Fugitive US spy secrets leaker Edward Snowden wrote an open letter to the people of Brazil, published in that country’s largest newspaper.  In it, Snowden offers to assist Brazil investigate US espionage against Brazilians, while making the case for his asylum request.

“Until a country grants permanent political asylum, the U.S. government will continue to interfere with my ability to speak,” Snowden wrote in the letter, which was published Tuesday on the website of Folha de S. Paulo newspaper.

Snowden is wanted by US authorities for fleeing with a trove of intelligence secrets, many of which have been leaked to the UK Guardian and The Washington Post, as well as to Brazil’s O Globo newspaper and filmmaker Laura Poitras.  Snowden’s secrets are of great interest to Brazil.  So far this year, he revealed that Brazil is the top NSA target in Latin America, in spying that has included the monitoring of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s cellphone and hacking into the internal network of state-run oil company Petrobras.

Rousseff was enraged by the revelations, and cancelled a long-planned meeting with US President Barack Obama at the White House. 

Yesterday, a US Federal Judge ruled that the NSA’s surveillance programs revealed by Snowden are unconstitutional.