL airlines, including Aeroflot.. And the incident with the Bolivian president's plane being forced down was a good indication of what would happen if the US had even the tiniest reason to suspect that Ed was trying to make his way across the Atlantic.

I honestly thought the whole thing about him being holed up on the airport was a cover story, and that Russia sorted him out the minute he made it to Moscow; i.e. gave him a new identity in Russia, sent him incognito to South America, or whatever.

Perhaps he wanted to go to South America for language reasons; I suppose he might already speak Spanish but maybe he thinks he'll remain an outsider in Russia because of the language.

But let's face it; unless he fancies hiding somewhere that's entirely closed off to the rest of the world - the only two countries that can protect him and got enough spine to do it right now, are Russia and China, and between them Russia seems a much more pleasant choice.

@ Rockzmom, sorry I can't agree with you on this one and YES, luckily it turned out that there were some countries that wanted Snowden after all. Quite a few in South America, and it seems Russia isn't so fussy about upsetting the "American partners" after all....
I understand that you feel p-d off that Snowden "betrayed" your country, but from his point of view he's trying to save it from going down the wrong way, and have some honesty between the state, the tech companies and the population. So he had only good intentions.

And this is not at all fully against the USA: It seems that France and the UK are doing a very good job of the spying too. It says a lot that it was actually an American who was brave enough to raise the flag on this. Why didn't a Brit, a German or French person come forward?

As for Russia; Whether it's got it's own PRISM programme.... What do people here think?
Either Russia has better things to spend money on (hopefully), or they are in fact doing it, only Snowden has no info to prove it, since Russia is not in NATO and wouldn't have shared the intel with the CIA like Europe does. So Snowden wouldn't know what the score was. But he might have suspicions, and perhaps that's why he was reluctant about Russia.

For people without an IT background:

1) Anything that passes through the internet backbone in the USA or Europe gets listened to and can be saved. I.e. emails and stuff you type in places like this. This affects anyone who is using MR, essentially. Your interactions are being auto-scanned for keywords or patterns that would flag that it's a conversation worth listening to. There is nothing you can do about that, other they use a completely anonymous VPN or TOR.

2) Anything you do on social networks is particularly under scrutiny. Your info is saved and can be pulled out and scrutinized if you are suspected of some security related crime.

3) Your search history, emails and phone calls, ditto.
Again, I repeat: Most people in IT suspected this was going on for many years. But we hoped we were just being paranoid. It is just beyond awful to have our worst nightmares on this score confirmed. But sadly, the rest of the public don't care, and many techies have already sold their soul and can't protest. That is why Ed Snowden is such a hero. He had so much to lose, but I couldn't keep quiet about what he knew, on principle. That is real heroism if you ask me.