14 DAY TRIAL // It’s been nearly a year since the first reports based on Edward Snowden’s leaked NSA files reached the media and the story is nowhere near over. In fact, it’s likely going to take a long while before journalists run out of files to write about and by then, actual change is likely to happen.
Despite all the reports that he’s signed so far and everything else that’s been reported up until now, Glenn Greenwald says he’s yet to publish his most dramatic piece. In this one, he’ll reveal those in the United States who were targeted by the NSA.
“One of the big questions when it comes to domestic spying is, ‘Who have been the NSA’s specific targets?’ Are they political critics and dissidents and activists? Are they genuinely people we’d regard as terrorists? What are the metrics and calculations that go into choosing those targets and what is done with the surveillance that is conducted? Those are the kinds of questions that I want to still answer,” Greenwald said.
The journalist believes that despite everything that the NSA has been saying, claiming that all data it collects is perfectly safe, things are far from perfect. In fact, the fact that Snowden slipped through the cracks and managed to take so many documents proves that the intelligence agency cannot guarantee data security.
Greenwald has also added that it’s quite ironic that the NSA failed to catch Snowden, who is currently under asylum in Russia. “There is this genuinely menacing system and at the same time are really inept about how they operate it. Not only was he out there under their noses downloading huge amounts of documents without being detected but to this day they’re incapable of finding out what he took,” he points out.
Revelations based on the leaked documents indicate that the NSA doesn’t really spy on terrorists alone, as it was expected. Instead, it simply collects all data it can and then shift through it, hoping to find the needle in the haystack, regardless of what private information it accesses.
The files later indicated that it wasn’t just innocent people that the agency was targeting, but also lawmakers from around the globe, state leaders, companies with a key economic role, NGOs, world organizations and more. Greenwald wants to make a list and reveal just who the NSA set its eyes on.
The former Guardian journalist has been out and about promoting his brand new book, “No Place to Hide,” which was recently published. The book contains the story of how Edward Snowden’s documents ended up in Greenwald’s possession, as well as more information about the NSA’s mass surveillance programs.