NSA leak journalist
Glenn Greenwald
BIOGRAPHY SUMMARY
He’s a man of many talents, from civil rights litigator to best-selling author. But Glenn Greenwald is perhaps best known as the journalist who broughtEdward Snowden
to the public’s attention.
Glenn Greenwald Overview ‧
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A respected writer and lawyer, Greenwald has written many works on privacy and US politics. He also appeared in the Oscar-winning documentary Citizenfour. In February 2014 he helped launch The Intercept, as one of the news site’s founding editors.
Greenwald’s early entry into politics
After high school, Greenwald studied philosophy at George Washington University, before earning his law degree at New York University School of Law, in 1994.
A trailblazing law career
Greenwald later told Rolling Stone : “To me, it's a heroic attribute to be so committed to a principle that you apply it not when it's easy.” Greenwald Christoph PC operated for ten years, before closing in 2005.
Journalism at Salon.com and The Guardian
Greenwald’s writing was so well received, he landed a job at Salon.com . His Salon.com columns were highly critical of how the CIA and other US intelligence agencies were attacking individual privacy and other civil liberties. This made him an obvious choice for Snowden to share the NSA files with.
In 2012, Greenwald joined the US arm of British newspaper The Guardian , where he would break the story of the NSA’s global surveillance programs.
Greenwald exposes NSA surveillance
Edward Snowden
, with regards
sensitive to documents
he wished to share. The documents turned out to be an enormous cache of
around 1.7 million files
, which Snowden had secretly copied from the National Security Agency. The files detailed the extent of the NSA’s global surveillance of individuals in the US and overseas.
“Communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing,” wrote Greenwald in his first report on the topic.
Kicking off the great privacy debate
The reports polarized opinion on whether Snowden and Greenwald were heroes or traitors. While a US federal judge found the NSA’s activities unconstitutional, one Republican congressman thought Greenwald should be arrested for his reporting. Greenwald won the 2013 Polk Award for his NSA journalism, along with several other awards.
No place to hide: Greenwald’s books and film
He also featured in Citizenfour,
Laura Poitras
’s Oscar-winning documentary about Edward Snowden and the NSA revelations.
Founding editor of The Intercept
In 2014, First Look Media launched The Intercept, a “fearless, adversarial” news site of which Greenwald was a founding editor. The Intercept has continued to report on the NSA spying revelations and other attacks on our
online privacy
.
Ushering a new era of whistleblower journalism
If not for his fearless journalism, Edward Snowden’s NSA revelations might not have made the global impact they did, and we might still not know how much governments are spying on us.
With The Intercept, Glenn Greenwald continues to fight for our online privacy and other rights. Long may he continue to do so.
Feature image: David dos Dantos / Mynewsdesk
