Shoreshthe drift report · all case files
Case file

Glenn Greenwald

Wikipedia's first sentence called it “american lawyer”. Today it says “american journalist”. The one-line description Wikipedia serves to search engines and AI systems read “American journalist, lawyer and writer”. It now reads “American journalist (born 1967)”.
Measured, not asserted. Every count, date and revision on this page was taken from Wikipedia's own history and checked against the live article. The words quoted are theirs.
Machine-checked against the full current article on 2026-08-03.
We saved snapshots of this article over twenty years; you are reading the 2015 one. Red dashes: removed from Wikipedia since. Pale dots: rewritten; the numbered note shows what it says now. 1 tap a number or a side note to jump between them
The opening as it read in 2015

Glenn Edward Greenwald (born March 6, 1967) is an American lawyer , journalist and author.1 Greenwald worked as a constitutional and civil rights litigator . At Salon he contributed as a columnist and blogger , focusing on political and legal topics. He has also contributed to other newspapers and political news magazines, including The New York Times , the Los Angeles Times , The American Conservative , The National Interest and In These Times . In February 2014 he became, along with Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill , one of the founding editors of The Intercept . Greenwald was named by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers of 2013. Four of the five books he has written have been on The New York Times Best Sellers list. Greenwald is a frequent speaker on college campuses, including Harvard Law School , Yale Law School , the University of Pennsylvania , Brown University , UCLA School of Law , the University of Wisconsin and the University of Maryland . He frequently appears on various radio and television programs. Greenwald has received awards including the first Izzy Award for independent journalism, in 2009, and the 2010 Online Journalism Award for Best Commentary. In June 2013 Greenwald became widely known after The Guardian published the first of a series of reports detailing United States and British global surveillance programs, based on classified documents disclosed by Edward Snowden . The series on which Greenwald worked along with others won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service . His reporting on the National Security Agency (NSA) won numerous other awards around the world, including top investigative journalism prizes from the George Polk Award for National Security Reporting, the 2013 Online Journalism Awards, the Esso Award for Excellence in Reporting in Brazil for his articles in O Globo on NSA mass surveillance of Brazilians (becoming the first foreigner to win the award), the 2013 Libertad de Expresion Internacional award from Argentinian magazine Perfil , and the 2013 Pioneer Award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation . His work on the NSA files was in part the subject of the film Citizenfour , which won the 2014 Academy Award for Best Documentary . Greenwald appeared onstage at the Oscar ceremony with the film's director, Laura Poitras, as she accepted the award. Greenwald lives in Rio de Janeiro , Brazil , the hometown of his partner, David Michael Miranda. Greenwald has stated that his residence in Brazil is the result of an American law, the Defense of Marriage Act , barring federal recognition of same-sex marriages, which prevented his partner from receiving a visa to reside in the United States with him. Greenwald has also cited fears of arrest should he move back to the U.S. US Court of Appeals, 2nd Circuit . When "Glenn Greenwald" is provided as a search term selecting the "author" field: (1) "Madness of Crowds"; (2) "Selective Amnesia"; (3) "Watching the Detectives"; and (4) "Authoritarian Temptation." Greenwald, Glenn (April 25, 2008). In These Times . 30 (8) . Art of The Possible (January 16, 2006). Art of the Possible Blog .2

This is Wikipedia's own text, saved in our repository. Their copy of it is revision 667046549.
Today
Wikipedia's first sentence called it “american lawyer”. Today it says “american journalist”. The one-line description Wikipedia serves to search engines and AI systems read “American journalist, lawyer and writer”. It now reads “American journalist (born 1967)”. Read the current article and compare.
201020152020Oct '232025
Counts in the opening at each snapshot. Green: the word gained ground. Red: it was cut. Grey: no change.

What Wikipedia says this is

Every article opens by defining its subject. This one was redefined since 2010, and today's defining sentence is their current revision.

Then

american lawyer

Now

american journalist

Sections that no longer exist

Present on October 6, 2023, absent today, with no near-matching heading in the current article and the article shorter overall, so this is not a renamed heading or a topic absorbed into a fuller treatment. 2 sections of 400 characters or more gone since October 6 2023, with the article 4,955 characters shorter.

  • Later comments
  • Israel and accusations of antisemitism
Struck red text is no longer in the article; dotted amber text was rewritten. Every revision id links to Wikipedia's copy; the text shown is our own saved copy. Data: /data. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA; quoted for the record; not affiliated with Wikipedia.

← back to the drift report