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UK Government Destroys Guardian's Snowden Drives

Posted by Unknown on from the and-then-the-internet dept.

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.

2 of 508 comments (clear)

  1. Wow... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    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!

  2. Blame Snowden by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    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.

    As far as "it's pointless" goes, well... you can blame your friend Snowden for that, too. He's said repeatedly that the information made public so far is only the tip of the iceberg, so any investigating official has to assume the worst about what stores of data you have. Any storage device even remotely linked to the scandal must be treated as though it contains all the information he had access to, thanks entirely to his big mouth.

    So, stop blaming our government and your government for your foolishness in associating with unapologetic spies. What you didn't do to yourself knowing full-well the consequences, Snowden did to you after the fact. Anything else is just narcissism, and should be treated as such.