CNN
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Austin,
Texas (CNN) -- In a rare public talk via the Web, fugitive NSA leaker
Edward Snowden urged a tech conference audience Monday to help "fix" the
U.S.
Edward Snowden speaks at SXSW, calls for public oversight of U.S. spy programs
Snowden: 4th amendment changed in secret
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- NEW: "Would I do it again? Absolutely," Edward Snowden says of leaking documents
- "We need a watchdog that watches Congress," the NSA leaker says from Russia
- "There's a political response that needs to occur," but also "a tech response"
- He speaks via teleconference to SXSW tech conference in Texas
He spoke via
teleconference from Russia to an audience of thousands at the South by
Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin. The event marked the first
time the former National Security Agency contractor has directly
addressed people in the United States since he fled the country with
thousands of secret documents last June.
In response to a
question, Snowden said he had no regrets about his decision to leak the
NSA documents, which showed the intelligence agency has conducted secret
monitoring of Americans' phone and Internet behavior in the name of
national security.
"Would I do it again? Absolutely. Regardless of what happens to me, this is something we had a right to," he said.
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"I took an oath to
support and defend the Constitution. And I saw the Constitution was
being violated on a massive scale," he added, to applause from the 3,000
people in the auditorium at the Austin Convention Center.
"South by Southwest and
the tech community, the people in the room in Austin, they're the folks
who can fix this," Snowden said earlier. "There's a political response
that needs to occur, but there's also a tech response that needs to
occur."
He appeared on video
screens with a copy of the U.S. Constitution as a backdrop. The live
stream was slow, repeatedly freezing Snowden's image onscreen.
The pair of American
Civil Liberties Union lawyers who hosted the discussion said Snowden's
video, ultimately delivered via Google Hangouts, was streamed through
several routers for security.
Snowden also said
Internet users need more awareness, and better tools, to help them
secure their online information from prying eyes.
While tech geeks may
have no problem using encryption tools to scramble their messages or
accessing the more-private "deep Web" via clients like Tor, Snowden said
the average Web user should be able to access similar protections.
"This is something that people have to be able to interact with, and the way we interact with it now is not that good," he said.
Snowden took questions
from two moderators -- the ACLU's Chris Sogohian and Ben Wizner, his
legal counsel -- from the audience, and from Twitter. The first,
fittingly, came from Tim Berners-Lee, who created the World Wide Web 25
years ago this week. Berners-Lee asked Snowden what he would change
about the nation's surveillance system.
"We need public
oversight ... some way for trusted public figures to advocate for us. We
need a watchdog that watches Congress, because if we're not informed,
we can't consent to these (government) policies."
Asked about the
difference between government surveillance and snooping by private
Internet companies, Snowden said he considers government surveillance
more insidious because "the government has the ability to deprive you of
rights. They can jail you."
Snowden, a former CIA
employee and NSA contractor who fled the United States after leaking
details of the American government's spy programs, was granted temporary
asylum in Russia last year.
He faces felony charges
of espionage and theft of government property in the United States, and
he has said he won't return until the U.S. changes its whistleblower
protection laws.
Reaction among SXSW audience members to Snowden's comments appeared mixed.
"I think it was right
on," said Michael Chalcraft, a retired software entrepreneur from
Seattle. "There's always a balance between what the government should
know about us and what we would expect to be private.
"If we're not constantly protecting that privacy, then we give it up."
But Megan Betterman, a health-care marketer from Minneapolis, didn't hear everything she wanted from Snowden.
"I wanted to hear about
what his life is like there (in Russia), and whether he'll ever come
back to the U.S.," she said. "It (his talk) was very encryption-heavy."
More than 30,000 attendees are currently in Austin for the 10-day SXSW festival, which began Friday and wraps on March 16.
The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit media organization, live streamed the session.
Also scheduled to speak
at the tech-themed conference Monday afternoon -- although in person --
was journalist and civil-liberties lawyer Glenn Greenwald, who broke the
story about Snowden's leaks of classified NSA documents.
Snowden's call for
developers to create secure, private networks for their users is less of
a no-brainer at South by Southwest than it may have once been. Having
emerged from the counter-culture of the early Web, SXSW Interactive has
exploded in recent years as more businesses have sought to tap into
successful startups' millions of users.
In the same Austin
convention hall where Snowden called for new privacy tools, other
sessions were helping entrepreneurs learn how to make money with the
data they collect about the users of their products.
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