Category Archives: Edward Snowden

Snowden: His NSA leaks leave world ‘in a more secure place’ (+video)

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Fugitive Edward Snowden, speaking via webcast to Americans in Austin, Texas, said Monday his leaks about NSA surveillance programs led to better communications security, whereas NSA leaders' actions jeopardized national security.

An unrepentant Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who during the past year leaked thousands of top-secret documents to news organizations, on Monday refuted US officials' assertions that his revelations about America's mass-surveillance apparatus had damaged national security and said his acts had benefited the public worldwide.

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Mr. Snowden, a fugitive who has been granted temporary sanctuary in Russia, made his comments during his first live discussion with a US audience, conducted via Internet webcast. He said he would leak the information again, despite his exile.

Presumably speaking from Russia, Snowden also urged greater use of encryption in everyday online communications so as to combat mass surveillance by governments worldwide, and said his actions had already helped to buttress such efforts.

His immediate audience was a group of US technologists meeting in Austin, Texas, at the South By Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival. They interrupted Snowden with applause at several points as he laid out a defense of his actions, familiar to anyone who has read his "manifesto" or his recent testimony to the European Union.

When I went public with this, it wasnt so I could single-handedly change the government or tell them what to do or override what the public thinks is proper, he said. I wanted to inform the public so they could make a decision, [so] they could provide their consent for what we should be doing.

Two representatives from the American Civil Liberties Union, Ben Wizner and Chris Soghoian, tossed questions some of them softballs to Snowden via Twitter. At the start,Mr. Wizner noted that US Rep. Mike Pompeo (R) of Kansas had asked SXSW organizers to revoke their invitation to Snowden on grounds it would "encourage lawlessness." Conference organizers declined the request, Wizner said.

Snowden used the occasion to pointedly rebut congressional testimony by current National Security Agency director Keith Alexander and former NSA director Michael Hayden that his actions and news stories resulting from the document leaks had damaged US national security. They, not he, are the ones who harmed it, Snowden said.

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Snowden: His NSA leaks leave world 'in a more secure place' (+video)

Snowden speaks at SXSW

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STORY HIGHLIGHTS

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. government's surveillance of its citizens.

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.

"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.

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Snowden speaks at SXSW

Edward Snowden calls for public oversight of U.S. spy …

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STORY HIGHLIGHTS

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. government's surveillance of its citizens.

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.

"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.

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Edward Snowden calls for public oversight of U.S. spy ...

Edward Snowden Urges SXSW Crowd to Thwart NSA With …

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With lawmakers slow to pass legislation curbing NSA surveillance, its up to the technology community to step in and devise solutions that will better protect online communications from snoops, said Edward Snowden, speaking today from Moscow at the South by Southwest conference in Austin.

[T]he people who are in the room at Austin right now, theyre the folks who can really fix things, who can enforce our rights for technical standards even when Congress hasnt yet gotten to the point of creating legislation that protect our rights in the same manner, he said. Theres a policy response that needs to occur, but theres also a technical response that needs to occur. And its the makers, the thinkers, the developing community that can really craft those solutions to make sure were safe.

The massive surveillance being done by the NSA and other governments has created an adversarial internet, he said, a sort of a global free-fire zone for governments, thats nothing that we ever asked [for]; its not what we wanted. Its something we need to protect against.

[T]heyre setting fire to the future of the internet. And the people who are in this room now, you guys are all the firefighters. And we need you to help us fix this.

One solution he highlighted, that would make it more difficult for the U.S. and other governments to conduct passive surveillance, is the implementation of end-to-end encryption that would protect communications from user to user, rather than as its currently done by Google and other services, which only encrypt the communication from user to service, leaving it vulnerable to collection from the service provider.

End-to-end encryption makes mass surveillance impossible at the network level, he says, and provides a more constitutionally protected model of surveillance, because it forces the government to target the endpoints the individual users through hacking, rather than conduct mass collection.

Snowden, speaking through a Google Hangout session, masking his whereabouts through seven online proxies, appeared onscreen sitting in front of a backdrop of the Constitutions First Amendment likely a sly reference to a Kansas lawmakers attempt to bar Snowdens free speech by asking the conference organizers last week to cancel his talk.

Snowdens talk was broadcast online to more than 40,000 viewers as well as to a packed house and overflow rooms in Austin.

The interview was conducted by Ben Wizner, one of Snowdens attorneys and director of the ACLU Speech, Privacy & Technology Project, and Wizners colleague Chris Soghoian, principal technologist and a senior policy analyst for the same project.

Soghoian elaborated on the issue of technical security to protect digital civil liberties.

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