When I read it last night, the bit that raised my  eyebrows was Greenwalds dismissal of encryption. There's an article by Heather Brooke where she talks about the lengths she goes to when investigating, including leaving phones at home. But i cant find it at the moment.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

To be fair, the US has shown great willingness to ignore international treaties when it suits the interests of those in power.

So you vaguely remember reading an article by Greenwald ("I can't remember what the original column was about") and a discussion which grew out of it between him and a law lecturer in New Zealand. You remember having interpreted (obviously you don't have a link and haven't been able to check) part of Greenwald's response as a failure to understand the NZ guy's point and you interpreted this as "seeming" (thanks for that qualification) to show that Greenwald was "entirely (sic) unaware of international treaties and conventions on human rights."

This seems to be a rather extreme conclusion to me, unfortunately, without the link, one can't verify if it's at all a reasonable interpretation. It does seem unlikely that he was "entirely" unaware of such things, given his "great expertise in US constitutional and civil rights law", a not entirely unrelated area.

I'm not suggesting that Greenwald is beyond criticism (though I admire him and what I have read of his work), he's human. But I do think criticism ought to be a bit a better supported, Greenwald himself is usually pretty meticulous in providing quotations and links.

This is particularly true in the current context; Greenwald had already made powerful enemies through his criticisms of the Bush and Obama administrations and of mainstream media coverage of them. But attacks on him (and Snowden, Poitras has wisely kept a pretty low profile so far) have become more widespread and virulent after the NSA reporting, as he expected:

"When I made the choice to report aggressively on top-secret NSA programs, I knew that I would inevitably be the target of all sorts of personal attacks and smears.
...
When I asked Ellsberg about that several years ago, he explained that the state uses those tactics against anyone who dissents from or challenges it simply to distract from the revelations and personally smear the person with whatever they can find to make people uncomfortable with the disclosures.

So I've been fully expecting those kinds of attacks since I began my work on these NSA leaks. The recent journalist-led "debate" about whether I should be prosecuted for my reporting on these stories was precisely the sort of thing I knew was coming.
...

I'm 46 years old and, like most people, have lived a complicated and varied adult life. I didn't manage my life from the age of 18 onward with the intention of being a Family Values US senator. My personal life, like pretty much everyone's, is complex and sometimes messy.

If journalists really believe that, in response to the reporting I'm doing, these distractions about my past and personal life are a productive way to spend their time, then so be it."

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/26/nsa-revelations-response-to-smears

Maybe he should have known more about international laws and treaties, and about encryption and should have taken Snowden's approaches more seriously, more quickly. But at the moment I'd prefer to focus on the impressive work he's done, I'm impressed by the research in his articles which I've read, his debating skills in youtube videos I've seen and his courage in criticising powerful organisations - which hasn't made his life too easy;

Poitras and Greenwald are not facing any charges, at least not yet. They do not plan to stay away from America forever, but they have no immediate plans to return. One member of Congress has already likened what they've done to a form of treason, and they are well aware of the Obama administration's unprecedented pursuit of not just leakers but of journalists who receive the leaks.
...
 Greenwald asked Poitras, "Since it all began, have you had a non-N.S.A. day?"

"What's that?" she replied.

"I think we need one," Greenwald said. "Not that we're going to take one."

Poitras talked about getting back to yoga again. Greenwald said he was going to resume playing tennis regularly. "I'm willing to get old for this thing," he said, "but I'm not willing to get fat."

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/magazine/laura-poitras-snowden.html

Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.

Possible article by Glenn Greewald @Salon titled "Eavesdropping" on 9 Sept. 2008. I could only find the cached version to article - here - or comments section - here.

It could be you misread a discussion which at the time appeared Glenn Greenwald was on the losing side. Knowing what we understand today, improbability has turned out to be reality. Perhaps the New Zealand law lecturer was part of the establishment and had talking points of the "Five Eyes."

I was saddened by this fp story @BooMan - What a Dumb Argument. Taking Glenn Greenwald to task. It's not a conspiracy, it's what the Internet has become.

Global Warming - distance between America and Europe is steadily increasing.

Ted prompted me to look for the origin of what you recall, too, and I found a quite likely candidate, but with roles somewhat switched. In Binding U.S. law requires prosecutions for those who authorize torture, it is Greenwald who argues that the Convention Against Torture makes the prosecution of torturers binding on all states that signed it, including the USA. New Zealand law professor Kevin Jon Heller disagreed by pointing out some nuances that allow governments to maintain some degree of discretion as to whether to prosecute torturers. In his Update III to his Salon article, Greenwald didn't reject that argument, but argued that these legal backdoors don't cover the actions and excuses of the Bush regime. In his own update, Heller reacted with complete agreement.

So, unless there was another discussion here, Greenwald and the New Zealand law professor both argued on the basis of international law, Greenwald's ignorance was about a backdoor making the binding part less strong rathern than about something being binding, and the argument ended in agreement rather than accusations of speculation.

Either way, a reason I was uncritical about your recollection was that the NYT article contained two passages that bothered me for considering the rights violations of American citizens only [my emphasis]:

...The Snowden story, they both said, was a battle they were waging together, a fight against powers of surveillance that they both believe are a threat to fundamental American liberties.

...These lists have been criticized by civil rights groups for being too broad and arbitrary and for violating the rights of Americans who are on them...

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

Although there are always politicians that get horribly worked up about prosecuting journalists, as long as the journalists lawfully acquire sensitive information, they should be safe from prosecution with countries that have free press enshrined in their constitution. Though, for the USA, there already is a caveat:

Journalists and the Espionage Act: Prosecution risk is remote but real | Alison Frankel

Gregory's prosecutorial tone didn't go over well with journalists trained to believe that the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark 1971 ruling in The New York Times v. United States (better known as the Pentagon Papers case) gives them carte blanche to publish materials they've received lawfully from their sources, even if their sources broke the law to obtain the information. The court's subsequent 2001 ruling in Bartnicki v. Vopper confirmed that the media cannot be punished for publishing information that sources obtained illegally, so long as the information is of public importance. But there's actually a distinction in the law between the media's right to publish sensitive national security information and the government's right, at least in theory, to bring charges against reporters and publishers for possessing and disclosing classified information.

Gregory's question, in other words, may have been inaptly posed but it addressed a legitimate, albeit remote, risk for reporters with hot national security stories. No journalist has so far been prosecuted under the Espionage Act for a story that reveals sensitive information (nor, for that matter, under other federal laws addressing classified information), and Attorney General Eric Holder has said publicly that he doesn't intend to start charging reporters for doing their job. Nevertheless, there's enough uncertainty about criminal liability that the government has used the threat of prosecution to try to squelch reporting, according to a fascinating 2008 paper, "National Security and the Press: The Government's Ability to Prosecute Journalists for the Possession or Publication of National Security Information," from the Communication Law & Policy journal.

A Dutch example was the 2006 prosecution of two Dutch journalists, who were wiretapped and even got jailed, because they possessed a file from the Dutch secret service and they refused to reveal their source. They fought the tapping and jailing tooth and nail up to the European court in 2012 and every single time it was a crushing slapdown on the account of the Dutch state.

It should not come as a surprise, therefore, that the huntdown on whistleblowers has intensified instead.

As far as I remember Greenwald's work was mostly based on analysing public information/ interviewing public personalities. I'm not sure he even had a story based on anonymous sources before.

They are 'appropriately informed' no doubt.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

.
The NSA spy case and Snowden didn't warrant much discussion @BooMan. This affair in London with Glenn Greenwald's partner loosened the tongues ... 120+ comments on fp story.

The Greenwald Drama Ramps Up

Global Warming - distance between America and Europe is steadily increasing.

Detaining my partner: a failed attempt at intimidation | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | The Guardian

David had spent the last week in Berlin, where he stayed with Laura Poitras, the US filmmaker who has worked with me extensively on the NSA stories. A Brazilian citizen, he was returning to our home in Rio de Janeiro this morning on British Airways, flying first to London and then on to Rio. When he arrived in London this morning, he was detained.

Next time, he'll fly Lufthansa.