Snowden: NSA is setting fire to Internet's future

Snowden: NSA is setting fire to Internet's future

AUSTIN — Edward Snowden says the National Security Agency is "setting
fire to the future of the Internet" with the clandestine tech snooping
program he exposed last year — and the tech community needs to help
"fix" it.

In his first direct address to an American audience
Monday, the fugitive NSA contractor told an audience of several thousand
people attending the South By Southwest conference he had no regrets
about his decision to leak thousands of secret documents.

"Would I
do it again? Absolutely. Regardless of what happens to me, this is
something we had a right to," Snowden said via teleconference from
Russia, where he has been granted asylum.

"I took an oath to
support and defend the Constitution," said Snowden, whose choppy video
feed was the result of it being relayed through seven proxy computer
servers to hide his exact location.

"I saw the Constitution was
being violated on a massive scale," he said, to thunderous applause from
about 3,000 people 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," said Snowden, with a copy of the
U.S. Constitution as a backdrop. "There's a political response that
needs to occur, but there's also a tech response that needs to occur."

 

NSA
whistle-blower Edward Snowden speaks via videoconference during the
2014 SXSW Music, Film + Interactive Festival at the Austin Convention
Center on March 10 in Austin, Texas.(Photo: Michael Buckner, Getty Images)