Edward Snowden would like Brazil to grant him political asylum. And why not? The Brazilian public was pretty ticked off over revelations that the NSA had hacked into Petrobas, and Brazil’s president, Dilma Rousseff, was pretty ticked off when she learned that the NSA had been monitoring her email and cell phone. But apparently canceling a state trip to the United States is about as far as she’s willing to go:
Brazil has no plans to grant asylum to Edward Snowden even after the former U.S. National Security Agency contractor offered on Tuesday to help investigate revelations of spying on Brazilians and their president, a local newspaper reported.
The Folha de S.Paulo newspaper, citing unnamed government officials, said the Brazilian government has no interest in investigating the mass Internet surveillance programs Snowden revealed in June and does not intend to give him asylum.
In the end, no matter how annoyed they are and how much public posturing they do, very few countries are willing to risk the massive breakdown in relations that would be the likely result of harboring a wanted American fugitive. Snowden is going to have a helluva hard time finding a permanent home anywhere other than Russia.
