Whistleblower and former NSA contractor Edward Snowden is set to speak at this year's South by Southwest Interactive Festival, CNN reported. Snowden, who is avoiding returning to the U.S. to face prosecution, will speak via teleconference from Russia on March 10.
Snowden will participate in a conversation with Christopher Soghoian, principle technologist of the Speech, Privacy and Technology Project with the American Civil Liberties Union. Snowden, who fled the U.S. after he leaked confidential government surveillance documents last year, will talk about how the technology community needs to protect itself from intrusive surveillance, CNN reported.
"The conversation will be focused on the impact of the NSA's spying efforts on the technology community and the ways in which technology can help to protect us from mass surveillance," a press release from SXSW said.
The audience will "hear directly from Snowden about his beliefs on what the tech community can and must do to secure the private data of the billions of people who rely on the tools and services that we build."
The director of SXSW Interactive told CNN it took several months to get Snowden on the program. The whistleblower helped reveal unknown ramifications of the online world.
"The growth of social media has fueled so much of the growth of the online ecosystem, but the revelations from the summer of 2013 expose the costs and downsides of this growth," director Hugh Forrest told CNN.
Snowden exposed the NSA's mass surveillance of Americans' Internet and phone activity when he leaked top secret documents to The Guardian newspaper in the summer of 2013. Snowden is currently in Russia on asylum, where he has been since June.
Snowden previously admitted in interviews he would like to return to the U.S. However, he will not do so for fear of being arrested. There are laws that exist to protect whistleblowers, however the protection does not extend to Snowden because he was not an NSA employee.
Ever year SXSW, based in Austin, Texas, presents thousands of people with interactive festivals, music and movies. Those who cannot make it to the festival can see the conversation with Snowden livestreamed by The Texas Tribune.
