Hugh Forrest, director of the South by Southwest Interactive Festival, announced on the festival's website Dec. 12 that journalist Glenn Greenwald will speak at the conference March 10.

According to a blog post on the festival's site, Greenwald's session will be one of many events focused on privacy at this year's incarnation of SXSW.

"Certainly a big area of focus for 2014, in light of what we know this past summer is privacy, surveillance, NSA and PRISM," Forrest said. "We have a lot of programming focused on that."

Greenwald has worked as a columnist for The Guardian US and Salon. In June Greenwald broke the story of classified leaks from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Personal Democracy Co-Founder Micah Sifry will interview Greenwald at the event. Personal Democracy, which is a co-sponsor of the event, is a forum dedicated to discussing the effect new technology has on democracy. According to the blog post, Greenwald will be speaking on the developing NSA story as well as his current journalism projects. The end of the session will be left open for questions from the audience.

"I think the Snowden stuff from last summer was a reminder to those of us—myself included—who were very idealistic about this technology and all the power of social networks that there is a very dark side to this stuff as well, which continues to need to be investigated and looked at and thought about and viewed," Forrest said. "That'll be a big topic of conversation."

The 21st annual SXSW Interactive Festival will take place March 7–11 in Austin. Keynote speakers at the event include Austin Kleon, author of the best-seller "Steal Like an Artist"; Anne Wojcicki, CEO and co-founder of 23andMe; and Adam Savage, executive producer and co-host of the Discovery Channel series "Mythbusters."