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UK Government Destroys Guardian's Snowden Drives
An anonymous reader writes with revelations that the UK government has been pressuring the Guardian over its publication of the Snowden leaks for a while, and that it ultimately ended with GHCQ officials smashing drives of data to pieces. From the article: "The mood toughened just over a month ago, when I received a phone call from the centre of government telling me: 'You've had your fun. Now we want the stuff back.' ... one of the more bizarre moments in the Guardian's long history occurred — with two GCHQ security experts overseeing the destruction of hard drives in the Guardian's basement just to make sure there was nothing in the mangled bits of metal which could possibly be of any interest to passing Chinese agents. 'We can call off the black helicopters,' joked one as we swept up the remains of a MacBook Pro."
The paper had repeatedly pointed out how pointless destroying the data was: copies exist, and all reporting on the Snowden leaks is already being edited and published from locations other than the UK.
With the drives destroyed, and the leaks plugged, we can all get back to our normal lives under the new heightened levels of paranoia.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
And we've been wondering what that 350 GB "insurance file" from WikiLeaks was...
The point was crystal clear: the friend of my enemy will get no end of crap thrown at them. The Grauniad can expect more such visits in the future, as well as any other news organization who dares publish That Which Must Not Be Published.
John
The U.K. thinks it can join the fascism club just because it smashes a computer or two?
The U.S. arrested a filmmaker a year ago just for making a movie. Are those reporters in jail? Don't think so. You're going to have the step up the game U.K. to join the big boys.
Bonus points for all the cameras though.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You can't stop the signal, Mal.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
They pretty much ensured that data dumping will ensue, on levels never before seen. It's going to be pretty damned interesting considering that Greenwald is a hell of a leftist, and is railing like never before.
Om, nomnomnom...
The UK is such a fucking authoritarian dictatorship.
The only difference is you get to vote which dictator you want to fuck up the country even further.
Fuck the UK!
It really is amazing that we (ANZUS+UK+Canada) can lecture the rest of the world about the virtues and freedoms of democracy, chastise China for censoring the Internet and making up economic figures and pass laws like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (mandating whistle-blowing for corporations); while we are so openly censoring our "free" press.
I do expect a certain level of hypocrisy and self-serving behavior from our governments, but am I alone in noticing this has really stepped up a notch recently?
The funny thing is how "safe" Brazil is compared to the first world.
Government agents smashing your data, and backups, to bits is now something that happens. I suspect many multinational corporations ate going to be rethinking their hosting strategies. Having the government spy on your business data is one thing. Having them come in with sledgehammers and destroy it is something else entirely.
If you run a news agency just pxe boot from various remote sites that way $government/corp thugs get their touchy smashy feel good, and you keep your data......... its win win........ or something
Isn't it safe to assume that the data would already have distributed to n number of people via torrents? If so, this action is totatlly pointless and shows their desparation.
Before the spooks find your offsite backups, put it all on the world's best data backup and redundancy system: bittorrent.
There's every chance they had good reason to act as they did but from the outside, to me, it seems like this was a wasted opportunity. Had they forced the government to bring them to trial it would have brought shone more light on both the NSA story and the problem of the erosion of freedom of the press.
Had The Guardian won, they would have the added benefit of setting some precedent for their countrymen.
Had they lost, we would at least know where we stand in terms of press freedom; better, in my mind, than the present situation, in which the rules don't seem to be fixed and government power is arbitrarily applied.
Saying the data is copied somewhere else seems like an avoidance of the principle of the matter.
I wonder if the Guardian et al. are in danger of running afoul of the Official Secrets Act?
This would be cause for concern: "The Official Secrets Act 1989 (c. 6) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that repeals and replaces section 2 of the Official Secrets Act 1911, thereby removing the public interest defence created by that section."
That law has some teeth of it, if it applies.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Next time they roll around asking for there take to keep the neighborhood safe you should pay up bro
They know there are offsite backups. This was intimidation, pure and simple.
The media gets dozens, hundreds, of documents. They slowly release them one or two at a time. Why? Not to make them easier for the public to digest. Not because they need to spend time reviewing them, writing articles, or gather sources. Not even because they enjoy being the gatekeepers of desired information.
No. This is almost entirely about making money and a major ego trip. The writers enjoy getting off on being the center of a public spectacle. You put a few articles out a week and you get more viewers. You keep stringing everyone along and keep those numbers up for more advertising revenue and to try to attract more subscribers. You keep your own name in the papers and get a higher profile for a book release. That's what this game is all about. Snowden leaked his information to people who are using it as leverage to manufacture news.
The reporters that Snowden contacted could easily release everything tomorrow. Total transparency. It would eliminate them being part of the story. But they get off on the attention. Glenn Greenwald wants to BE THE STORY. We've seen this repeatedly with Assange who comments on himself as often as he comments on the news. They don't want to report on some of the most relevant news and whistleblowing in the last decade. This is a chance for Greedwald to make a lot of money, a low of news appearances, some Real Time with Bill Maher, and maybe even a Howard Stern Show appearance. If he releases all of the documents then he's no longer important. His ego can't take that.
I know at Slashdot that people are upset when the news media focuses on Snowden and Greenwald not the major revelations that Snowden has given us regarding the U.S. government's total war on privacy. But this is not new territory for Greenwald. He loves being the center of attention. Look at his news appearances regarding this case. He talks about himself and his involvement far too much in my opinion.
I think that the U.S. citizenry has a right to know about the government's war on privacy. Show us everything. Be transparent the way Obama said he would be when he campaigned. Let us judge. Stop being the gatekeepers of information that you don't have a right to hide from us like the government did. Enough of the games. I can't take anyone in the media seriously anymore. If Greenwald and Snowden want less attention then give the world the information to help people combat the government's overreach.
Story about the arrest.
Note they claim his video ignited muslim protests, when in fact it was a coordinated attack on embassies including Benghazi...
His video had nothing to do with it, but he made a great scapegoat for the embarrassed state department. Now that we know it was terrorists and not a protest, he's out of prison. How odd.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Was that rather pointless and incompetent theater supposed to impress someone? I doubt the Guardian has been cowed by destruction of at most a few thousand dollars of equipment. And it shows that the UK is in bed with the US with this sort of spying.
It is sad to see the UK ... once with its own Empire ... being reduced to a mere minion of the United States of America, but this is what it has come to. With the pinning of Assange in an embassy, holding a journalist with a mere association with Snowden under terrorism legislation, and now bullying news papers to destroy computer equipment -- however futile this might be -- can it be any clearer that once proud and independant Great Britian is now just another bitch of the American government? I don't think so...
I love the Greenwald quote in the NYT a few days ago: "You feel you are empowered for the first time because there’s this mammoth system that you try and undermine and subvert and shine a light on..." (emphasis added)
Poor choice of words for a mere reporter, wouldn't you say? If I was in government security, I'd be after him even without Snowden.
Mordac the preventer
http://michaelsmith.id.au
They destroyed data there was copies to, so the only point they could be making must have been that they believe that Apple Macbook Pros are terrorists!
...joked one as we swept up the remains of a MacBook Pro.
Anyone else think of the scene in Zoolander? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ze3hthGRbRo
Did they really destroy a functional computer to destroy the drive? Could they not have removed the hard drive and destroyed just those parts that have any persistent data retention? Even including the optical drive would have been overkill-- eject the disk. What was the purpose of destroying perfectly good hardware? Just to be sure? Why not steam roller the remains and then incinerate them in an induction furnace? Where they worried about a secret compartment? Notes scribbled on the inside? What a bunch of clowns.
All this behavior on the part of GCHQ is evidence of nothing so
much as a state of panic on the part of stupid people who
want to retain power they no longer deserve because they
have ABUSED that power.
The British "empire" is now nothing more than a couple of
islands with shitty weather, inhabited by people who have bad
teeth and no guns. Pathetic is the word that comes to mind when
one witnesses such has-been empires grasping at the shreds of
the power they once had.
Thanks for the laughs, you GCHQ fuckwit bootlickers.
Despite the need for the people in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the USA to rebell and overthrow their governments, it's well and truly time that the USA back the fuck off and leave the rest of the world alone.
So, basically, guys who are apparently stupid enough to think this actually accomplished anything are the ones we're supposed to give the benefit of the doubt to when they say they're adequately protecting our data when they vacuum everything up?
No wonder they say they need to gather up every available piece of data they can - they're not bright enough to walk and chew gum at the same time.
#DeleteChrome
Good old fashioned book burning internet style. Less flame but just as fun.
Utterly stupid. It's trivial to hide a microSD card, all you need is AES encryption and Saran Wrap. Just stash it under a rock, or up a tree, or in a hotel room. You've got 57 million square miles to choose from.
In the NYT article about Poitras and Greenwald's initial contact with Snowden there is mention of the use of, "air gapped" computers. At first it struck me as odd, but knowing that everything transmitted over the internet is tracked and that MAC addresses can reasonably be used to identify specific hardware, it no longer qualifies as paranoid to suspect that nearly any computer that's ever passed an IP packet could be singled out by some claiming to have been sent by the government just to help you.
The Guardian article indicates that the lack of a constitution renders this type of situation something from which UK subjects have little protection, implying that you're safer in the US. Apparently after Guantanamo, extraordinary rendition, the new & improved FISA courts and the I Have a Drone program, anyone who believes they are protected by a 225 year-old historical work might be forced to seek medical advice for their own personal intracranial air gap.
It is done by morons! They can do untold damage without even intending to, as they apparently have zero clue about IT security.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
"Thank goodness for AppleCare+" in Russian?
~Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, but Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.
Don't bother, SuperKendall is a Benghazi truther.
Truther is a term used for some idiot who believes 9/11 was the result of aliens, bad diarrhea or a massive government conspiracy by a government so stupid it sent machine huns to mexican drug lords just to see what would happen.
With Benghazi, it was obvious it was a terrorist attack from the start but the government blamed a video for scores of deaths and embassy attacks. Every reporter on earth along with the public now knows it was a terrorist attack, and that the state department knew it was at the time. Most people now know also they let people die there because they didn't want any hiccups in the undergoing operation to ship 400 Libyan missiles to Syria... but that's a story for another day.
It says much that your weak attempt at spin comes not from anyone real, but a nameless AC who tries to pretend something that everyone knew long ago was discredited... and as I said the guy is out of jail so it's pretty obvious he was just in jail when it was handy. Which he says himself...
Post away AC. But your attempt to deflect real truth with a weak protest that the most obvious thing is not true, holds little weight among people who can think and/or read.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
strikes again...
"We have top men working on it now." ... men."
"Who?"
"Top
As ambitious as it seems, this level of correction has happened several times in US history. I believe that these goals can be achieved if 3 conditions are met:
So far, Poitras and Greenwald have played Obama and the US Intelligence like a hooked trout. They have skillfully countered every attempt to divert or end the discussion. It looks like they have a chance of advancing reform of the US Executive branch. They may also help bring reform to England.
But now, I think we are seeing the beginning of more strategic responses from the US Intelligence community. I suspect that they are now trying to end the discussion by re branding Poitras and Greenwald as traitorous threats. This approach worked so well with Manning and Assange. Not only did they succeed in discrediting the messenger, they also turned the messenger into an external threat. Now, they can use 'Traitors' to justify Executive excess.
I suspect that the goals of US Intelligence are now:
If they can't shutdown or re-brand Poitras and Greenwald, then I expect the next step will be to create an immediate, external threat that requires an unbridled Executive.
I am praying for Poitras and Greenwald. We need their help. And their enemies are capable of doing terrible things.
A popular thing here on /. which the original poster did is to turn any story either about China doing something bad, or the US doing something bad in to a "Oh look at how bad the US is, they can't say anything to China!" or "OMG the US is worth than China/Russia, they are more free!" Or equally stupid shit like that.
In no way is China relevant to this. What's more, the idea that only if a nation is perfect that it could level any criticism at another is completely ludicrous.
It is just spin, just crap to try and hate on the US and allies for no particular reason. So the GP had a good point: China does some pretty bad shit, things that even the imperfect countries that are the UK and US might have an issue with.
If people want discussions of the problems with western governments to stay on topic, something I think is a good idea, then the first step is to stop dragging in China et al at every opportunity. What the US, UK, etc do is good or bad, right or wrong, regardless of what they say to China, regardless of how they compare to China, etc.
If you want to start playing the "compare and contrast" game, well then don't be surprised when others come back in kind.
Machine huns? Damn, the original Huns were bad enough when they were just mounted on horseback, now they're mechanized? :-)
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
I would shit in said scarf and gag David Cameron with it.
Let's go ahead and look at some of the "truth" you posted in response to another AC:
Note they claim his video ignited muslim protests, when in fact it was a coordinated attack on embassies including Benghazi...
Except there were widespread protests and riots across the middle east in general, with the worst of it being in Egypt, not Libya. The initial statements from the US government mistakenly identified these protests/riots as the cause of the Benghazi consulate attack -- but within 48 hours of the attack they had updated information and had informed the American public that it was, in fact, an organized and planned terrorist attack.
His video had nothing to do with it, but he made a great scapegoat for the embarrassed state department. Now that we know it was terrorists and not a protest, he's out of prison. How odd.
You're right; he had nothing to do with the attack itself. But let's look at the rest of your version of events. First: He was arrested on probation violations on September 27th, 2012, weeks after the Obama administration had already announced that the Benghazi consulate attack was orchestrated by terrorists. The idea that the initial arrest was part of a cover-up is, thus, a load of bullshit. Second: He was released earlier this month, after serving almost the full length of his 1 year sentence (and almost 1 year after the Obama administration's announcement that Benghazi was a terrorist attack). Thus, the idea that his release is because everyone knows it was a terrorist attack now is absurd -- everyone knew it was a terrorist attack the day he was arrested. The explanation for why he is out of prison somewhat early is the same reason countless prisoners are released early -- good behavior and release to a halfway house.
Now let's go ahead and take a look at the post to which I am replying.
With Benghazi, it was obvious it was a terrorist attack from the start but the government blamed a video for scores of deaths and embassy attacks.
(a) On what basis was it obvious that it was a terrorist attack? Are you asserting that all of the protests and riots across the entirety of the middle east and northern Africa were orchestrated as some massive terrorist plot to cover for a single consulate attack? And if so, do you have any actual evidence of this? And if you do have evidence, was this evidence widely available (which would be necessary for it to be "obvious" that it was a terrorist attack) "from the start"? Alternately, if you are not asserting that the widespread protests/riots were orchestrated as part of any plot, on what basis can you possibly assert that a single consulate attack on a day in which dozens of people were killed in protests/riots was not simply an extension of said protests/riots?
(b) Scores of deaths -- again, do you mean to imply that you believe the entirety of the protests/riots were orchestrated by terrorists? There were only 4 deaths in the consulate attack.
(c) Embassy attacks (plural) -- What embassies? There was a single consulate attacked, and no embassies. You can't even get very basic facts straight, yet we are supposed to believe your grand conspiracy theory is the real story here.
Most people now know also they let people die there because they didn't want any hiccups in the undergoing operation to ship 400 Libyan missiles to Syria... but that's a story for another day.
Perhaps if you seek psychiatric help that day will not come.
Please stop posting.
... thus solving the problem once and for all!
But
ONCE AND FOR ALL!
I guess the Anglo/Rican alliance is felt feeling so powerless that they just had to smash up a MacBook Pro to show that they are powerful
It's not unlike a lame thief who just had to rob candies from a little baby in order to feel great
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
No need to release new leaks when they keep pulling stunts like this! What better news story could there be than new examples of neo-Orwellian boot stamping, modern-day book burnings.
Nice to know my grandparents and greatgrandparents bled in WWII so fascists like you could still be in power. Oh wait...
This article is outrage porn. If this community is still capable of rational, mature thought there will be people commenting on what I've said here explaining in further detail what is wrong with this being on slashdot. If that does not happen you will have hard evidence that this community is dead, and you should move on.
The "widespread protests" were for the anniversary of 9/11. I seem to recall that there were a number of violent protests and a few hundred dead. But we have always been at war with East Asia, so the record of this has been disappeared.
Scores of deaths? There were the four dead Americans, and a few dozen dead terrorists in the courtyard. SEALS don't go down easily, and these two took an honor guard to Valhalla with them. It wasn't QUITE the "Grave of the Hundred Head", but close.
Truther is a term used for some idiot who believes 9/11 was the result of aliens, bad diarrhea or a massive government conspiracy by a government so stupid it sent machine huns to mexican drug lords just to see what would happen.
And what do you call one stupid enough to believe an ordinary office fire could cause a building to collapse in a way that only a handful of highly specialized demolition companies in the whole world could accomplish? "Naïve" is the kindest word that comes to mind. WTC 7 collapse
"There's someone in my head but it's not me." - Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon
Seriously 10 more years of this shit and we'll be back 1980's Soviet erra style control unless people get the fuck off their ass and so something unless you're a fucking retard like this http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/19/us/cable-outage-911-calls
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Sending machine guns to drug lords may well have had the desired outcome, to justify increased spend on crime prevention, arming the polce better, etc.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
You are correct, of course, about the death count at the consulate attack -- I was ignoring the deaths of attackers as one generally does not count those in the casualty count of an attack.
There is no better way to motivate a journalist than to tell them that they aren't allowed to to report on something. I mean, seriously,
Not everyone can be motivated
Not all journalists cares about the truth
For some journalists, yes, it would be a tremendous motivation to find out just how far the big brother has invaded our liberty and how bad our society is suffering from it
But to others, the term "journalist" is but a ticket to fine dinings in posh surroundings, with important people
When we compare journalistic articles of, say, 1960's - 1970's, to what we have now, you would understand that true journalism is, - if not completely dead already, - struggling to stay alive in the ICU
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
At this point I expect nothing short of the British people taking to the streets and demonstrating for their freedom of expression. The Guardian could call for it.
Sounds like a good analysis. As retarded as the government usually acts, I have to believe that at least the intelligence communities have some brains; you can't build sophisticated systems like PRISM and XKeyscore with mere corruption and fascism alone.
So, since they know destroying one individual copy of the data is pointless when everyone knows it's been backed up all over the place, the only rational reason I can see for their actions is to attempt to get one or more people holding onto other copies decide to dump everything at once, and soon, for fear of being the next target. The spooks can't really go into full damage control mode until the leaked material is completely published.
the war on free press.
Privacy is terrorism.
Ok, so David was detained and his goods seized under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000 which states :-
In the first place, they had no right to detain the personal property. I wish the officers joy in explaining why he thought these items were "evidence in criminal proceedings" or were relevant to a "deportation order".
In the second place, nothing I can see therein allows them to destroy detained property, which is a very extreme response under any cricumstances. It also contradicts the intent of the section, which was to allow collection of property to be used as evidence.
Pretty ironic since the preamble states that the Act was "An Act to make provision about terrorism; and to make temporary provision for Northern Ireland about the prosecution and punishment of certain offences, the preservation of peace and the maintenance of order.". The only terrorism here I see is committed by the government.
Ordinary? It takes about ten tanker loads of fuel to fill up those planes. It's closer to a refinery fire than an office building fire with that much stuff. Add vast amounts of paper plus wood panelling and the aluminium goes up too. All that heat and the steel frame is soft like a heated up horseshoe - following me so far? Now a skyscraper is made with a steel frame that is strong due to heat treatment, make the steel soft and it isn't strong enough to hold itself up. When it isn't strong enough you get one floor falling into the one below, then into the one under that, so the entire thing collapsing into itself and a lot of stuff inside ground into dust. That dust then burns. Aluminium dust plus iron dust plus wood dust burns so well that it used to be used to weld rails together. The end result is a fire that is not ordinary at all and far more destruction than what a handful of highly specialized demolition companies in the whole world could accomplish.
Does it make sense now?
Since when are "ordinary" office fires started by means of the high-velocity impact of many tonnes of jet fuel in a restricted space?
CAPTCHA: prowess
Australia and the UK have never really had free speech provisions.
And as if to underline the point, the UK also gave us English defamation law, with this very attractive trait :-
So you can sue someone for defamation and make them bankrupt if they fail to prove what they said was true. Pretty nifty when you need to sue say, a newspaper exposing your scandals -just sit back and bleed them with legal fees while they scramble for evidence (which you've already buried, of course).
the Daily Mail is leading with some b0ll0x about some royal baby's first portrait photo... all across the front page... the Miranda detained in Heathrow news item is there, but buried under all sorts of rubbish about what various z-lister's had for their breakfast etc.
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
I think that generally things have pretty much been as they always have been, wild and chaotic. Accidents happen, disasters occur, people die etc.
What is different is this climate of fear over terrorism permeating our society, in no small part fanned by those in power. Understandably so -people ruled by fear are much easier to herd in the direction the powers that be want them to move. Since the terrorism scare began, overly broad and severely restrictive laws have been passed (Terrorism Act/Patriots Act), personal liberties infringed and sacrified in the name of safety (TSA is a good example), huge chunks of national budgets have been appropriated for defence all of which the government could not have done if the public had not been coerced into it by fear of terrorism.
One example of how this climate of fear has changed our world is (with utmost respect to the deceased) the death of Lee Rigby. Prior to 911 I doubt this story would be deemed remarkable -a story about a lone soldier stabbed by 2 (crazed?) men. What gives the story prominence now is the motive for the killing, i.e. revenge for Muslims. And we have people like the Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair fanning the flames by calling the attack part of the broader "problem within Islam."
Uh, I don't think that LEXIS-NEXIS has anything to do with the government. It is essentially a search engine of court filings and rulings. It is private, anybody (even you) can buy access and it has been around for decades.
Based on this, I think the rest of your post is worthless.
Laura Poitras for several years has been subject to extraordinary harassment, intimidation and searches when travelling. http://www.salon.com/2012/04/08/u_s_filmmaker_repeatedly_detained_at_border/
These goons destroyed private property, and the Guardian is entitled to compensation. The big win in litigating this would be making the goons squirm in depositions. "Officer Asshat, what did you seek to accomplish by destroying the equipment in question? Are you stupid enough to believe that you were destroying the only copy of the embarrassing material, or were you just making an infantile display of pique?"
The Guardian could get months of material out of that..
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Huns like Honey, not like Attila. Machine huns = sexbots.
Instead they destroyed their stuff.
They have problems other than their remit to spy: they're clearly morons.
"I want my car back, stick it in this crusher, so you can't take it again!".
I hope they at least paid for the hard drives which wasn't theirs and took away the data on it that was theirs rather than leave it for someone else to clean up after their mess. Or at least Graun charged them for cleanup. CEO pay for three hours (leave it to someone lower down and they may decide to steal the data again and sell it to the chinese!).
The building was designed to manage that without catastrophe.
Simplest explanation: corners were cut to increase the profits to the contracting company who is connected to Rummy and Shrub. The chances of a plane crashing in is damn near zero, so no deaths were INTENDED. But since this was a "terrorist attack", not accidental CFIT, anything showing that a US Company were responsible for the death count would not only gut the security theatre attempts to externalise the anger, but more importantly, put people like Rummy, Shrub and their best pals in the dock AND show up capitalism as a danger to American safety.
Malicious incompetence, lets call it.
This is something required by the police for all hard drives seized with suspected illegal material on it.
The stereotypical example is if they seize a PC with suspected child porn on it, can't find any on the drive, they return it, only for them to have missed the material, the police could be accused of then distributing child porn and get sued or even prosecuted.
Likewise with classified information, they are not allowed to 'distribute' classified info so are required to destroy the hard drives. It's not the government being naive and thinking they can stem the data, it's the government pretty much being forced to by various laws (and a litigious society).
because the government writes the laws that protect them and appoint the judges. So we know where we stand already.
Duffy is still a senator and still being paid. The PMO's mouthpiece quit and was not fired as punishment.
Distract, deceive, distort.
Ever the Conservative mantra in Canada.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Queen Elizabeth II declares war on the United States targeting the NSA for breaching EU law and bribing GCHQ. Now that would be a turn of events :P taking the old fashioned approach of data suppression to the extreme.
Excellent analysis: Next stop False Flag Attack. America and the world need to beware. These guys would waste a US or a European city in a nuclear detonation or do something stupid like that just to cover their tracks. If you had any doubt that the real terrorists were the states involved this is about next up on their playbook! Watch for it and be ready. These guys are running out of options short of outright mass murder!
Is it not obvious? The lesson is that might makes right -- the same tired old lesson that coercive authority has been teaching us for thousands of years.
So, which plane hit the WTC 7 again? I know planes hit WTC 1 and WTC 2, but none ever hit building seven.
"There's someone in my head but it's not me." - Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon
You might have a point if a plane actually hit WTC 7. None ever did. The claim is that falling debris from the twin towers (WTC 1 and 2) damaged building seven, started a fire and caused it to collapse into its own footprint. Yeah, right...
"There's someone in my head but it's not me." - Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon
Same answer applies as to the posters above. No plane ever hit WTC 7 and no-one has ever claimed so. For some curious reason, the collapse of WTC 7 was not mentioned in the 9/11 commissions report at all. Wonder why that might be?
"There's someone in my head but it's not me." - Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon
And yet, there is still a US-backed and assisted Conservative government literally raping the land for tar. I guess if they do it in a 'non-corrupt' manner, it is eh-okay with Canadians.
There seems to be a misconception here. Congress broadly authorized the programs, and the intelligence committees get regular updates. The programs operate under FISC orders, which provides some form of judicial oversight. Either body could shut the programs down. The House did not have the votes to defund a couple weeks ago, extremely unlikely it would have passed the Senate anyway.
So given that these bodies have not shut the programs down, the only logical conclusion to me is that all three branches are OK with it. Yeah, some individual legislators are making hay, and there was one denial from FISC, but as a whole the bodies haven't really used their power to curtail the activities.
This doesn't magically make the programs legal, good, or right.
It might be of interest to note that Fox News' website has a prominent article regarding the drive destruction on their home page, while CNN has absolutely no mention of it at all on their home page that I could find. Hmmmm. Nothing on MSNBC either. CNN and MSBNBC both have deemed it newsworthy to have articles on Prince George's new royal portrait though. I guess that's what's important.
Remember that next time you feel the need to complain about Fox News.
If we keep oppressing the UK this way they might dump all the tea into the Boston harbor or something.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Has nobody ever heard of multi-pass zeroing out? In like 10 years tops we'll have the technology to read the 0's and 1's off magnetic hard drive platter shards and there's a rumor that the technology exists right now. Run DBAN or Killdisk and you're never, ever, ever getting that data back ever. Although, it is rather amusing that they destroyed a macbook pro.
And you are guilty of committing an act of journalism. This is where things are heading.
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I'll give you one guess what fires do when something next to them can burn. One guess should be good enough for anyone at your reading level. Ironically it was a fire hot enough to burn "tinfoil".
He's the one who sold you information that he had no legal claim to. You knew the risks when you bought obviously classified data with the intent to violate that classification. This is how data leaks are handled -- if I were to accidentally plug a portable hard drive into a SIPR machine, even if no data transfer took place, that hard drive is considered classified, and must be handled as such, up to and including physical destruction. It's not gestapo... it's bureaucracy.
Well, that makes it all right then. As long as your name's not one-letter-off from a renegade HVAC terrorist, you should be perfectly fine.
So, which plane hit the WTC 7 again? I know planes hit WTC 1 and WTC 2, but none ever hit building seven.
im sure the answer is in one of the sealed torrents floating around. lets wait for some keys ?
Nice ad hominem you've got there. I guess you ran out of talking points.
"There's someone in my head but it's not me." - Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon
How recently did GCHQ attempt to destroy one of the Guardian's copies? It's not really clear whether this happened before or after Miranda was detained.
Haven't you heard of the Mechanical Turk?
Really bizarre events in London. And the word play of the "Officers" suggests a much less than high school education.
And the association of 'Miranda Rights' with Mr. David Miranda who again at the hands of London Police had no rights whatsoever.
Furthermore, why would London Police give the President of the U.S. a "heads up call"; did they or did they not give the Exchequer a buddy call too? And what did Mr. Cameron say in reply? From where or whom did the London Police get the U.S. President's private phone number?
Bloody odd for sure.
But I bet its got The Guardian flying out the news stands all over Old Town.
[Jedi hand wave] There was no building 7! This is not the building you are looking for. [End Jedi mind trick]
Seriously though, I find it amazing how many people don't even remember that there was another building that fell that day. And that there is no probably reason for it to fall.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
Your grandparents and great-grandparents would be mortified at your complete ignorance of the meaning of the word "fascist."
I found this comment on another article and I want to recreate it here, if I may,
"You are much more free than before. Because you know more.
What you see is a forward movement.
Did you expect the power to just surrender to a future where they don't matter anymore?
As you know more and more. As you recover what is rightly yours. As you take over the control of your own country. They will fight back. And they will bite and tear down your houses searching for traitors. And they will destroy you, and put you in jails, and kill many of you.
But you will prevail.
Because freedom only moves one way.
You're scared because you're the first ones. There's only darkness ahead. But you shouldn't be, because behind that darkness is the future that will look back and cheer at you as the freedom fighters of this century."
To keep information about how much of a lap dog the GCHQ is to the USA out of public view.
Have gnu, will travel.
Absolutely. It seems all the posts blasting the 'President' for this stuff people intending to blast the President himself rather than the process. Yes, The US Congress (legislative branches) have authorized all of these programs, repeatedly. And people will continue to vote for them, and even I will; because the alternatives are FAR worse.
I am willing to exchange a little bit of my personal privacy for the rights for gays to marry. That's just how it goes. It's a trade off I accept.
You forgot to add the third crucial element, the Guardian. It's the only publication covering this story consistently, in the UK there is a 'gnote' issued by the government that has silenced most publications and blogs; an eerie silence for a so called democratic country and free press. In the US mainstream media is severely compromised.
So in the end its only due to the Guardian that this story is persistently in our face. Some of these revelations are so far out its forcing reluctant media who would simply this story goes away, to print it as a matter of record.
Think about one thing... Secret services people don't like hard drives, Google has put a laptop for sale with less then 50GB, and google works with the NSA...
So the plan for world domination is to decrease computer disk space.
The World Trade Center was built a while ago. Would they have cut corners in anticipation of an event nearly 30 years later?
Indian: Boy, that was awful, Snowden releasing all that data. ... wait a second ... let me check what was on Snowden's drive BEFORE he copied that data onto it ...
Chief: Good thing he didn't release x,y,z as well
Indian: Hum
Chief: OMG
Indian: Y'know, with the proper tools, anyone with that actual drive could get at that
Chief: OMG! OMG!
Indian: I'm on it, boss
You're right... that whole area was super stable after the first two came down. How could we have been so stupid!?
True! So unstable that there was half a dozen buildings that fell. Oh. . .wait, what?
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
What is the name of the guy in charge of this operation, Ned Ludd?
So it's all or nothing, eh? Perfect logic!
all reporting on the Snowden leaks is already being edited and published from locations other than the UK
The UK government wants to stay in the US's good books.
The leaks are being reported on, but not in the UK's jurisdiction.
Then why the cover up. No report on why it fell. No talk about that building at all. Most people don't even remember it happened. I don't know the truth. All I know is the official story does't hold water.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
Having the data locally and bragging about it is quite different than some anonymous blob floating around on teh interwebz. It's practically a challenge to the authorities to come and get it -- well, they got it :-)
"The paper had repeatedly pointed out how pointless destroying the data was: copies exist, and all reporting on the Snowden leaks is already being edited and published from locations other than the UK."
That may be, but I fathom that the UK's policy is: it may leak, but it won't leak from the UK.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Why assume that there is a cover up in the first place? You don't have any evidence to support that claim -- full stop. From the sound of it it's because no one but you, and a handful of others, actually give a shit about it. That's why. Not to mention that that's not the building where people actually died that day. For the record, I remember it collapsing.
And to be able to claim that Mexican drug-lords are obtaining weapons from US dealers and enact stricter controls.
Because it is kinda stupid to believe things that are told to you by someone that has been lying to you over and over again. The reasons we go fight wars are lies, the oversight of the spying agencies are lies. Our government is being run by criminals that are breaking the law and telling us it's ok and we can't do anything about it. Every way that the US has entered was started by a false flag operation, where they deliberately got americans killed so we would have justification to enter the war. Boats of passengers sent into German waters, letting japanese planes have free attack on Pearl Harbor. Why would the war on terrorism be any different. They knew what was up that day and figured it would be good to give them the authority to attack wherever they wanted and pass the laws they wanted. So when a building that took almost no damage suddenly falls down and they don't even make up a story to explain it, you just accept it as the will of your masters. Well I don't. When the pentagon gets hit with a plane, but there are no marks where the wings and tail should be, you just accept it as the masters tell you to, well I don't. Keep believing the lies if you want to, I'm sure it makes your world seem a much nicer place to be.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
You're a very naive person to believe that admitted liars and frauds (Snowden admitted in a June interview that the took the job at BA only to collect and disseminate classified data; Manning broke sworn oaths to protect the State secrets he released) when they say that they haven't been "irresponsible" with the information they stole -- though, I find it laughable that we're even using that word, given that one handed over his entire stack of documents to a known criminal, while the other sought refuge for himself and his treasure amongst the most prolific frenemies the US has. Irresponsible doesn't even begin to describe their actions to date.
It ain't rocket surgery.
But this is: http://www.prosalesconnection.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/RocketSurgery2.jpg
You're conflating two distinct issues. Not assuming that there is a conspiracy does not immediatly suggest I take your government's word for the event. I've never said I accepted anything from your masters. Note I used the word "your" twice now, hint hint. Frankly you have no concept of my convictions, as we've never properly discussed them. My point was one and only, do not look for evidence to fit your theory. Look to construct a theory from your evidence (sorely lacking for the conspiracy angle). That is all.
Since you are not the originator of the tinfoil hat conspiracy you are spreading it is not a personal attack but instead a call for you to think for yourself given the situation instead of lazily falling for the loud rants of manipulative bastards. Learning about the world is the best defence against conspiracy theories from people that want to drag you into their slimy politics, such in this case people that want to undo the work of the US Revolution. Think of who is funding such hatred against governments. Rule by the rich alone is still feudalism before they pass control down to their children, and you should have managed to pick up enough history to learn that such a society is a bad thing for nearly everyone.
Aircraft tend to change shape rapidly when hitting concrete walls at speeds of several hundred knots.
The alternative of making a plane full of civilian passengers disappear while setting up a hoax explosion and hoax aircraft parts next to the pentagon, plus coaching fake witnesses, ripping the tops of light poles and falsifying aircraft traffic control data would require a huge operation running with clockwork precision for no gain at all since there was already enough justification for nearly any action after the planes hit in New York. It's not only implausable it's pointless. Nobody wins anything with such a hoax.
It was real. Yes, reality sucks some times, but living with it is better than any of the alternatives.
Those damn 'traitor' journalists they are destroying the damn country I tells yu!
You should take your own advice, to think for yourself and learn about the world. I have done just that, and I concider myself most reasonable. If I may suggest, start with watching one talk from this video, the one that starts on 2:08:17. It is not long, very coherent and well worth watching if one claims to be open to evidence. When you have done that, get back to me, and we can talk. Calling others "tinfoil hatters" is not likely to win any discussions. Presenting well reasoned evidence and alternative explanations is.
"There's someone in my head but it's not me." - Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon
I don't have a theory. All I know is the official story is straight BS. When they get caught lying over and over and have proven that they have no respect for the truth or the public people then there is no reason to give them the benefit of the doubt. And when their story is full of holes and makes no sense it reinforces the view that they are lying about it. Steel softening makes sense, pancaking at the speed of freefall does not. Having most of the plane melted to nothing, but finding one of the terrorists drivers licences sitting on the ground in the rubble just a short while after the attack also makes no sense. Don't terrorists keep those in their wallets in their pants? Ignoring an entire building in the official story is just poor work. They couldn't even come up with a good lie so they just dropped it. Obviously when the people don't question them on this, then it really doesn't matter if they could come up with a good lie or not, so why bother.
I also love how conspiracy has become a bad word meaning nut-case imaginings. A google search on the definition comes up with this. A secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful. I would say the NSA spying is a conspiracy. Just because most people aren't in on it, doesn't mean there are a few people planning things in the government that are illegal and wrong.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
You didn't watch the hearings.
What you describe can largely be attributed to incompetence. It isn't the word that bugs me here. Yes there are lies and more lies on top of lies, but what you see as a coordinated assault on The People, I view as a shitshow perpetuated by extreemly disconnected self centered interests. They are too incompetent to work together, and amusingly, all of this technology they employ to conpensate ends up sheding light on these cockroaches. All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again.
And what do you think was in those encrypted files WikiLeaks posted this week? Betcha is was the contents of those disks. Betcha, betcha, betcha!
Whilst I'm no big fan of our libel law here, that's not the whole picture. Journalists would have the defence of responsible journalism, which they can argue in their defence independently of a separate defence of truth or justification (what you're talking about).
Also, any other governments who get the urge to destroy a Macbook Pro...
Speaking as a person who loves his country and likes his held together by duct tape Macbook, I would be very happy to come to you and remove the hard drive from the next Macbook Pro you are about to smash to bits, if I can have the puter afterwards.
The propeller heads at slashdot will still make fun of you for myriad reasons, but this will take one really easy to avoid one away from them, and also allow me to improve my own computing power significantly. See? Win-win.
Your friend,
Michael
P.S. This story is really one where the use of the word "retarded" seems justified. Just observing, not using it on anyone specific.
If you can't put it into words why should I respond with anything other than ridicule? Instead of "well reasoned evidence" you've got a link to some supposed video which could be anything, so I'm not going to look at it since I'm not in a private environment.
Using words isn't hard, let me demonstrate:
Fires break stuff. Things fall over. Go bang!
... is just how funny of ad can Toughbook advertisers put together based on this event?
It is not the UK government. The current body of traitors who you refer to are Israeli agents who works for Israel. This is a fact you can verify even on wikipedia. Look up William Hague on wikipedia, you will see that he works for Israel and always has done so.