The South China Morning Post reports: Two pan-democratic lawmakers urged US President Barack Obama on Friday to stop all legal action against and “consider letting go” NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden who has taken refuge in Hong Kong.

They made the comments at a press conference at which they also made public a letter they have sent to Obama urging him to not allow “national security” claims to justify abuse of state power.

In an exclusive interview with the South China Morning Post on Wednesday, Snowden, a 29-year-old former Central Intelligence Agency analyst, made the explosive claims that the US government had been hacking into computers in Hong Kong and on the mainland for years. He had earlier revealed that the US has been secretly collecting the phone and online data of its citizens for national security reasons.

In the 400-word letter, Claudia Mo Man-ching of the Civic Party and Gary Fan Kwok-wai of the NeoDemocrats, democratically elected members of the Legislative Council urged Obama to “tread very carefully and take into account the views of America’s democratic friends around the world.”