At SXSW, Snowden Speaks About NSA Spying

Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked documents that revealed a vast network of surveillance by American government agencies, wants the technology industry to become serious about protecting the privacy of its customers. Snowden, speaking at the South by Southwest festival via videoconference, said the early technology adopters and entrepreneurs who travel to Austin every year for the event are “the folks who can fix this and enforce our rights.”

The Washington Post cited Snowden’s appraisal of the NSA: “They’re setting fire to the future of the Internet,” Snowden said. “We need public advocates. We need public oversight. Some way [to have] trusted figures, sort of civil rights champions to advocate for us, to protect the structure. How do we fix our oversight? How do we structure an oversight model that works? The key factor is accountability.”

On stage while Snowden spoke were Christopher Soghoian, the principal technologist of the American Civil Liberties Union, and Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project and Snowden’s legal adviser. All three men said that they wanted to raise a call to arms to developers and activists to build better tools to protect the privacy of technology users. Snowden said that even the companies whose business models rely on collecting data about their users “can still do this in a responsible way.”

“It’s not that you shouldn’t collect the data,” he said. “But you should only collect the data and hold it as long as necessary.” Hundreds of people sat quietly as Snowden spoke.

The technology community should pressure those companies to introduce security measures that are stronger and easier to use, Soghoian said. “We need services to include security by default,” he added.

[March 10]