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Snowden Is 'A Hero,' WikiLeaks' Assange Says

From one secrets leaker to another:

Edward Snowden "is a hero," WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said Sunday on ABC-TV's This Week with George Stephanopoulos. "He has told the people of the world and the United States that there is mass unlawful interception of their communications, far beyond anything that happened under Nixon."

Others disagree. And on Fox News Sunday, senators John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) called on Russia to extradite Snowden to the U.S. so that he can be prosecuted for revealing secrets about National Security Agency surveillance programs.

We posted Saturday about Snowden's legal limbo in Moscow: "3 Things To Know About Edward Snowden's Passenger Purgatory." He's reportedly seeking asylum from Ecuador or some other nation. Assange, meanwhile, has been living in Ecuador's London embassy for a year as he tries to avoid being extradited to Sweden, where's he's wanted for questioning in a case involving alleged sexual assaults.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.