Snowden wants to write his own software to better protect online privacy

Whistleblower Edward Snowden has indicated during a video chat at a hacker conference that he is considering focusing on writing protocols and applications to improve the privacy of internet users.

Snowden spoke briefly about his plans for the future through a Google Hangouts session with hackers at the Hackers on Planet Earth conference. The whistleblower currently residing in Russia indicated in the interview that companies in the tech sector should do more to better protect devices and services against eavesdropping by, for example, the NSA, a call he also made in March. But Snowden also indicated that he also wants to play a part in it.

The American said that in his future work he wants to focus on the development of new protocols and software in order to restore the privacy of internet users. Encryption should play an important role in this.

Snowden called on the hackers present to help him with that. He didn’t mention concrete projects yet, but as a former NSA system administrator he would have the necessary knowledge and ideas.