Edward Snowden, who is exiled in Russia, will appear via video conference at this year's South by Southwest Interactive Conference.
While Snowden has given plenty of interviews since he leaked a cache of highly-sensitive documents about the United States' surveillance programs, he has not done so live and on video.
SXSW announced that Snowden will participate in a conversation with the American Civil Liberties Union on Monday, March 10 at noon ET. According to a press release, the talk will focus 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."
The conversation will be moderated by "Ben Wizner, who is director of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy & Technology Project and Edward Snowden's legal advisor."
Here's a bit more about the chat from the SXSW website:
"Just as technology has enabled our modern surveillance state, so too can technology protect us. But regular users cannot make privacy-preserving tools themselves. The technology industry and the tech community can and must do more to secure the private data of the billions of people who rely on the tools and services that we build.
"Edward Snowden's revelations have launched a historic debate about surveillance practices and democratic controls, in which all three branches of government are actively and publicly engaging. But the technology community has too often been left out of the debate. It's time to fix that."
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