According to the Times, “The government statement said that Hong Kong had informed the United States of Mr. Snowden’s departure.”

A Moscow-based reservations agent at Aeroflot, Russia’s national airline, said that Mr. Snowden was aboard flight SU213 to Moscow, with a scheduled arrival there a little after 5 p.m. Moscow time. The reservations agent said that Mr. Snowden was traveling on a one-way ticket to Moscow. …NYT

WaPo reports that HongKong needed “additional information” from the US in order to hold him.

Reuters reports that Cuba is the probable destination. Well, “Cuba, Ecuador, Iceland or Venezuela.”

“It’s a shocker,” said Simon Young, a law professor with Hong Kong University. “I thought he was going to stay and fight it out. The U.S. government will be irate.” …Reuters

The US is coming across like a villain stumbling across the stage in a comedy. Wicked WikiLeaks, Our Hero, helped the handsome whistler escape.

The Hong Kong government said on Sunday, in its first detailed statement about Mr. Snowden, that the United States had made a legal request for the issue of a provisional warrant of arrest against Mr. Snowden, but that the Hong Kong government had concluded that the request “did not fully comply with the legal requirements under Hong Kong law.”

The statement said that Hong Kong had requested more information from the United States but had not received it. Because the government “has yet to have sufficient information to process the request for provisional warrant of arrest, there is no legal basis to restrict Mr. Snowden from leaving Hong Kong,” the statement said.

The statement also said that the Hong Kong government had written to the United States government to ask for clarification about media reports that Mr. Snowden had released documents showing that United States government agencies had hacked computer systems here, adding that the Hong Kong government, “will continue to follow up on the matter so as to protect the legal rights of the people of Hong Kong.”

The United States consulate in Hong Kong declined to comment, referring questions to the State Department in Washington.

WikiLeaks, the organization that released extensive classified American diplomatic communications three years ago, said in a statement on its Twitter feed that it had “assisted Mr. Snowden’s political asylum in a democratic country, travel papers” and safe exit from Hong Kong. WikiLeaks did not identify the country; Mr. Snowden had previously expressed an interest in going to Iceland, a country with a history of strongly defending Internet freedoms, although it is less clear that the current government wishes to become involved in such disputes. ...NYT

Oh, I know: “blame Obama.” Or better, “blame Congress.” Or both. Let’s not forget, however, the agency with growing commercial and transnational interests: NSA. Given their spread away from public service and into cutting-edge communications and international profiteering, I’d say our intelligence community has a lot to answer for.

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The Guardian has live updates on Snowden as the news rolls in. The latest — at this writing:

The New York Times has an interesting quote from the veteran Hong Kong politician Regina Ip, arguing that by letting Snowden slip out the territory’s government has saved itself a long and difficult debate of whether to extradite him:

I think your (the US) government will be upset for a while, but I hope that they will shrug it off, because our government acted in accordance with the law. Our government officials can breathe a sigh of relief.

As an indicator of Beijing’s possible attitude to the decision of Hong Kong in allowing Snowden to leave, this commentary piece today from the official Xinhua news agency is interesting. It talks of Snowden’s latest revelations of US hacking against China as “clearly troubling”, adding:

They demonstrate that the United States, which has long been trying to play innocent as a victim of cyber attacks, has turned out to be the biggest villain in our age.

At the moment, Washington is busy with a legal process of extraditing whistleblower Snowden.

But for other countries, Washington should come clean about its record first. It owes too an explanation to China and other countries it has allegedly spied on. It has to share with the world the range, extent and intent of its clandestine hacking programs.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Due to a technical glitch the wrong byline appeared on this post for about one mine. We regret the error.