With a goal of 100,000 signatures by 9 July 2013, at time of press the petition had reached 11,125 in its first day of existence.
It calls for “a full, free, and absolute pardon for any crimes he has committed or may have committed related to blowing the whistle on secret NSA surveillance programs.”
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Edward Snowden has fled to Hong Kong
The petition comes just hours after Snowden identified himself as the whistleblower behind leaks that uncovered secret US government surveillance programmes.
Snowden, 29, an American IT administrator for the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, revealed his identity at his own request, the Guardian said.
It emerged last week that the UK's eavesdropping agency GCHQ may have connections to the Prism system, which is said to give American agencies easy access to nine of the world's top internet companies, as well as phone records of millions of people.
Snowden, who fled to Hong Kong leaving a home and girlfriend behind in Hawaii, told the newspaper he had no regrets about his actions, and said the unconstrained collection of data was destroying civil liberties.
The Top 10 Whistleblowers
Mark Felt(01 of10)
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Mark Felt, the former FBI second-in-command revealed himself as "Deep Throat" 30 years after he helped The Washington Post unravel the Watergate scandal. (credit:AP)
Bradley Manning(02 of10)
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Bradley Manning is charged with indirectly aiding the enemy by sending troves of classified material to WikiLeaks. He faces up to life in prison. (credit:AP)
Daniel Ellsberg(03 of10)
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Daniel Ellsberg is a former United States military analyst who, while employed by the RAND Corporation, who leaked the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of US government decision-making in relation to the Vietnam War, to The New York Times and other newspapers.He has called Edward Snowden, the man behind the NSA Prism leak, a "hero". (credit:Alamy)
Katharine Gun(04 of10)
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GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun is a former translator who leaked top-secret communications from the US sent prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.She was cleared at the Old Bailey following a charge under the Official Secrets Act was dropped after the prosecution said it would offer no evidence against her.During the press conference she urged others working in the intelligence services to leak information if their consciences told them to. (credit:PA)
Mordechai Vanunu(05 of10)
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Nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu is a former Israeli nuclear technician who revealed details of Israel's nuclear weapons program to the Sunday Times in 1986.Vanunu was captured by Mossad after being lured to Italy by a "honeytra" and convicted in a closed doors trial.Vanunu spent 18 years in prison, including more than 11 in solitary confinement. (credit:Getty Images)
Coleen Rowley(06 of10)
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Former FBI agent Coleen Rowley pushed the US government to act on information about a suspected terrorist training at an Eagan, Minnesota flight school (credit:AP)
Jeffrey Wigand(07 of10)
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Jeffrey Wigand is the former vice president at Brown & Williamson who sensationally claimed that the cigarette company intentionally manipulated its tobacco blend to increase the amount of Nicotine in cigarette smoke. Wigand claimed that he was subsequently harassed and received anonymous death threats. He was portrayed by Russell Crowe in the 1999 film The Insider which also stars Al Pacino. (credit:WikiMedia:)
Peter Buxtun(08 of10)
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Peter Buxtun was the whistleblower responsible for ending the shocking Tuskegee syphilis experiment.A social worker and epidemiologist in San Francisco, he interviewed patients with sexually transmitted diseases; in the course of his duties, he learned of the Tuskegee Experiment from co-workers, a study which monitored the natural progression of untreated syphilis in rural African American men who thought they were receiving free health care from the US government.In 1972, Buxtun leaked information on the Tuskegee Experiment to Jean Heller of the Washington Star. It became front-page news in the New York Times the following day. (credit:WikiMedia:)
Frank Serpico(09 of10)
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Former New York City Detective Frank Serpico testified against police brutality and corruption in the city. Police officers were encouraged to turn a blind eye to wrongdoing within their ranks and never question authority, or else face harassment by peers and punishment by superiors. (credit:AP)
Criag Murray(10 of10)
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Murray is a former UK ambassador to Uzbekhistan, who accused the Karimov administration of human rights abuses, a step which, he argued.After complaining to the Foreign Office about the abuses and evidence gained via torture, which he described as "selling our souls for dross" Murray was subsequently removed from his ambassadorial post in 2004.Murray is now a political campaigner and author, who recently hit headlines again last year for naming the alleged rape victim in the Julian Assange sex assault case, live on Newsnight. (credit:Alamy)
He said: "I can't allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties.
"My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them."
He chose Hong Kong as a refuge because of the former colony's “spirited commitment to free speech and the right of political dissent.” But the country does have an extradition treaty with the US.
In a stark warning, he said that surveillance was not being properly constrained by policy, and would grow beyond control.
"The months ahead, the years ahead, it's only going to get worse, until eventually there will be a time where policies will change - because the only thing that restricts the activities of the surveillance state are policy.
He added: "There will be nothing the people can do at that point to oppose it. And it'll be turn-key tyranny."
Meanwhile, American intelligence officials were overheard discussing how the key players in the US data-gathering scandal could be "disappeared", it has been claimed.
Steve Clemons, a policy analyst and editor at large of The Atlantic, said he overheard the conversation while waiting for a flight at Dulles airport in Washington.
One said that both the reporter and leaker should be "disappeared," a term used to describe secret murders and abductions carried out by authoritarian governments.
Clemons said on Twitter the suggestion seemed to be "bravado" and a "disturbing joke." He said that the officials were talking loudly, "almost bragging."
The Huffington Post USA asked Clemons via Twitter how he could be sure they were in the intelligence community and he noted that "one wore a white knit national counterterrorism center shirt."