Rights activist: Hundreds of hackers crowded into an auditorium to hear Edward Snowden speak from Moscow. Photo: Channel 4 <\/p>\n
New York: Edward Snowden, a former US National Security Agency contractor who leaked details of US surveillance programs, called on supporters at a hacking conference to develop easy-to-use technologies to subvert government surveillance programs. <\/p>\n
Mr Snowden, who addressed conference attendees on Saturday via video link from Moscow, said he intends to devote much of his time to promoting such technologies, including ones that allow people to communicate anonymously and encrypt their messages. <\/p>\n
\"You in this room, right now, have both the means and the capability to improve the future by encoding our rights into programs and protocols by which we rely every day,\" he told the New York City conference, known as Hackers on Planet Earth, or HOPE. \"That is what a lot of my future work is going to be involved in.\" <\/p>\n
Hundreds of hackers crowded into an auditorium and overflow rooms to hear him speak from Moscow, where he fled last year. <\/p>\n
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Mr Snowden leaked documents that detailed massive US surveillance programs at home and overseas revelations that damaged international relations, outraged some Americans and sparked protests from countries around the globe. <\/p>\n
Mr Snowden did not discuss the status of a request he made earlier this month to extend his Russian visa, which expires at the end of July. The US wants Russia to send him home to face criminal charges, including espionage. <\/p>\n
At the HOPE hacking conference, several talks detailed approaches for thwarting government surveillance, including a system known as SecureDrop, which is designed to allow people to anonymously leak documents to journalists. <\/p>\n
Lawyers with the Electronic Frontier Foundation answered questions about pending litigation with the NSA, including efforts to stop collection of phone records that were disclosed through Mr Snowden's leaks. <\/p>\n
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