Edward Snowden is hoping to stay in Russia a little, or perhaps a lot, longer.<\/p>\n
The former National Security Agency whisteblower — who leaked secret information about U.S. spying programs — has formally requested that Russia’s government extend his temporary asylum in the country, Russian state news reported Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The asylum request was filed with the Moscow branch of the Federal Migration Service, said Snowden attorney Anatoly Kucherena, according to state-run Itar-Tass and RIA Novosti.<\/p>\n
As to how long Snowden might extend his say, Kucharena said — according to RIA Novosti: “We won’t say yet in what status we would like to receive the extension because that decision is up to the Federal [Migration] Service.”<\/p>\n
Kucherena noted that Snowden’s temporary asylum in Russia ends on July 31. He’d been holed up at a Moscow airport for five weeks before the Russian government granted asylum for one year on August 1.<\/p>\n
Since that time, Snowden has kept busy working for a Russian website and speaking out — including to journalists — about the disclosures about the U.S. government’s spying programs and processes that he helped make public.<\/p>\n
Snowden’s disclosures in 2013 made him in an icon among those who praised him for risking his future to expose these secrets and a villain among those who accused him of being a lawbreaker who betrayed the United States.<\/p>\n
The former government information technology contractor collected information on spy programs — in which the NSA mined phone and Internet metadata from thousands of people inside and outside of the United States — and exposed the programs to the media.<\/p>\n
U.S. authorities have charged him with espionage and theft of government property.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Source: CNN<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Edward Snowden is hoping to stay in Russia a little, or perhaps a lot, longer. The former National Security Agency whisteblower — who leaked secret information about U.S. spying programs — has formally requested that Russia’s government extend his temporary asylum in the country, Russian state news reported Wednesday. The asylum request was filed with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":30843,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-30810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-papa-owusu-ankomah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30810\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/30843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}