"The articles we have published so far are a very small part of the revelations that ought to be published,"
The above statement was offered by Glenn Greenwald on Tuesday in testimony given before the Brazilian Congress, investigating U.S. spying on Brazilians.
"There will certainly be many more revelations on spying by the U.S. government and how they are invading the communications of Brasil and Latin America," he said in Portuguese.
The columnist, now working for Britain's
Guardian newspaper, is based in Rio de Janeiro. When asked by a congress member if Snowden had given any classified material to the pro-transparency website
WikiLeaks he told him that he does not believe any of the documents were given to anyone other than himself and filmmaker
Laura Poitras. He also told the congress that he's recruited the help of experts to understand some of the 15,000 to 20,000 unpublished NSA documents he has access to because of their length and complexity.
Perhaps he should have included a linguist in the bunch who's well-versed in Orwellian language.
The story was published at Reuters
"I speak with him a lot since he left the airport, almost every day. We use very strong encryption to communicate," Greenwald told the Brazilian legislators. "He is very well."
"He is very pleased with the debate that is arising in many countries around the world on internet privacy and U.S. spying. It is exactly the debate he wanted to inform," Greenwald said.
(snip)
Last month, in an article co-authored by Greenwald, the Brazilian newspaper O Globo reported that the NSA spied on Latin American countries with programs that can monitor billions of emails and phone calls for suspicious activity. Latin American countries fumed at what they considered a violation of their sovereignty and demanded explanations and an apology.
Brazil is America's largest trading partner in South America. As a result of the disclosures, angry senators questioned Brazil's president, Dilma Rousseff's planned state visit to Washington D.C. in October over a billion dollar purchase of U.S. made fighter jets Brazil is considering.
Members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee peppered Greenwald with questions on Tuesday, such as whether the NSA was capable of spying on Brazil's commercial secrets, including the discovery of promising offshore oil reserves, and the communications of the country's president and armed forces.
Greenwald answered that he had no details on specific commercial targets and did not name U.S. based telecoms and internet companies that may have collaborated with the NSA's broad collection of internet users' data.
When asked about Edward Snowden, Greenwald told congress members, "as long as he needs to, until he can secure his situation." He also said Snowden knew he risked spending the rest of his life in jail or being hunted by the most powerful country in the world but had no doubts about his decision to leak the documents on the U.S. surveillance programs. He then railed against those nations who wouldn't offer Snowden protection while denouncing the the U.S. for spying on them at the same time.
Meanwhile, Washington is working through diplomatic channels to persuade governments to stop complaining about the surveillance programs, he said.
"The Brazilian government is showing much more anger in public than it is showing in private discussions with the U.S. government," Greenwald told reporters. "All governments are doing this, even in Europe."
While speaking at the United Nations on Tuesday, Brazilian Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota called the interception of telecommunications and other act of espionage in Latin America, "a serious issue with a profound impact on the international order."
But he did not mention the U.S. by name.
I think it's safe to say that our hegemonic power rivals that of our military.