The man who outted the U.S. government's secret monitoring of telephone calls and the monitoring of the Internet, Edward Snowden, a former NSA worker, told the South China Morning Post that "I'm neither traitor nor hero. I'm an American."

Snowden sought refuge in Hong Kong prior to releasing documents revealing the U.S. Government’s massive data collection program from Verizon and several of the Internet giants such as Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Apple , Skype, and AOL.

He revealed documents to British newspaper the Guardian as well as to the Washington Post. The U.S. Government is defending its use of the programs and the American public is split on the subject. Snowden has been called both a hero and a traitor by various voices in the country.

Many in the United States have said that Snowden made a mistake by running to Hong Kong, saying that Hong Kong and the United States have an established extradition agreement and that he would have been better off going to a different country to evade being brought back to the U.S.

Snowden however, says that he is not hiding in Hong Kong but rather he chose Hong Kong as a place to reveal “criminality” on the part of the U.S. Government.

Saying that they want everything out in the open, Google, Microsoft and Facebook have requested permission from the White House to reveal the details of the court orders to turn over customer information to U.S. spy agencies.

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the NSA spy programs in Federal Court. The ACLU says the programs violate the free speech of Americans by carrying out unsuspected surveillance of every person in America.

Snowden said that he has had many opportunities to flee Hong Kong, but says that he will stay in the Chinese city and fight the U.S. government in the courts. He says, “I have faith in Hong Kong’s rule of law.” Even though Hong Kong has an extradition treaty with the United States it also has a stipulation in that treaty that may allow Snowden to stay in that city as a political asylum seeker.