Snowden: I Helped ‘Every Society’

Appearing in front of the image of the U.S. Constitution, Edward Snowden addressed a crowd at South by Southwest to great fanfare Monday. Via Google Hangout, Snowden responded to questions from his legal adviser, Ben Wizner of the ACLU. "We need a watchdog that watches Congress," he said. He believes "every society has benefitted" from his NSA leaks and that he was acting in the name of the Constitution. "I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution, and I saw that the Constitution was being violated on a massive scale," he said. He also stressed the importance of encryption and said that it should be a "basic protection" rather than a "black art." That seemed to be part of his larger goal of calling upon the tech community to be more vigilante. "They're setting fire to the global Internet, and you guys in the room are the global firefighters," he said.