12PM EST Watch Edward Snowden address SXSW LIVE here

Edward Snowden is speaking live now (12pm ET). The hosts mentioned, as the conversation began, that Snowden is speaking via 7 different proxies to ensure that he can’t be tracked during this historic event…UPDATE: Full video is now posted. Warning, the audio is really bad on the full video. First I’ll post a video clip with better audio that addresses some important comments from Snowden.

FULL VIDEO

(Forbes 3/9/14) Edward Snowden isn’t ready to come back to the U.S. in person yet, but on Monday, he will be here virtually. The NSA whistleblower will be on a South by Southwest panel with his lawyer, Ben Wizner, and ACLU technologist Chris Soghoian. Every news network in the world is salivating for a one-on-one interview with Snowden, but he instead chose to talk to a room full of technophiles in Austin.

Ben Wizner, who is also the director of the ACLU Speech, Privacy & Technology Project, said in an interview on Sunday that SXSW was an appealing venue for Snowden’s first appearance because “it brings together a lot of young people who are passionate about technology and who know a lot about technology.” A Kansas congressman displeased by the decision wrote an open letter to SXSW asking them to kill the panel, saying that allowing Snowden to speak “encourages lawlessness.”

“I appreciate his interest in SXSW, but I’ve never uninvited a speaker, and so we wouldn’t do this with Snowden. Our goal here is to be an open platform. I’d love to have the NSA giving a lecture,” says Hugh Forrest, director of the SXSW Interactive Festival, who expressed some concerns about the possibility of the video feed being taken down or interfered with on Monday. “I hope it goes off flawlessly because I think it’s the biggest thing we’ve ever done, in terms of political and cultural relevance. It’s a big deal. . Snowden is going to urge this crowd of innovators to build better encryption into the next generation of [technology]. I’m proud and excited that Snowden wanted to get this message out at SXSW.”