“The NSA, the sort of global mass surveillance that’s occurring in all of these countries, not just the U.S. — and it’s important to remember that this is a global issue — they’re setting fire to the future of the Internet,” Snowden said. “And the people who are in this room now — you guys are all the firefighters. And we need you to help us fix it.”

◼ link - Ashe Schow/Washington Examiner

Snowden’s suggestion was end-to-end encryption, which limits communication to just the party sending and the party receiving information.

“And the result of that is a more constitutional, more [inaudible] sort of intelligence-gathering model, law-enforcement model,” Snowden said. “Where if they want to gather somebody’s communications, they have to target them specifically. They can’t just target everybody all the time.”

◼ NSA whistleblower accuses Dianne Feinstein of double standards, pointing out her lack of concern about widespread surveillance of ordinary citizens... - Paul Lewis in Washington/The Guardian

Snowden, who is in Russia on temporary asylum, added: “But it’s equally if not more concerning that we’re seeing another ‘Merkel effect,’ where an elected official does not care at all that the rights of millions of ordinary citizens are violated by our spies, but suddenly it’s a scandal when a politician finds out the same thing happens to them.”