1. Greenwald testifies and talks about all the awful things the NSA has been up to.
2. NSA offials will deny any and all claims made by Greenwald.
3. Greenwald will release documents that directly refute the NSA's testimonial.
Only one of two things are likely to happen on Wednesday. He discusses the truth and they admit it or he discusses the truth, they deny it, he provides evidence to the contrary that confirms both the truth and that those at the NSA blatantly lied to Congress. Either way, there is no way this can go down well for those protecting these abuses of Constitutional rights.
I'm really looking forward to this hearing.
GreEnwald is exposed down there in Brazil. A petty street robbery gone bad, a car accident, or a simple "sudden" heart attack, could all make this into a nothing event.
People in this kind of position have habits of "committing suicide" from the "stress":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kelly_(weapons_expert)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Gareth_Williams
I would put money on the act that Gareth Williams worked on, or knew about both Tempora and Prism.
"Williams' working life, after graduating with a first
in mathematics in 1996 aged 17, was spent in Cheltenham
at GCHQ, Britain’s signals intelligence agency. He joined
in 2001 after completing a PhD in computer science at
Manchester University. His final role in GCHQ had been
designing "practical applications for emerging
technologies".
In 2007, he applied to become a secret agent by
transferring to SIS, the UK's human intelligence agency
responsible for spies and spy recruitment. He was put
through a series of aptitude and skill tests. He failed.
He also attended Black Hat 16 the same year, according
to an SIS witness, presumably also then staying on to
attend Defcon."
Maybe he was Snowden part 1: the failed mission.
End conspiracy theory...
The greatest risk would be bribery of his security personnel to provide a "backdoor" for an assassination. If that were the case, it definitely wouldn't look like one of the scenarios you described. It would be obvious that it is a targeted assassination.
FWIW: I'm Brazilian, have lived in both Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo and have had known many people with private security and armored cars there.
In today's world you need the media to treat him as a martyr to make him one in the general public's eyes. There is currently a smear campaign against him stating things like, "he is no longer just a journalist, but actively aiding and abetting the enemy", "aiding a fugitive", "helping to commit treason", gay with a green-card-denied-gay-lover, etc
The knives are out. He would be a martyr to a few that cared. The ambivalence in the masses to this subject is truly scary.
Greenwood is being treated like Applebaum and the other Wikileaks personnel surrounding Assange. They are viable targets as they are aiding dissenters that are determined, effective and dangerous to the status quo.
I don't actually believe that the US is going to try and remove Greenwald from the picture now, but not for the reasons you state.
The dam is breached so he is no longer a real threat. The usual process now is to control the response, public opinion and any senators that might raise any opposition.
They are very very good at it; well practiced and effective. You don't go up against the combined resources of the United States government and expect to win. This is like a gnat attacking an elephant.
If Greenwald strikes any more than a flesh wound on the US government then I'd be surprised. They are already back to business as usual and now with the added cart blanche, which is the knowledge that the public know they are being spied on, but the NSA now know that most of them don't give a shit, as long as they can still read status updates on Facebook.
[1] http://majority.fm/2013/07/25/725-glenn-greenwald-the-impact...
> “In fact, we don’t monitor emails. That’s what kind of assures me is that what the reporting is is not correct. Because no emails are monitored now,” [Senator] Chambliss said. “They used to be, but that stopped two or three years ago. So I feel confident that there may have been some abuse, but if it was it was pure accidental.”
They've essentially admitted that Greenwald's information is accurate, they're just claiming that Greenwald is late to the party and they've already dealt with the problem in secret.
It's interesting, because if you go back over the testimony I'm very sure that all of the NSA denials will be in the present tense. So it's quite possible that the NSA has not been lying at all, they've just been counting on us to fill in "That has never happened" when all they've said is "we do not [currently] do that."
Until officials are held accountable, why wouldn't they continue lying and denying? It's starting to get to the point where I'm more angry at congress members who should provide oversight, than the lying officials themselves.
As a simple example, if I'm an NSA official and contrast how James Clapper experienced absolutely no real consequences for perjuring himself [1], with how Snowden has been treated for rocking the boat, I honestly don't know what decision I would make.
[1] http://www.salon.com/2013/06/12/how_james_clapper_will_get_a...