The NSA has a "brand new" technology that enables one billion cell phone calls to be redirected into its data hoards, according to the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald, who told a Chicago conference that a new leak of Snowden's documents was "coming soon."
Calling it part of a "globalized system to destroy all privacy," and the enduring creation of a climate of fear, Greenwald outlined the capabilities of the NSA to store every single call while having "the capability to listen to them at any time," while speaking via Skype to the Socialism Conference in Chicago, on Friday.
Greenwald was the first journalist to leak Snowden's documents, having travelled to Hong Kong to review them prior to exposure.
"What we're really talking about here is a globalized system that prevents any form of electronic communication from taking place without its being stored and monitored by the National Security Agency," he said.
While he underlined that members of the NSA are not necessarily listening in on the full billion calls, he pointed out their capability to do so and the lack of accountability with "virtually no safeguards" which the NSA is being held to.
The Guardian journalist made hints that he was sitting on further details of the NSA's billion-call backlog, which he'd keep under wraps until the documents' full publication, which he said was "coming soon."
He additionally suggested future exposures to come from Snowden, while lauding the sheer risk the whistleblower took in revealing the NSA's covert surveillance program.
People cross a street in front of a monitor showing file footage of Edward Snowden, a former contractor for the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), with a news tag (L) saying he has left Hong Kong, outside a shopping mall in Hong Kong (Reuters/Bobby Yip)
"More a recluse than a fame prostitute"
Greenwald spoke highly of Snowden throughout, saying that he apparently lacked remorse, regret and fear, while not seeking notoriety of any form.
"He's a person who has zero privilege, zero power, zero position and zero prestige, and yet by himself he has literally changed the world," Greenwald said of Snowden, using him as an example of the powers individuals still have.
"Courage is contagious," he said, commenting on the demonization of whistleblowers, and saying it was necessary as Snowden could potentially set an example -- something that Snowden himself aimed to do, as he had been looking for a leader to fix the problems inherent in the US system, but found nobody.
"There is more to life than material comfort or career stability...he thought about himself by the actions he took in pursuit of those beliefs," said Greenwald.
He outlined his meeting with the NSA whistleblower, who he said contacted him anonymously via email suggesting Greenwald might be "interested" in looking over the documents -- a suggestion labeled by Greenwald to be "the world's largest understatement of the decade."
After Snowden sent Greenwald an "appetizer," of the documents he had on hand, Greenwald recalled being dizzy with "ecstasy and elation."
Satellite dishes are seen at GCHQ's outpost at Bude, close to where trans-Atlantic fibre-optic cables come ashore in Cornwall, southwest England (Reuters/Kieran Doherty)
"Climate of Fear"
It was Snowden's exposure of the documents while operating in a highly surveilled environment that Greenwald was particularly complimentary about, citing an intensifying "climate of fear" being pushed on people who may be hazardous to the government.
"One of the things that has been most disturbing over the past three to four years has been this climate of fear that has emerged in exactly the circles that are supposed to challenge the government...the real investigative journalists who are at these outlets who do real reporting are petrified of the US government now. Their sources are beyond petrified," he commented.
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