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Press TV has conducted an interview with Franklin Lamb, international lawyer from Beirut about NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden who is wanted for revealing the extent of the secret US spy program. 

The following is an approximate transcript of the interview about Snowden’s rumored leaving of Hong Kong to evade US extradition.

- How do you react to this deepening of this spy scandal story? It seems that Snowden has now left Hong Kong. Where do we go from here?

- Well, just to touch on personally his situation.... if in fact he is on the way to Russia he is a very lucky young man because Hong Kong has an extradition treaty with the United States since the year 2,000 and they always go along pretty much with what the Americans request.

And the other thing that he escaped is a very deadly instrument and that is a provisional arrest warrant that the Americans filed. That was a procedural matter just to get him held until they could file more serious charges and they probably were going to try to file spy charges.

But now if he’s in Russia or a similar country, then he’s got three good arguments that will be heard by the local courts in Russia that he’s subject possibly to torture; that this is a political persecution; and that he’s not going to get a fair trial in the United States. And that means I think the Russians will be sympathetic to that. That means at least he’s not going to spend his at this point in prison.

But, the fact as your report says, is that this thing is getting out of control - it’s metastasizing, it’s spreading - where is it going to end?

And the fact that Snowden is now going to be able to continue his work and the Australian gentleman Mr. Assange is apparently cooperating with them... Maybe these two people who are widely viewed as patriots can do some good in terms of getting legislation to stop this - from the US Congress, but also for the international community to react.

This seems to me a matter for the United Nations perhaps the Security Council. Who are they not spying on?

There are 193 governments. Are they going to sit there or are they going to react and make sure that neither the Americans or their allies or others if they can catch them, do these kinds of invasions of the most fundamental privacy that mankind has. I think it is a very interesting situation now and we’ll see what the coming days bring.

- In a sense is it too late for the United States to go backwards now on privacy in today’s world especially since the war on terror began? Is it pretty much an accepted thing that there is no privacy in the US and even worldwide now?

-Well, that’s up to the people to decide ultimately, not the government. And it’s true that in the hysteria and the world war on terrorism that followed 9/11 and similar events, people tended to say, well alright, the government must know what they’re doing.

But now... 600 million phone calls a day. Ah no. The law, the judicial system in general says the government or the executive can take certain actions that are against the fundamental freedoms of the people, but they’ve got to justify it and there is no evidence that anybody even knew much about this. So if the government wants to continue that , they’re going to have to justify it.

No citizen should concede that that’s the day, this is the 21st century, nothing we can do about it, there’s never going to be privacy again.

I think they’ve got to resist this as part of the culture of resistance and turn the clock back and demand in each country and certainly in America and Britain - the people - that no, this is unacceptable unless you overwhelmingly convince us and so far they haven’t been very persuasive at all - I’m talking about the government - in justifying the need for this kind of casting the net so broadly - a sort of witch-hunt.

So I don’t concede... it may be a fact of life, but it shouldn’t stay a fact of life. The people have the power to change it.