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."