Error 208

You said you added launcher.exe to your windows security?  Add both launcher.exe and swtor.exe to your windows security, specific firewall / anti-virus or exceptions list depending on what it's called.  Always good to have both in there if you haven't added both.

Try again and see if it will download.  If not go through these steps to see if any work:

1. Download and run the launcher repair utility: http://cdn-patch.swtor.com/patch/LauncherRepairUtilityP1.8.2.exe

2. Make sure when your launching the game it's being ran in administrator mode

3. before you run the launcher, disable bitraider by doing the following:

open the launcher.settings file in notepad and locate the below line and edit to the below

, "PatchingMode": "{ \"swtor\": \"SSN\" }"
, "bitraider_disable": true

SAVE the changes.
Delete the BitRaider, Movie and Asset folders then start the launcher.

If none of this works, please list what your ISP is and where your located.  I would also recommend running a tracert and seeing where it stops or errors at.  You can do that by opening your command prompt by following these steps depending on your windows version:

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/commandlinereference/f/open-command-prompt.htm

 type the command:

tracert 159.153.92.50

or

tracert manifest.swtor.com

Which should test the connection to the patcher and see if it's stopping somewhere.