Snowden said his leaks have made the US safer.

Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden spoke via internet link on a panel at the South by Southwest Conference (SXSW) in Austin today. If you were hoping for fresh revelations, or probing questions about his motivations and decisions, you would have been disappointed.

Staff writer

Dan Murphy is a staff writer for the Monitor's international desk, focused on the Middle East.Murphy, who has reported from Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, and more than a dozen other countries, writes and edits Backchannels. The focus? War and international relations, leaning toward things Middle East.

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His fellow panelists were Ben Wizner and Chris Sogohian of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), but Mr. Snowden, sitting in front of a screen with the US Constitution emblazoned across it, was the star of the show.

What did Mr. Snowden, currently residing in Russia to avoid arrest at home, have to say?

1. Public oversight.

Snowden said the US needs some new kind of "public oversight" of its intelligence community. "We need a watchdog that watches Congress, because if we're not informed, we can't consent to these (government) policies," he said.

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Listening to Edward Snowden at SXSW - CSMonitor.com

Tech Security Edward Snowden speaks via video conference from Russia at SXSW Interactive in Austin, Tex. on March 10, 2014 Harry McCracken / TIME

Of all the hundreds of interviews, panels and other conversations happening at South by Southwest Interactive in Austin, perhaps the most newsworthy one features somebody who didnt make the trek to Austin. He had a good excuse: Hes NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, who landed in Russia after releasing documents to reporters.

Snowden appeared via a videocast with Ben Wizner and Chris Soghoian of the ACLU, with questions submitted from the public via Twitter. It was also broadcast in two overflow rooms as well as over the Internet via livestream.

Technically, the video conference wasnt impressive the image was choppy and the audio was muddy, perhaps because they were routed through multiple proxies in the interest of security but it was still compelling. It was, after all, one of the few opportunities weve had to hear from Snowden directly. And he appeared before a green-screen image of the U.S. Constitution a tart, unspoken response to his critics.

Why did Snowden choose to speak before SXSW Interactives audience of techies? Theyre the folks who really fix things, who can enforce our rights through technological standards, even when Congress hasnt taken steps, he told Wizner. The NSA and its counterparts in other countries, he said, are setting fire to the future of the internet. You guys that are in the room are all the firefighters. We need you to help fix this.

Snowden emphasized that he isnt opposed to government monitoring of individuals suspected of crimes, but he said that mass surveillance makes such targeting harder, not easier. He pointed out that the U.S. government failed to adequately act on warnings it received about Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the brothers accused in the Boston Marathon bombings, and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the so-called underwear bomber.

We didnt actually investigate this guy, he said of Abdulmutallab. We spent all of this time hacking into Google and Facebooks back ends. What did we get? We got nothing.

The tone of the discussion wasnt all bleak. Snowdens revelations have led companies such as Google and Yahoo to bolster their security measures, which helps protect online data from being watched by government eyes. But he said that encryption is still too tricky a subject for average consumers, especially when it involves nerdy products and services such as the Tor encrypted browser.

Speaking of the difficulty that reporter Glenn Greenwald had installing and using PGP encryption software when Snowden wanted to provide him with documents, Snowden said, We want secure services that arent opt-in it has to pass the Glenn Greenwald test. This is something that people have to be able to access, and really the way we interact with it isnt good.

Its a really complicated subject matter today, and thats the difficulty, Snowden said.

Link:
SXSW: Edward Snowden Talks Privacy and Security - TIME

Can SXSW do better? A Kansas congressman thinks so.

Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) wrote an open letter to the organizers of the film, music and technology conference in Austin, Texas, asking them to axe whistleblower Edward Snowdens talk on Monday.

In the letter, Pompeo, who is a member of the House intelligence panel, sarcastically called Russia the beacon of First Amendment freedoms and suggestsSnowden is appearing to soak in the spotlight and pursue the agenda of his new overlords.

RELATED: EDWARD SNOWDEN TO SPEAK AT SXSW FROM RUSSIA

Certainly an organization of your caliber can attract experts on these topics with knowledge superior to a man who was hired as a systems administrator, wrote Pompeo on March 6.

Snowden, who is exiled in Russia, is scheduled to speak to conference-goers about national security and surveillance through a video conference titled A Virtual Conversation with Edward Snowden.

By allowing Snowden, who Pompeo described as a treasonous fugitive, to speak, the appearance will validate his behavior and actions of stealing thousands of classified documents, handing them over to journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras on a thumb drive, and then fleeing to Russia.

RELATED: WIKILEAKS FOUNDER HINTS AT 'UPCOMING' INFO LEAK

In the letter, Pompeo says the conference will only be a softball interview, and gives a common criminal and traitor a venue to stay in the good graces of his new home nation, he wrote.

Once Snowden ends his outreach shaming the U.S., he stops being useful to the Kremlin, he says.

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Kansas Congressman: Cut Edward Snowden from SXSW schedule ...

Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who has leaked large amounts of classified information about the agency's electronic surveillance programs, spoke via video to a sympathetic audience at South By Southwest Interactive on Monday.

Snowden, who is wanted for prosecution in the U.S., was in Russia, where he's been given temporary asylum. Repeating things he's said before, Snowden declared Monday that he would do what he did all over again because he had seen the Constitution being "violated on a massive scale."

The Obama administration disagrees, though Snowden's revelations did begin a process that earlier this year led the president to say he wants the NSA to stop holding on to massive amounts of "metadata" about the phone calls and electronic communications of millions of people around the world.

We posted some highlights from Snowden's comments. As you'll see, he faced no tough questions.

Earlier today, All Tech Considered previewed his SXSW appearance.

Update at 1:02 p.m. ET. Would He Do It Again? "Absolutely Yes":

The last question to Snowden is about whether he would do what he's done again. "Absolutely yes," he says, adding that he "took an oath to support and defend the Constitution and I saw the Constitution ... being violated on a massive scale."

The surveillance programs, he adds, take the Constitution's prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures and turn it into "any seizure is fine, just don't search it."

Update at 12:59 p.m. ET. The Problem With Contractors:

Snowden has worked both inside the government and for contractors outside it. The problem with contractors, he says, is that "they aren't accountable."

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Edward Snowden Tells SXSW He'd Leak Those Secrets Again

Edward Snowden accused the NSA and its counterparts of "setting fire to the future of the Internet" during a videoconference discussion at South by Southwest in Texas on Monday, and he called on the tech community members in the audience to be "the firefighters."

Snowden spoke remotely from Russia, where he received asylum when he fled the United States last year after leaking classified government surveillance documents to journalists including Glenn Greenwald.

His 11 a.m. CT appearance at SXSW, a technology and music festival in Austin, Tex., were his most public comments since the leaks. The Texas Tribune livestreamed the Snowden event.

Snowden, who appeared in front of a greenscreen displaying the U.S. Constitution, explained that he chose popular tech confab SXSW as the platform for his talk because "the tech community ... they're the folks who can really fix things, who can enforce our rights."

Snowden characterized the NSA's surveillance program, as well as similar programs from governments around the globe, as "setting fire to the future of the Internet."

"The people in this room are all the firefighters," Snowden said, addressing the SXSW audience. "We need you to help us fix this."

"The people in this room are all the firefighters. We need you to help us fix this."

Also on the panel was Christopher Soghoian, principal technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union, who agreed with Snowden on his call to action.

"We need to lock things down," Soghoian said. "We need to make services secure out of the box. It's going to require a rethink from developers."

Snowden spent most of his portion of the talk stressing a point he has made in past comments: He has a problem with unfocused mass surveillance, not targeted monitoring of specific suspects' activity.

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Snowden: NSA 'Set Fire' to Internet, Techies Are 'Firefighters'

AUSTIN National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden blasted the U.S. government Monday for "setting fire to the future of the Internet" with its massive data-collection program that has triggered a worldwide debate over online snooping.

"The result has been an adversarial Internet," Snowden, speaking by video link from Russia where he was granted asylum from pending U.S. espionage charges last year, told attendees at the South by Southwest Interactive conference. "It's nothing we asked for. ... It's not something we wanted."

"The people in this room are all firefighters," Snowden said. "We all need your help to fix this."

Snowden challenged the tech community to bolster encryption software that will make Internet communications more secure, criticizing companies such as Google, Yahoo and others for not doing enough to protect customers' privacy because their business models were based on unsecured networking. "The good news is that there are solutions," he said.

Christopher Soghoian, the principal technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union and a panelist at the forum, said U.S. firms that transmit "need to lock things down ... We need to make services secure out of the box. It's going to require a rethink from developers."

Speaking in front of a backdrop displaying the U.S. Constitution, Snowden challenged U.S. lawmakers who claim his leaks of secret documents have damaged U.S. security. Instead, he insisted that his actions have improved it, along with championing the online privacy of U.S. citizens who he said should be able to open e-mails or take cell phone calls without fear of being monitored.

Snowden contended U.S. interests have suffered "tremendous intelligence failures because we've been monitoring everybody's communications rather than suspects," including tips concerning accused Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev and accused underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab that were never followed-up by authorities.

"What did we get from bulk collections?" Snowden said. "We got nothing."

Snowden specifically criticized U.S. intelligence chief James Clapper for "cheering" on the NSA's data-collection program, rather than holding it accountable. "The overseers aren't interested in oversight," he said.

The session moderated by Ben Wizner, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Speech, Privacy & Technology Project and Snowden's legal advisor had been criticized in recent days by U.S. Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kansas, who claimed Snowden's "only apparent qualification is his willingness to steal from his own government and then flee to that beacon of First Amendment freedoms, the Russia of Vladimir Putin."

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Snowden: NSA data-collection 'setting fire' to Internet future