--- title: NSA Leaker Edward Snowden Speaks To SXSW description: Speaking via a video link to a tech conference at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, the former NSA contractor said that the spy agency undermines the trust and security upon which a well-functioning Internet depend canonical: https://time.com/18207/edward-snowden-sxsw-south-by-southwest/ author: Denver Nicks article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-03-10T14:03:48.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:47:00.425Z article:section: Politics og:title: NSA Leaker Edward Snowden Speaks To SXSW og:description: Speaking via a video link to a tech conference at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, the former NSA contractor said that the spy agency undermines the trust and security upon which a well-functioning Internet depend og:url: https://time.com/18207/edward-snowden-sxsw-south-by-southwest/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt40792c2f60a9e53e/698684c61eebf749fa36fbdf/477632431-copy.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1438 og:image:height: 809 og:image:alt: NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden speaks via videoconference at the "Virtual Conversation With Edward Snowden" during the 2014 SXSW Music, Film + Interactive Festival at the Austin Convention Center on March 10, 2014 in Austin. og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: NSA Leaker Edward Snowden Speaks To SXSW twitter:description: Speaking via a video link to a tech conference at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, the former NSA contractor said that the spy agency undermines the trust and security upon which a well-functioning Internet depend twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt40792c2f60a9e53e/698684c61eebf749fa36fbdf/477632431-copy.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Snowden Says NSA 'Setting Fire' to the Web > Sponsored content. 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Watch excerpts from Snowden's SXSW interactive panel discussion._  by [Denver Nicks](https://time.com/author/denver-nicks/)  ## Denver Nicks Mar 10, 2014 2:03 PM UTC  NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden speaks via videoconference at the "Virtual Conversation With Edward Snowden" during the 2014 SXSW Music, Film + Interactive Festival at the Austin Convention Center on March 10, 2014 in Austin. NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden speaks via videoconference at the "Virtual Conversation With Edward Snowden" during the 2014 SXSW Music, Film + Interactive Festival at the Austin Convention Center on March 10, 2014 in Austin. Michael Buckner—Getty Images for SXSW  by [Denver Nicks](https://time.com/author/denver-nicks/)  ## Denver Nicks Mar 10, 2014 2:03 PM UTC Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden said Monday that the United States government is “setting fire to the future of the Internet” with its massive domestic surveillance programs. “When we think about what’s happened with the NSA in the last decade, the result has been an adversarial Internet, a global free fire zone,” Snowden, whose leaks last year sparked debate about surveillance, told the South by Southwest Interactive tech conference via video link from Russia, where he’s living under temporary asylum. “Nothing we ever asked for. Something we don’t want. Something we need to protect against.” Snowden was joined by his American Civil Liberties Union attorney Ben Wizner and the ACLU’s chief technologist Christopher Soghoian for a conversation on digital privacy issues, a major theme of this year’s conference. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange drew substantial crowds for his own address via video link on Saturday. For much of Monday’s talk, Snowden hammered home an argument he and his supporters have been making since his leaks first pulled the curtain back on the NSA a year ago: that mass surveillance makes the Internet a more dangerous place. By systematically working to crack and weaken online security systems in order to harvest user data for surveillance, Snowden said NSA in effect undermines the trust and security upon which a well-functioning Internet depend. “They’re setting fire to the future of the Internet,” Snowden said, addressing the tech savvy audience. “And the people that are in this room now—you guys are the firefighters.” During an audience Q&A segment, the first question asked of Snowden came from Tim Berners-Lee, the computer scientist credited as the creator of the World Wide Web. Berners-Lee, who has been a vocal supporter of Snowden’s, asked what changes the leaker thought should be made to prevent abuse of government surveillance capacities. “We’ve got a good starting point and that’s what we have to remember. We have an oversight model that could work,” Snowden said, stressing that the people ultimately tasked with overseeing the intelligence community—Congress—must be held to account. “We need a watchdog that watches Congress,” he said. The decision to invite Snowden to speak at SXSW drew criticism from some quarters. Kansas Republican Rep. Mike Pompeo wrote to festival organizers asking them to cancel the event. Pompeo derided Snowden as a man “whose 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.” ## Transcript Please bear with us today, the, the technology may have some kinks, the video may be a little bit choppy our friend is appearing through seven proxies. And Ed if you're with us maybe you could say a few words about why you chose for some of your first public remarks to speak to the technology community rather than say the policy community. There's a policy, policy response that needs to occur, but there's also a technical response that needs to occur. And it's the makers, it's the thinkers, it's the development community that can really craft those solutions to make sure that we're safe. The, the NSA, the sort of global mass surveillance that's occurring in all these countries, not just the US, and it's important to remember that this is a global issue, they're 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. Do these mass surveillance programs do what our intelligence officials promised to congress that they do, are they effective? We've reached a point where the majority of Americans telephone communications are, are being recorded regardless metadata that's being stored through years and years, and years. But two important white house investigations have found it has no value at all. It's never helped us. Beyond that, we've gotta think about what are we doing with those resources, what are we getting out. And as I said in my European parliament testimony we've actually had tremendous intelligence failures. Because we're monitoring the internet, we're monitoring the, you know, everybody's communications instead of suspects' communications. And that lack of focus has caused us to miss leads that we should of had. Tamerlan Tsarnaev of the Boston bombers, the Russians had warned us about him. But we did a very poor [ INAUDIBLE ] resources we had people looking at our things. And if we hadn't spent so much on mass surveillance, if we followed the traditional models we might have caught that. [ UNKNOWN ] the underwear bomber, same thing. [ UNKNOWN ] Walked into a US Embassy. He went to a CIA officer, he said my son is dangerous, don't let him go to your country. Get him help. We didn't follow up. We didn't actually investigate this guy. We didn't delegate a team to figure out what was going on. Because we spent all this money, we spent all of this time hacking into Google and Facebook's back ends. To look at their database their data center recommendations. What did we get out of it? We got nothing and two White House investigations that confirm that. Just before this began I got an email from Sir Tim Berners- Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web who, who asked for the privilege of the first question to you and, and I think I'm willing to extend that to him [ LAUGH ] he wanted to thank you. He believes that your actions have been profoundly in the public interest. [ SOUND ] Thank you. That was applause if you couldn't hear it. [ LAUGH ] And he asks if you could design from scratch, an accountability system for, for governance over national security agencies. What would you do? We have an oversight model that could work. The problem is when the overseer's aren't interested in oversight. When we've got we've got Senate Intelligence Committees, House Intelligence Committees that are championed for the NSA instead of holding them to account. When we have James Clapper the director of National Intelligence in front of them and he tells a lie, that they all know is a lie because they're briefed on the program. Because they got the questions you know, a day in advance and no one says anything. Allowing all the American people to believe this is a true answer. That's an incredibly dangerous thing and that's the biggest mistake. So, when I would say, how do we fix our oversight model? How do we structure an oversight model that works? The key factor is accountability, we need a watchdog. Their watches come with us. Something that can tell us, hey, these guys didn't tell you that you were just lied to. Because otherwise, how would we vote. If, if we're not informed we can't consent to these policies and I think that's damaging. In, in your early interviews with Gwen Greenlaw and Laura Poitras you said that your, your biggest fear. Was that there would be little or no reaction to these disclosures. You know, where you sit now how satisfied are you with the global debate that you helped to launch and do you feel that it was worth the price that you paid in order to bring us to this moment. Regardless of what happens to me, this is something we had a right to know. I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution. And I saw that the Constitution was violated on massive scale. The interpretation of the Fourth Amendment had been changed [ INAUDIBLE ] [ SOUND ]. Thank you. The the interpretation of the constitution had been changed in secret from no unreasonable search and seizure to hey any seizure is fine, just not searching. 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