Snowden: 'I never thought I'd be saved' after NSA leaks - CNET

It's been three years since Snowden leaked information about NSA programs like Prism, which gave the govement access to people's emails, video chats, photos and documents through some of the world's biggest tech companies. The disclosures put pressure on Silicon Valley companies including Apple, Google and Yahoo to step up their efforts in encryption and privacy and galvanized the companies to push back against the govement on issues of spying and user data.

Apple, for example, was embroiled in a heated standoff with the FBI earlier this year over information on an iPhone tied to a gunman in the San Beardino, Califoia, shooting in December. Neither side backed down, and in the end the federal govement found a way inside the phone without Apple's help.

But Snowden still managed to take a jab at Silicon Valley on Thursday. "The FBI actually gets a copy of this talk, because we're going through Google Hangouts," he said, to laughs from the crowd. "Anybody basically who asks nicely gets a judge to sign off on it."

The Comic-Con Q&A took place after the first public screening of the biopic "Snowden," in front of a small audience of about a hundred people. The panel also featured director Oliver Stone; Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who plays Snowden (and who sported an American flag t-shirt on Thursday); and Shailene Woodley, who plays his longtime girlfriend, Lindsay.

Snowden, who cooperated with the movie-makers, said he still feels uneasy about being the subject of a film.

"I don't think anybody looks forward to having a movie made about themselves -- particularly somebody who's a privacy advocate," he said.

Snowden's life clearly hasn't been the same since 2013. Now he's a fugitive, accused of violating the Espionage Act, and he lives in an undisclosed location in Moscow. More recently, though, he's been roaming around the US in robot form: a flat-screen with a camera on two wheels that stands about 5 feet tall, affectionately called the Snowbot. But for this event, he instead appeared on a giant screen that just showed the movie. (Ever the technical expert, Snowden opened his Idea by explaining the 5-second lag in the feed between him and the audience.)