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.

Comments

Liveleak

[Daas]

And we've been wondering what that 350 GB "insurance file" from WikiLeaks was...

Loss of an opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Good!

[Anonymous Coward]

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, what do these governments think they are going to accomplish. Whistleblowers leak information because they are worried about a surveillance state. And journalists investigate things because they want to find a cover-up. Cranking down on the surveillance state and forcing a cover-up is only going to make them redouble their efforts. And since information can be mirrored around the world in seconds, what could they possibly accomplish? The number of whistleblowers willing to give information to reporters looking for a big story has just exploded, thanks to the kneejerk damage control response.

In other news, another whistleblower has anonymously leaked information on PROTON, CLEARWATER and LEXIS-NEXIS, US government programs that are used to data-mine contacts for intelligence and criminal prosecutions because the government wanted to cover-up how they were getting probable cause to investigate DEA actions (with the bullshit DICE program). Read it and weep.

Re:Media is in the business of making money

[Laxori666]

Actually I think it's definitely better to do a slow-release. Snowden may even be planning it this way. Think about it: if it's released all at once, who the fuck is going to go through thousands of documents to see what the gov is up to? Plus once the story is out it'll be forgotten within a few weeks. This way it's constantly in the news, people are always talking about it, it remains in people's minds, and the findings are summarized to make it easier to understand what is really going on. Good stuff, I say.

Spooks are trying to provoke an irresponsible act.

[dweller_below]

So far, Poitras and Greenwald have done an incredibly good job of handling the Snowden material. They have been implementing a long term, strategic, plan that seems to have 2 goals:

• * Restore the US Constitutional limits on the Executive branch.
• * Make the Executive branch accountable to the Legislative and Judicial branches.

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:

• 1) Poitras and Greenwald must succeed in maintaining public awareness of the problem.
• 2) Poitras and Greenwald must continue to be regarded as responsible journalists.
• 3) The Public must agree that the threat of an unbridled Executive is greater than the external threat.

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:

• * Get Poitras and Greenwald to do an irresponsible disclosure. From the Intelligence communities viewpoint, even an immediate, complete disclosure of the Snowden material is a small price to pay in return for swift end to the discussion and discrediting the whistle-blowers.
• * Or create an irresponsible disclosure of the Snowden material. Remember, neither Manning nor Assange/WikiLeaks did the big, irresponsible disclosure. But, they were blamed when it happened. On considering this objective, it seems to me that the primary objective of the Miranda incident may have been to acquire the secret key of the distributed file, so they could create an irresponsible disclosure.

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.

Re:Context

[SuricouRaven]

I think his plan succeeded. He wished to make the argument that Muslims are easily incited to violence, so he made a film insulting them - and the immediate reaction was a series of violent protests and a few murders, making his point quite clearly.

Re:Good!

[MrL0G1C]

No, they didn't 'simply followed a law' they chose to victimise somebody in a very deliberate manner, they made a legal choice and not a moral choice, they flouted the spirit of the law whilst sticking to the letter of the law.

The law books didn't tell them to victimise the guy, their boss did.