Edward Snowden is offering to help Brazil investigate how the NSA spies on the country's citizens in exchange for asylum there.
In September, the Guardian published a report based on leaked documents from the former NSA contractor that stated the NSA spied on Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and state-run oil company Petrobras. Since then, Brazil has been one of the most outspoken critics against the NSA's surveillance tactics.
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The whistleblower made the offer in a lengthy open letter to Brazil on Tuesday, as first reported by the Associated Press.
"I have expressed my willingness to assist wherever appropriate and lawful, but unfortunately the United States government has worked very hard to limit my ability to do so," Snowden wrote in the letter, which was published in full by the Brazilian daily newspaper La Folha de S. Paulo.
"Until a country grants permanent political asylum, the U.S. government will continue to interfere with my ability to speak," he continued.
Snowden, who praised Brazil's angry reaction to the leaks, reminded Brazilians why he lifted thousands (or millions, depending who you ask) of documents from the NSA and leaked them to the press.
"I was motivated by a belief that the citizens of the world deserve to understand the system in which they live," he wrote in the letter.
For Brazilians, that system entails pervasive surveillance, as Snowden explained with three examples.
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.
Snowden is currently residing in Russia after the Kremlin granted him a one-year temporary asylum. Prior to that, he spent five weeks holed up at a Moscow airport over the summer. He sent out asylum requests to 21 countries, and 18 of them — including Brazil — either declined or didn't respond. Snowden's U.S. passport was cancelled when the government pressed charges against him.
It's unclear whether Brazil is now interested in offering asylum. Details on Snowden's ability to get to Brazil are also murky; his flight there would have to avoid U.S. airspace and probably even the airspace of countries that could be asked to block his plane.
In early July, a flight carrying Bolivian President Evo Morales, which was suspected to have Snowden on board, was forced to land in Austria when several European countries refused to let the plane fly over their airspaces. The U.S. government allegedly asked these countries to block the plane, fearing Snowden was on his way to South America where he could get asylum in Venezuela, Nicaragua or Bolivia.
You can read Snowden's full letter here.
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