National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden says he would be willing to help Brazil investigate NSA spying on its soil, but could not fully participate without being granted political asylum because the US Government “will continue to interfere with my ability to speak.” In a lengthy “open letter to the people of Brazil” obtained on Tuesday by The Associated Press, Snowden also commended the Brazilian government for its strong stand against US Spying.
Snowden said that he has been inspired by the global debate ignited by his release of thousands of National Security Agency documents, and that the NSA’s culture of indiscriminate global espionage “is collapsing.” Revelations about the NSA’s spy programs were first published in June, based on some of the thousands of documents Snowden handed over to the Brazil-based American journalist Glenn Greenwald and his reporting partner laura Poitras, a US Filmmaker.
The documents revealed that Brazil is the top NSA target in latin America, including the monitoring of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s cellphone and hacking into the internal network of State-run oil company Petrobras.