Taking another page out of the WikiLeaks playbook, Edward Snowden has apparently distributed an encrypted copy of at least “thousands” of documents that he pilfered from the National Security Agency to “several people,” according to Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian reporter who first published Snowden’s leaks.
In an interview with the Daily Beast on Tuesday, Greenwald said that Snowden “has taken extreme precautions to make sure many different people around the world have these archives to insure the stories will inevitably be published.”
Greenwald added: “If anything happens at all to Edward Snowden, he told me he has arranged for them to get access to the full archives.” The Brazil-based journalist said that he himself has thousands of documents that Snowden leaked from the NSA, which may or may not constitute the totality of what he exfiltrated.
“I don’t know for sure whether [Snowden] has more documents than the ones he has given me,” Greenwald added. “I believe he does. He was clear he did not want to give to journalists things he did not think should be published.”
As we reported yesterday, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said that the complete set of leaked documents and materials had been “secured by the relevant journalistic organizations prior to [Snowden’s] travel.”
Assange's comments could suggest that The Guardian and the Washington Post—where Snowden previously leaked information—are now in possession of his entire cache. Ars asked The Guardian and the Post to confirm this on Monday but has not yet received a reply.
“[Snowden] was not trying to harm the US government”
“Snowden himself was vehement from the start that we do engage in that journalistic process and we not gratuitously publish things,” Greenwald also told the online publication. “I do know he was vehement about that. He was not trying to harm the US government; he was trying to shine light on it.”
Not surprisingly, since Greenwald has deepened his relationship with Snowden, he has taken extra digital security precautions, including communicating only by encrypted e-mail.
“When I was in Hong Kong, I spoke to my partner in [Rio de Janeiro] via Skype and told him I would send an electronic encrypted copy of the documents,” Greenwald noted. “I did not end up doing it. Two days later his laptop was stolen from our house and nothing else was taken. Nothing like that has happened before. I am not saying it’s connected to this, but obviously the possibility exists.”
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