Four journalists who pulled back the curtain on the National Security Agency’s sprawling espionage operations and data mining activities will receive George Polk Awards for national security reporting, Long Island University, which awards the prizes, said Sunday.
They include The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill and Laura Poitras and The Washington Post’s Barton Gellman, all of whom broke stories shining a light on the NSA’s efforts to capture millions of email and instant messaging contact lists, track cell phone calls and spy on allies. Their reports were based on top-secret documents disclosed by former intelligence analyst Edward Snowden and they set off an international debate about the value and risks of government surveillance in the digital age.