Edward Snowden made a quiet appearance at South by Southwest, to which only a few dozen of the event’s thousands of attendees were invited.
Snowden hosted a private livestream conference with around 20 technology and privacy experts. Only after the event did participants acknowledge that it had taken place.
One participant, Sunday Yokubaitis, head of online privacy company Golden Frog, told The Verge that it was “call to arms” to discuss, in detail, how to improve privacy protections against government spying:
Snowden covered several other topics, including arguments for harsher punishments for security agents who abuse their power, like those caught spying on their loved ones. “This proves that spying programs are worth more than the interests of justice,” he said.
He spoke about the difficulties of his returning home—”[The] government hasn’t felt the pressure; they don’t care about petitions, they need higher-level pressure. It is not a legal issue, it is a political issue”—and said that so far he has “got the sense that I’m helping to improve lives.”
A SXSW organizer told The Verge that the meeting was kept under wraps until its conclusion in order to facilitate an “intimate” atmosphere. “[T]his morning’s event was an invite-only session with about 30 tech leaders who are attending SXSW. The smaller group allowed for more in-depth questions, answers, ideas, brainstorms and discussion that simply can not be done in the kind of space where we hosted his talk in 2014.”
Naturally, the meeting concluded with some “selfie”-tweeting:
Epic selfie. @CenDemTech pic.twitter.com/rlkxDwzlwy
— Nuala O’Connor (@privacymama) March 15, 2015
