Today, we got news that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden had been granted temporary asylum in Russia. That meant that he could leave the airport that he’d been holed up in since whole thing began (which he did, promptly). He’ll be able to live in Russia for a year, and will have to have his asylum request renewed after that – if he chooses to stay in Russia.
So, what now?
Well, if he finds himself in need of work (once he comes out of hiding, which could be a while), one Russian tech giant is willing to offer him a job.
VK (VKontakte) founder and CEO Pavel Durov has offered Snowden a job at his social network – as a security specialist. VK is the second most popular social network in Europe (behind Facebook), and the most popular in Russia. Here’s what Durov had to say in a public post on VK this morning:
Here’s what it looks like once it’s beeb put through Google Translate and cleaned up:
Today Edward Snowden – a man who denounced the crimes of U.S. intelligence against citizens of the world – has received temporary asylum in Russia. At such moments, you feel proud of our country and regret the U.S. policy – a country committed to the principles on which it was once built. I invite Edward to St. Petersburg and will be happy if he decides to fill up a stellar team of programmers at VKontakte. In the end, there is no more popular European Internet company than VK. I think Edward might be interested in protecting the personal data of millions of our users.
So, you know, at least Snowden has that option.