[malandrew]

Never thought of that as a reason for denying asylum, but it's quite obvious that if the NSA has tons of communications on your country and your politicians, you probably wouldn't want to piss them off by granting asylum to Snowden

This is almost exactly the blackmailing situation I described in this lively discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5960695

I imagine that the only way to grant him asylum is to do so very very very secretly.