A cyber security analyst works in a watch and warning center at a Department of Homeland Security cyber security defense lab at the Idaho National Laboratory, September 30, 2011, in Idaho Falls, Idaho. REUTERS/Jim Urquhart National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower/leaker Edward Snowden has given encoded files containing an archive of secret NSA files to several people, Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald told Eli Lake of The Daily Beast.

Snowden “has taken extreme precautions to make sure many different people around the world have these archives "to [ensure] the stories will inevitably be published,” Greenwald told The Beast (emphasis added).

He added that the recipients “cannot access them yet because they are highly encrypted and they do not have the passwords. [But] if anything happens at all to Edward Snowden, he told me he has arranged for them to get access to the full archives.”