As the news broke that NSA whis­tleblower, Edward Snowden, had fled Hong Kong for Rus­sia today, I was invited on RT to do an inter­view. At that point few people had any idea of his plans.  How­ever, it appears that the USA had charged Snowden under the Espi­on­age Act 1917 (no sur­prises) and then asked Hong Kong to arrest and hold him, pending extra­di­tion. Equally unsur­pris­ingly, Hong Kong found mis­takes in the paper­work and used the oppor­tun­ity to com­plain about US spy­ing activ­ity in its territory.

Any­way, this gave Snowden, with appar­ently the help of the whis­tleblow­ing pub­lish­ing site Wikileaks, the chance to leave the coun­try and fly to Rus­sia, with the repor­ted final des­tin­a­tion being Ecuador.

So here’s my ini­tial take on the situation:

Snowden case shows US is bully boy of world — RTTV inter­view from Annie Machon on Vimeo.