Glenn Greenwald again ignited the debate over government surveillance during a speech at the Socialism 2013 conference in Chicago.

Greenwald offers a compelling account of his relationship with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, and his respect for those like him who shed light on abuse by the powerful. Importantly, Greenwald states that he will continue to expose the spreading surveillance efforts of the intelligence community.

To that end, Greenwald gave the audience a preview of his next Snowden exposé – a report on “a brand new technology [that] enables the National Security Agency to redirect into its own repositories one billion cell phones calls every single day.” (video at 40:00).

More on this to come.

Shaking the Roots

He concluded that there is another motivation for publishing the Snowden documents. It is to “shake up the … corrupted and rotted roots of America’s political and media culture.”

What you find is that the debate over imprisoning whistleblowers and journalists is being led by “TV actors who play the role of journalists on TV,” Greenwald said.

He describes his Meet the Press interview with NBC host David Gregory as an illustration of this rot. During the interview Gregory all but stated that Greenwald should be arrested for “aiding and abetting” Snowden’s efforts to expose the NSA’s spying operations.