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Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks during a during a round table event to launch the "Talking is Teaching: Talk Read Sing" campaign at the Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute on July 23, 2014 in Oakland, California. Justin Sullivan, Getty Images

At last heeding the massive outcry for her thoughts on the police shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri three weeks ago, Hillary Clinton on Thursday weighed in on the tragedy and the violence that erupted there in its wake.

"Watching the recent funeral for Michael Brown, as a mother and as a human being, my heart just broke for his family," Clinton said during a keynote address at a San Francisco summit for software company Nexenta. "But I also grieve for that community and for many like it across our country."

Brown was shot and killed by white officer Darren Wilson, bringing to a head years-long racial tensions that have simmered in Ferguson. Though the majority of the town's residents are black, its police force is 93 percent white.

"We cannot ignore the inequities that exist in our justice system," she said. But America's "true colors," she added, have been demonstrated by the peaceful protesters and the officers "who serve and protect their communities with courage and professionalism, who inspire trust rather than fear."

As violent riots continue to flood Ferguson's streets amid nationwide debate about the law enforcement community's prejudiced administration of justice, Clinton lauded President Obama's decision to dispatch Attorney General Eric Holder to Ferguson to conduct a "thorough and speedy investigation."

"Behind the dramatic, terrible pictures on television, our deep challenges that will be with them, and with us, long after the cameras move on - this is what happens when the bonds of trust and respect that hold any community together fray," Clinton said. "Nobody wants to see our streets look like a war zone; not in America. We are better than that."

The former secretary of state's remarks drew fast praise on Twitter, but inevitable are the criticisms that they came too late. Clinton and her camp have deliberately declined opportunities to speak on the issue, though many in the media have suggested that as the early frontrunner for the 2016 Democratic president nomination, she bears more strenuous pressure to respond to such a hot-button social controversy.

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Hillary Clinton breaks silence on Ferguson: "We are better than that"

Summary: "I'm not an expert on software-defined storage or the intricacies of cloud computing," Clinton quipped.

SAN FRANCISCO---Privacy and security are in a necessary but inevitable tension, reflected former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton while speaking at data storage and software provider Nexenta's OpenSDx Summit on Thursday.

Proposing this debate has been going on in the United States since the days of the Founding Fathers (with Clinton trading out "privacy" for "liberty"), Clinton observed how concerns over privacy reached a fever pitch following the revelations about the National Security Agency last year.

"There's no doubt we may have gone too far in a number of areas, and those [practices] have to be rethought and rebalanced," Clinton said about the surveillance liberties given to government agencies following the attacks on September 11.

At the same time, Clinton countered that we live in a world with a lot of "bad actors" who have access to the same technology as ordinary Internet users. By extension (and with a little work), those bad actors could also have access to the same sensitive data.

"I think it's fair to say the Government, the NSA, didn't so far as we know cross legal lines, but they came right up and sat on them," said Clinton. "It could perhaps mean their data was being collected in metadata configurations, and that was somehow threatening. We have to be constantly asking ourselves what legal authorities we gave to the NSA and others and make sure people know what the tradeoffs are."

Clinton lamented that "probably the most frustrating part of this whole debate" is trying to convey that the United States is not the only country trying to manage and balance these conflicts. She explained how on diplomatic visits to China and Russia, for example, she and her staff couldn't take any personal devices off the plane in fear of the devices being hacked.

"We need to make it clear to other countries that our technology companies are not part of our government," Clinton said.

"They're so good," Clinton laughed, speculating the devices and stored data would be breached within a "nanosecond."

Clinton also emphasized the Federal Government does not use personal data for commercial purposes -- insisting other governments do.

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Hillary Clinton talks NSA and privacy, data security, tech jobs in San Francisco

Progressives really, really, really wanted to hear from Hillary Clinton on the events in Ferguson, Mo., where an unarmed black teenager was shot and killed by a white police officer on Aug. 9, sparking days of unrest in that small city outside St. Louis and elsewhere.

Al Sharpton said he wanted to smoke Clinton out on Ferguson and suggested that if she ran in 2016, he would be a thorn in her side on civil rights issues.

MSNBC host Chris Hayes thought it was bizarre that Clinton hadnt at least weighed in with a statement on the incident, even though she hasnt made a habit of offering up opinions on much of anything outside of formal interviews and speeches. (She didnt release a statement on the beheading of Jim Foley by ISIS, for instance)

Well, she finally addressed Ferguson on Thursday, during a prepared speech, and it turns out that her comments were among the most substantive compared to what other political leaders have said.

Whereas most Democrats and Republicans, and eventually President Obama, addressed the militarization of the police, Clinton actually went there on an issue that most avoided: racism and the criminal justice system.

At her speech at the Nexenta OpenSDx Summit in San Francisco, she said we cannot ignore the inequities that persist in our justice system. And then she did what few of her prominent fellow white Democrats have done in the context of Fergusonshe acknowledged the well-known statistics that show that blacks get treated differently than whites when it comes to everything from traffic stops to sentencing. But rather than just listing the statistics, she got personal by asking whites to put themselves in the shoes of black Americans:

Imagine what we would feel and what we would do if white drivers were three times as likely to be searched by police during a traffic stop as black drivers instead of the other way around. If white offenders received prison sentences ten percent longer than black offenders for the same crimes. If a third of all white men just look at this room and take one-third went to prison during their lifetime. Imagine that. That is the reality in the lives of so many of our fellow Americans in so many of the communities in which they live.

Her statements in many ways echo those of Sen. Rand Pauls who also imagined himself as Michael Brown, mouthing off at a cop as a teen, but with a very different outcome based on race. Both Paul and Clinton went further in their statements than Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Obama, who in his third statement on Ferguson, touched on black crime rates, and only allowed that there might be sentencing disparities and differential treatment for blacks in the criminal justice system. Paul and Clintons boldness on racism and the criminal justice system is a risky and bold move, given the wide divide in how blacks and whites think about and experience race. Yes, its easier for whites to talk about racism than it is for blacks (witness Obama), but in asking whites to change their thinking about race and to essentially imagine themselves as black, both Paul and Clinton are doing something that has rarely been done in national politics in the last decade. Progressives, fueled by buyers remorse over Obama, are set on portraying Clinton as too moderate, ignoring, for instance, that she actually ran to the left of Obama on health care, and has spoken out, in formal settings, on voting rights as well. Some progressives noticed her comments on Ferguson, but even as they praised her, they questioned her motives:

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Hillary Clinton was surprisingly bold on Ferguson

Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for a global compact on surveillance and the use of collected data, saying the U.S. isnt the only country that does it and American technology companies are unfairly targeted for the governments actions.

The U.S. government doesnt use information for commercial purposes, while other countries do, Clinton said.

We need to make it clear to other countries that our technology companies are not part of our government, and that we have more legal processes than any other country that Im aware of covering government requests for information, Clinton said during her appearance at the Nexenta OpenSDx Summit, a technology conference in San Francisco.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke on Thursday at the Nexenta OpenSDx Summit in San Francisco.

The threat of electronic spying was so great in some countries that when traveling as a U.S. official she couldnt carry any electronics, she said.

Every time I went to countries like China or Russia, I mean, we couldnt take our computers, we couldnt take our personal devices, we couldnt take anything off the plane, because theyre so good, they would penetrate them in a minute, Clinton said. She and her staff removed the batteries and left the devices on their plane.

Though she wants to see an international agreement on the collection and use of data, Clinton acknowledged that would take long and careful effort.

Clinton, who is pondering a run for president in 2016 and is widely considered the likely Democratic nominee, said the U.S. wasnt perfect on the surveillance front, especially when it was scrambling around after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Theres no doubt we may have gone too far in a number of areas, and that those have to be rethought and we have to rebalance, Clinton said. The [National Security Agency] didnt, so far as we know, cross legal lines, but they came right up and sat on them.

But she said some tradeoffs have always been necessary. Our privacy and our security are in a necessary, inevitable tension, Clinton said.

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Hillary Clinton: 'Our technology companies are not part of our government'

RNC Chair: I Don #39;t Fear Hillary Clinton
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus in an appearance on NBC #39;s "Meet the Press" said he doesn #39;t fear his party having to run against Hillary...

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RNC Chair: I Don't Fear Hillary Clinton - Video