So for Snowden to be a refugee with a valid claim to asylum he would have to argue two things. First, he’d have to show that he has a well-founded fear of persecution based on his political opinion. Second, he’d have to show that the crime he has admitted to, namely leaking highly classified documents, is either nonserious or political.

That’s a tall order on all counts. Snowden isn’t being persecuted for holding a political opinion, he’s being prosecuted for violating U.S. law. Few countries in the world, if any, have greater protections for freedom of expression of political beliefs than the U.S. (Germany bans public espousal of Nazism, Russia criminalizes offenses to various public figures, Ecuador just passed a restrictive press law, and so on.) If Snowden wanted to express his opinion about the surveillance state he could do so with near absolute protection under the First Amendment.

But even he says that’s not what he’s doing. Which gets to the second hurdle he has to clear. Snowden has admitted to breaking the law and said he is performing serious civil disobedience. In his first interview after coming forward as the source of the documents exposing the NSA’s broad surveillance programs, he said of his actions, “When you are subverting the power of government that’s a fundamentally dangerous thing to democracy.”