Europe has voted to offer Edward Snowden asylum

 

The European Parliament voted on Thursday to drop all criminal charges against Edward Snowden and offer him asylum and protection from rendition from third parties.
MEPs voted 285 - 281 to recognise the NSA whistleblower's status as a "human rights defender" and asked member states to grant him protection from extradition to the US, where he is wanted under several Espionage Act charges.In the resolution that was passed, MEPs said "too little has been done to safeguard citizens' fundamental rights following revelations of electronic mass surveillance" Snowden showed the world after leaving his job as a contractor with the National Security Agency and exposing the extent of its spying programmes.
The EU Commission is also being urged to ensure that all data transfers to the US are subject to an "effective level of protection" and examine concerns over surveillance laws in several EU countries. It is up to individual member states to implement the resolution.
Snowden himself seems to be overwhelmed by the development. Calling it a "game-changer", he tweeted:
Snowden's lawyers have said in the past that the whistleblower is longing to return home since fleeing the US for Hong Kong and then Russia in 2013.
Barack Obama's administration, though, has showed no sign of dropping the charges against him.
Snowden, 31, has been living in exile in Russia for two years after exposing the extent of the global surveillance programme by passing on classified records and allowing them to be published outside the US. He is still waiting on asylum decisions from 21 different countries.
In 2014 both independent and White House-funded studies analysed hundreds of terror cases in the US and concluded that the NSA collection of phone records had had no discernible impact in foiling terror plots.