String Puller | 61

String Puller | 61 Snowden was an avid reader of Greenwald’s screeds against the government. If he were to assume the role of a modern-day Pro- metheus, delivering forbidden NSA secrets to the public, Greenwald would be a logical candidate to break the story. Snowden could safely assume that Greenwald would be sympathetic to exposing NSA sur- veillance from his many blogs, tweets, and YouTube comments on the subject. For example, on November 13, 2012, just eighteen days before Snowden contacted him, Greenwald had written a blog for The Guardian asserting that the United States was “a surveillance state run amok.” In it, echoing very closely what Snowden said at his CryptoParty, Greenwald wrote, “Any remnants of internet anonym- ity have been all but obliterated between the state and technology companies.” Citing a story in The Washington Post, he continued, “Every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications.” Asa result, Greenwald called for action in that blog posting, writ- ing, “The US operates a sprawling, unaccountable Surveillance State © that, in violent breach of the core guarantees of the Fourth Amend- © ment, monitors and records virtually everything even the most law-abiding citizens do.” That same week, Snowden invited Runa Sandvik to co-host his CryptoParty. One problem for Snowden in reaching out to Greenwald was Greenwald’s lack of any encryption for his e-mails. Communicating with a journalist like Greenwald who famously attacked the very organization for which Snowden worked was itself a risky under- taking, especially if he wanted to pass classified NSA documents to him. If his e-mails were intercepted by the NSA in Brazil (where Greenwald lived) and where the NSA was not restricted by U.S. law, he could lose his job or even be arrested. As Cincinnatus, he told Greenwald that he needed to immediately encrypt his computer. To make his point, he cited Greenwald’s November 12, 2012, blog. In it, Greenwald noted that General David Petraeus, then the CIA direc- tor, had been caught in a sex scandal because his personal e-mails had been intercepted. Snowden wrote to Greenwald that Petraeus would not have been exposed if he had used encryption. Snowden sent Greenwald instructions on how to install the necessary encryp- | | Epst_9780451494566_2p_all_r1.z.indd 61 ® 9/29/16 5:51 Pa | | HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019549