Glenn Greenwald, a
reporter for The Guardian, says living
in Brazil helped him
report on data monitoring in the U.S.
Above, Greenwald stands with his partner, David Miranda.
Being 'Carioca' Helped Glenn Greenwald Break NSA
Surveillance Story (Folha, Brazil)
"People [sources] think they are more protected because of
the distance, and I'm less vulnerable to being targeted by political
retaliation or lawsuits because I live in Brazil. That gives me additional
protection. ... Not being in New York and Washington - and not being socially
connected to the people who cover politics, allows me to be more
independent."
It
was from Rio de Janeiro that American journalist and lawyer Glenn Greenwald
collected most of the information published in The Guardian, which revealed a scheme of wiretapping and monitoring
of Internet data by the U.S. government.
It
is there that Greenwald, 46, has lived and worked for eight years. For him, the
fact that he was in Brazil facilitated acquiring the documents and
investigating the story that has forced President Barack Obama to have to
explain himself.
"People
[sources] think they are more protected because of the distance, and I'm less
vulnerable to being targeted by political retaliation or lawsuits because I
live in Brazil. That gives me additional protection," Greenwald told Folha by phone
yesterday.
The
journalist himself considers it more difficult for the U.S. government to
monitor his telephone calls and e-mail because he’s outside the country.
"Not being in New York and Washington - and not being socially connected
to the people who cover politics, allows me to be more independent,"
Greenwald says.
Greenwald
lives in Rio with his partner, a Brazilian. The couple decided to stay in
Brazil because the U.S. doesn't recognize civil unions between gays for the
purpose of applying for permanent residency. In Portuguese, he told this
reporter that he's already a "Carioca."
And,
due to his involvement with Brazil, one of Greenwald’s first concerns when he
began combing through the information passed to him was the vulnerability of
Brazilian Internet.
"Then
I thought of the case of Brazil, because everyone I know here uses Facebook and Skype," he said. To him, it would be
"ridiculous" to think that users of the two services in Brazil
weren’t monitored by the American government. "They probably are," he
ventures.
Greenwald
is a lawyer and worked for a large New York law firm before leaving that
career. In 2005, he began a blog where he focuses on items on national security
and civil liberties. For many years he contributed to the digital magazine Salon, and today he maintains a column
in Britain's Guardian.
Posted By Worldmeets.US
The
American says he obtained the document proving the monitoring from a reader.
"He said he knew of my work and that he hoped I would go after the story
aggressively."
The
disclosure of eavesdropping occurs as soldier Bradley Manning is being tried in
the U.S. for allegedly leaking documents to WikiLeaks, and Greenwald knows that
he's not insulated from legal action. "With a leak of this magnitude, the
government will try to find a responsible party, but that was to be
expected."
[Editor's
Note: All quotes in this article are translated].
