On Moscow Layover, Snowden Finds No Friend in Putin

The suspense did not last long: Soon after his flight from Hong Kong landed in Moscow, we were told that National Security Agency whistle-blower Edward Snowden had applied for political asylum in Ecuador.

It was in Hong Kong that Snowden publicly disclosed the existence of Prism, a top-secret U.S. National Security Agency program providing the NSA with access to the servers of top Internet companies like Miscrosoft, Apple, Google and Yahoo! Hong Kong has an extradition treaty with the U.S., where Snowden is sought for revealing classified information. Though the region's parliament left it for the mainland Chinese authorities to decide whether or not to hand Snowden over, his situation was too uncertain to stay on. Hong Kong officials facing pressure both from the U.S. and from Beijing, which is reluctant to take orders from Washington, must have heaved a big sigh of relief as Snowden boarded an Aeroflot flight to Moscow.