Brazil - Glenn Greenwald, your primary reporter you're working with is based there, big country, cost-effective when you're on a budget, and Greenwald would have a local network of people who could help hide you, and Brazil doesn't extradite political prisoners.

Not to mention, borders on a ton of other countries with fairly porous borders, so you have the possibility of moving from one country to another.

I'm sure there's a lot more options that would crop up depending on a variety of factors. But if you're Snowden you want:

- A network of friends and associates you can trust to help support you, emotionally, physically, and fiscally

- To be in a country where the information you're in possession of might be valuable to that country, and could be used as a bargaining tool

- A country with good, but not great, relationships with the US (so no UK, Canada, EU is probably out).

- A country with a huge bureaucracy and judicial system - you want it to take years to extradite you

Hong Kong makes little sense on most of those, other than the judicial system.