u.s. national security agent whistleblower edward snowden political asylum in ecuador he's currently in transit for the night at a moscow airport after flying in from. ecuador and diplomats came to meet him after he landed reportedly checked in to fly to cuba with sources confirming ecuador is his ultimate destination. and before you even left hong kong snowden's passport was reportedly revoked by the u.s. just told him deported human rights activists want washington. to get him. for snowden crossing continents. with new allegations that even barack obama was monitored while he was running for the senate.

international news and comment live from our studio center here in moscow this is r.t. with you twenty four hours a day. and it's a whistleblower edward snowden who is wanted by the u.s. has formally applied for political asylum in ecuador and that's according to the country's foreign minister is currently in a moscow airport waiting to board his next flight tomorrow afternoon when it's across now to paul scott who is at the airport tell us what has happened there at the airport since snowden touched down from hong kong. pretty much a case at the moment of the calm of the storm edward snowden arrived here at moscow . fifty. six hours ago was greeted by officials from the were. durian embassy and indeed by the ecuadorian ambassador

it's not clear whether the ambassador is still here at the airport or whether he has made his way back towards the embassy but it seems pretty certain that edward snowden does remain. and will do so over night now we're hearing that he's having problems with his paperwork his visa in particular now whether that's got anything to do with washington's claims that they have revoked his passport it isn't yet clear now you have to ask yourself why is edward snowden made his move now wants that question you have to look back over that what's happened in the last twenty four forty eight hours or so when friday the charges against him were made public he was charged by washington by the united states government with charges under the espionage act which carries a hefty prison term if he is tried and found guilty and then only yesterday the white house confirmed that they had spoken to the hong kong authorities about opening the goshi ations about extradition proceedings and it seems that that was enough for edward snowden to make his move he has as we've heard as you mentioned

there applied for political asylum in ecuador it's expected that he'll fly towards to cuba tomorrow afternoon two o'clock tomorrow afternoon his flight is expected to leave shot a matter of cuba will be another transit stop before his final destination as you say as wiki leaks have confirmed which is expected to be ecuador wolf thank you very much indeed for that. as paul saying he has officially applied for asylum in quito in ecuador there's been no official response whether they will granted asylum from the embassy but by what say our reporters been outside the embassy all afternoon and into the early hours of the evening now to buying why do you think he has now chosen ecuador. well bill you know ecuador has been in the spin of the story says that the day that snowden came out and said i am the whistleblower the reason i think

a lot of people had suspected that maybe this might be his next move i mean he had thrown in a couple of other countries in the mix so whether to did told the authorities or why do we still don't know but what we do know for sure is that of course evidence that they have received that official appreciation of the asylum i'm also this brings up to you know this case brings us back to another case of a very famous whistleblower i would still at this point. to bring us back to the case of a very famous whistleblower julian assange is holed up at the door an embassy in london joining us on this story is not so much different to snowden's of course he was wanted by the swedish government because of charges against him of a sexual assault he has denied those charges he was a he then we need to court to say you know he'd like to contest that but then decided that it is better for him to seek asylum as he thought that this was more than just the seeking him to ask him about these questions as a small political motivated move he then went to the door an embassy in june of

last year seek asylum was granted that asylum they could dorrian government indeed just came out and said we're granting him based on the fact that we feel that he may be extradited to the united states and will not face if a free trial and most so they were concerned about the treatment that he might receive upon his arrival in the united states when he is if he was extradited now snowden obviously coming out and saying that i am the man who lead to these documents is easy his life is in basically he needs to protect himself now these being a whistleblower under these circumstances you want to country that is be is going to be able to understand the situation that you're in an accident had seemed in the past with you in a son just story to be able to offer him. that kind of comfort he's now if indeed he will be able to make it out of the able to teach it will be a relief for him because right now it really is a case of just waiting and seeing how far he's going to go to buying things very

much indeed for that to buy more so live outside the ecuadorian embassy here in central moscow well let's discuss snowden's asylum plea with boratto she's information activist at the free bradley manning support network she joins us live now the only ecuador is proving to be quite a popular destination for whistle blows isn't that why is it so popular. well i don't know if it's ecuador per se but i know that they have very large. numbers of asylum fifty some odd thousand not necessary political refugees but i think also that has also helped make a safe haven for those that are persecuted politically and i think it's a wonderful watershed moment for there was a concert effort beyond these countries russia hong kong china venezuela and ecuador to protect edward snowden i think that's a very good initiative and i hope that this will set off a message to the u.s.

administration saying that the world is not about to take this kind of abuse of the constitutional protections that american citizens should enjoy and the u.s. to have an extradition agreement. is going to be that by having to cater. i suppose he will i think that they're. ready if they do accept his asylum petition that they would do everything in their power to provide safe passage and protect his well being in mind there and it's taken me hopefully look how long it's taken june in the sunshine it took him or something like two months for his asylum plea to be going on here of course he is indeed but you know what happens in that transitional period and to snowden could be very vulnerable and. i suppose so but i think that's why this incredibly complicated route has been mapped

out because it's tradition i believe in cuba and venezuela is also going to be very cooperative i suspect and i think that they will be well. if they do want to extradite him or now that is passports been revoked it's going to be a rather stormy weather getting him to ecuador i think that the americans are not going to let up lightly and are going to exert a great amount of political pressure to have him extradited but i do hope in this new age of south american. let's say self-consciousness and new freedoms and so forth that they will step up to the plate and provide protection for. the president the president of ecuador career has been criticized for freedom of speech clamping down on press freedom for example and here we have a champion of free speech now heading towards a country which is run by somebody who was criticized for doing exactly the opposite. i think there's

a great deal and irony of this whole story normally during the cold war they would be traveling to the u.s. and russia to countries like cuba and venezuela now recently yes but this might perhaps set a couple things into motion and make ecuador a little bit more aware of you know. me inspire ecuador to become more of a safe haven for press freedoms i think that all these countries have been challenged by this story in iceland for example which was also mentioned a couple of times that it might have been a potential. destination for his asylum. and it needs those kinds of civil protections that are anchored in the constitution and so forth to provide these protections and i think this is a rather new domain so you believe on like bradley money snowden won't be facing any court but he will get away from the grip of the u.s. . not necessarily saying that i mean i wish bradley manning had perhaps

done this form of disclosure outside of the us because we're seeing what kind of show trial he's experiencing and it's and the secrecy. shrouded around this trial i'm just thinking that i think ecuador took. petition very very seriously and putting your statement when he they did grant him asylum was really quite impressive and i'm sure they will review this death and. and rally together to protect. the whatever have a unity doesn't want to be bullies by the u.s. so yes no matter whatever happens he faces a very uncertain future you may never be able to return to his home bradley manning of course is facing a serious fate as well by the looks of things along with a surge don't these people's predicament put all the whistle blows off or does it actually encourage others to pursue their cause. it's a great question well i think that we've you know we've been experiencing the great show in the press corps in the u.s.

they're also attacking a journalist and slamming them with espionage act charges and so forth i just don't think that you're going to silence this generation these these people are from the internet they're born. digital natives and i think that this is a very very interesting trend very courageous young people stepping up and speaking truth to power and i think that they just not be able to plug the leaks you know and i think that he did consider very well the risks involved that he might not see his family again i was just as bradley manning did and they were willing to do it all the same and i commend them and i salute them and i stand and and also devote my life to try to raise awareness for these causes and i think it's very important to break through the sound barrier especially in the u.s. but there are not reporting on these issues or not reporting fairly on the bradley manning trial or on the fate of people like. brown or jeremy hammond or jacob and the kinds of persecution they've suffered as well in the u.s.

the only thanks so much for your thoughts on this the only berth of information i got was that the bradley manning support network in the states thank you very much indeed. the u.s. has reportedly revoked his passport and notified hong kong and russia but it didn't stop him from traveling or he's going to is here now with the details. the u.s. reportedly revoked edward snowden's passport yesterday but apparently it was too late for hong kong officials to stop him from flying in moscow snowden has been in the transit area at the airport where he doesn't need his passport now the speed with which the u.s. government stripped him of his passport is astonishing it's not clear how they manage that from the legal standpoint but it shows how much the u.s. wants to get hold of him the government is clearly afraid of more revelations the debate in the media has shifted to this chase mode it's now all about how are we going to catch him so right now the media is unsympathetic to edward snowden although just a week ago many of the same journalists who are almost cheerleading for his capture

now were grateful for snowden's revelations which were indeed i mean policymakers here are doing everything he can to shift the attention away from his revelations by focusing on scolding himself or even by attacking other countries like russia senator chuck schumer was on one of their use channels this morning saying president putin has aided and abetted snowden is a scape adding that quote putin always seems almost eager to put a finger in the eye of the united states and himself said he would seek asylum in a country that would not be easily pressured by the u.s. we know that the u.s. has put a lot of pressure on hong kong to arrest snowden and not to let him leave the country but in a statement the government of hong kong says u.s. documentation did not quote fully comply with the legal requirements under hong kong law but also in the same statement the government of hong kong adds that they want more information about the hacking of computer systems in hong kong by u.s. government agencies something that was part of snowden's revelations so in this

official statement we see hong kong shift the focus from the messenger edward snowden back to the message to the revelations that he has made demanding an explanation from the u.s. government now more on how the u.s. is going out of its way to keep the focus on the messenger to blackout the message my report. america is split on edward snowden traitor hero mix in between but we guard lissa what anyone thinks about snowden his revelations have shed unprecedented light on the u.s. government's massive spying program even if you're not doing anything wrong you're being watched and recorded a former n.s.a. employee william binney was prosecuted as a traitor when he blew the whistle on the government's sweeping collection of data and communications it's setting up a tele tarion state. when the government has that much information they can do those things they can use the i.r.s. to intimidate people or anything else they can send the f.b.i. . what they did to me and some others bradley manning to is being prosecuted as

a traitor although it's so here's your logs that the public learned about the. collateral murder was committed in iraq the obama administration has prosecuted more whistleblowers under the espionage act than all previous administrations combined but it was a lower say stop government persecution that they fear the greatest fear that i have regarding the outcome. for america of these disclosures is that nothing will change the administration is not trying to convince the american people that government secrets programs are a trade off they have to make in the name of national security they always have the same stories about you know science manning is known you know psychological stories what is wrong with these people cause them to do this i mean the real question is what is wrong with everyone else. who doesn't see what they can see but whistleblowers are not the only targets there is an obligation both moral but also legal i believe against

a reporter that was the chairman of the house committee on cutting teligent and terrorism peter king calling to punish the journalists who expose the government surveillance programs in its hunt for me the obama administration has already targeted journalists it's trying to set the precedent the communicating with the media is the same as communicating with the enemy and it's a death penalty offense the administration doesn't have to go after each other or he certainly it's enough to create an environment of fear but will that fear stop information from coming out here that we're snowden to answer that question even stations kone and responses simply build better whistleblower he said in washington i'm going to take on. littlewood snowden is the seventh person the obama administration has sought to punish for leaking classified data let's remember his main revelations while he disclosed the documents showing the n.s.a. has access to huge streams of internet data including emails chat rooms and videos

from large companies such as facebook and google showed how the u.s. government used the secret foreign intelligence surveillance court to get extensive data from phone service provider the rising and he told china hundreds of targets there were being hacked according to his latest leak the u.k. is collecting and storing huge amounts of sensitive personal data from online and telephone traffic and sharing it with america where you go investigative journalist tony goldwyn believes that the revelations are bigger than many think the real impact of what he's done here is only now starting to be realized it's not only is he exposing criminality q the signals intelligence part of the british intelligence services also the national security agency but he's also showing that much of that intelligence contains information which may bring criminal prosecutions for example of war crimes criminal criminal prosecutions against for example bankers but this

is what people don't necessary understand is there will be information that edward snowden has that can actually bring some of these people to trial eventually and that's why the west is so afraid if britain was really serious about any kind of real justice we would be able to invite him to london and say yes you can tell all your secrets or your stories to people here in britain you'll be safe here he's actually exposing criminals and the criminals are going for him now and we'll get the latest on it would snowden's dash for safety in about a minute from now to stay with this is after you live in moscow.

speak your language. programs and documentaries in spanish matters to you. a little turn to angle stories. the spanish find out more visit. this is just come up to twenty minutes past the hour not date on our top story for you now america's most wanted n.s.a.

whistleblower edward snowden as for many applied for political asylum in ecuador that's according to the country's foreign minister snowden is currently in a moscow airport reportedly waiting to board his next flight tomorrow afternoon when i'm joined by nick pickles he's from big brother watch an activist group in britain defending civil liberties and privacy so nick snowden's revelations were really not such a big shock to many especially those fighting for transparency and online privacy so is his contribution really that big. no i think his contribution is very big because a lot of this activists has been going all around. in the world and people haven't acknowledged it and now we see the scale of these revelations meaning that whatever country you're in whether it's said in china or in the us there now is a public awareness of what governments have been doing for many years and in very many circumstances with questionable legal authority and nevertheless you can't dispute that he has broken laws and by definition he's

a traitor so he. for that brought to account should me. well i think it's a great deal in the court documents that were filed in america to charge him as a bit harder actually secrets so the idea of an open open justice which is very important hasn't been represented there but if he has broken a law he can be charged as agreements in place but i think as you mention the a bomb or ministrations attitude to whistleblowers did place in in jeopardy clearly his opinion of his safety and his his well being so he thought he should do this activity from abroad but that's that's getting caught up in the process of of how this information came out rather than saying actually has as members of congress have said and lawmakers in the u.k. both the u.s. and u.k. governments might have been complicit or at least their agencies have been complicit in illegal acts and if the act of a whistleblower to bring to public attention illegal acts by the states that i think he's done

a great great public service or it might bring this to public attention but do you really think the activist whistle blows can do anything to really prevent government acting in any way they see fit in the name of national security for our after all that's what it's all about so the usa. no i think we've had countless countless cases where laws that were introduced the one reason have been used for a different reason and that has led to legal reform so important we've just changed the law about the oversight of our intelligence agencies only a few months ago and that was thoughts about because of cases brought against the government so there are a good positive outcomes from this but i think the really important thing is that we look at a case where the internet is international by nature and some countries want silo their citizens off from the world and there are other countries who are promoting freedom and why and what really bothers me is that these kind of revelations do more damage to the long term opportunities that poses because it makes countries

around the world say we will place our systems on surveillance we will control what they see online because that's what the west's doing and this is where our moral leadership as britain and the u.s. is incredibly important not to damage just briefly i want to ask you we see manning a sergeant now snowden obviously all in some ways being sacrificial lambs for the cause that you support but many went may alice was it really necessary for him to disclose his identity if you just want to shed light on the u.s. snooping program why couldn't have done that in an anonymous way and not gone through now what could perhaps be a complete life changing from one. well i think i think he's clearly made a personal decision about wanting to do that. for instance one of the things he did say was that if he was scared for his safety sometimes the black best place to hide is in the spotlight because it's much harder to if someone's in the international media it's much harder to do something against them that doesn't follow the due process particularly given he was out of u.s.

jurisdiction who knows what might have happened so that was his decision and i think that the thing that worries me is we end up talking about the person rather than the very very serious concerns about race. about how we we leave for future generations global communications infrastructure that was bought with the it heard good bye and is now being used by governments potentially so you are to spy on us is an incredibly repressive mother nic thanks for your thoughts mick because from big brother watch live there in london in the u.k. thank you very much indeed. well there are fresh turns in the global spy scandal whistleblower russell tice who released his secrets during the george w. bush era says former cia head general petraeus and even barack obama were once targets for n.s.a. snooping and he confirmed that data was being stored james corbett a japan based independent journalist believes that tice's revelations didn't get the attention they deserved. while the snowden drama unfolds something that's being

swept under the rug are these new revelations from n.s.a. whistleblower russell tice who is in fact one of the people who is one of the sources for the original two thousand and five new york times story on the n.s.a. wiretapping scandal at that time but now russell tice to step forward with more information into explosive interviews from the last few days he talked about how the the n.s.a. is in fact storing not just the metadata which has been the talking point in the news so far but the content of all electronic communications that are going across the u.s. servers from e-mails to faxes to phone calls all of it being stored now at the new data center and in utah he also went on record to name names of some of the specific targets of n.s.a. spying and with the implication that this information was being used for blackmailing purposes on including senator then senator barack obama including general david petraeus and others who he mentioned by name including supreme court justices and top ranking military and republican congressional officials so this is

being specifically avoided right now and the implication is that the news outlets are as we've seen with the snowden story and other stories collaborating with the intelligence agencies behind the scenes to repress this information but this is this is absolutely explosive and again coming from a key n.s.a. whistleblower who is right now being ignored with these allegations. and as such as snowden revealed government appetite for personal data we're interested in how you feel about your private information being collected by security agencies and this is how you've been voting so far on our web site r t v dot com the overwhelming majority as you can see collecting private data without warning is totally unacceptable and then significantly less people at sixteen percent say they can provide their answers online they're going to go online and tell us what we think they think because they could easily be tracked by security agencies right now seven percent of you are sure that snooping is totally justified but only in the

case of spying on terror suspects without the mass tracking of everybody else and finally well if you've got nothing to hide what are you worried about three percent so far no response to our online poll do you get involved to cast a vote r.t. dot com. twenty seven minutes past the hour now we'll have more updates on the edward snowden story in about thirty minutes from no i'll be that man with the news team but up next with the dead numbering in the tens of thousands of t. travels to one of the most dangerous cities on earth to report on mexico's war against the drug cartels. you know what's worse than a crop bureaucrat a crook bureaucrat who sucks at being corrupt a scumbag bureaucrat in veronese russia just couldn't help himself and put some

very hefty charges for services contracts for road repair and construction in just three years he was able to take enough of a percentage off of these contracts though investigators raided his house he had the equivalent of over three million dollars in russian money all over his home news not mail dot ru claims he had entire laundry hampers and twenty five kilogram sugar sex filled to the brim with box first off when someone is this flagrant that means that he felt rather comfortable and not getting caught so there are plenty more of these guys out there but second this is an absolute slap in the face to russia taxpayers who are hungry for new roads i think for instance it's a flagrant in your face obvious crush corruption russia might need to reconsider that moratorium on the death penalty but that's just.

this vehicle was peck's because usually all policemen undergo control there are police officers that are connected to a legal activities.