US whistleblower Edward Snowden finds haven in Hong Kong, but for how long?

While Barack Obama played golf on an estate in California, a young man named Edward Snowden emerged from hiding in Hong Kong to tell the world how the US was at risk of becoming a surveillance state at odds with its own better nature. As a former intelligence insider, Snowden knows he cannot escape the electronic dragnet of the National Security Agency for long.

Then there is Glenn Greenwald, a US lawyer and constitutional rights activist who Snowden shared information with. Greenwald writes for The Guardian, a connection which helped propel this story to stratospheric heights. If Snowden's situation brings to mind Bradley Manning, who was thrown into the brig and is likely to get a long jail sentence, then Greenwald's situation has echoes of Julian Assange, who used The Guardian to publicise the WikiLeaks material, only to find himself subject to an ongoing political witch-hunt.

Greenwald and Snowden's Hong Kong-based interviews have been broadcast around the world in the same way that controversial China stories get aired, via satellite link from freewheeling Hong Kong.

As a freelance journalist covering the Tiananmen demonstrations in Beijing in 1989, I remember the great relief I felt upon arriving in Hong Kong just a few days after the bloody crackdown. Despite the noise and crowds, it was wonderful to be in a city with a vigorous tradition of press freedom and free information flow.