Info Leak Wars To Get Messier

jfruh writes "As we discussed this weekend, David Miranda, the partner of the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald, was detained while transporting encrypted data on the Snowden affair from Berlin; all his electronics were seized. Over at the Guardian offices, British police destroyed more of the newspaper's hard drives. Privacy blogger Dan Tynan sees where this one is going: reporters like Greenwald are going to stop even bothering to be circumspect with their revelations. Sorting through the contents of such infocaches to redact sensitive information just gives the government time to track you down. Eventually, the information will just be dumped online, warts and all, as soon as someone who wants the information public gets ahold of it."

Comments

Idiots

[scarboni888]

'Nuff said.

Re:Idiots

[Mister Liberty]

Sorry, We're British -- No Miranda Rights!

Re:Idiots

[Jeremy Erwin]

But they have taken legal action.

Letter from Miranda's attorneys

Even if you don't agree with Miranda's position, the letter is still worth reading, as it lays out the facts in meticulous detail.

Re:Idiots

[amck]

He was detained, not arrested, under section 7 of the Terrorism Act.

Part of the point of this is that not having been arrested, he did not have the rights of a suspect who has been arrested.
However he was _required_ to answer all questions, no matter how irrelevant to a case, asked by the police.

Also remember he wasn't entering the UK. He was transiting from Germany to Brazil. So, relevance to a crime?
this was about intimidation, pure and simple.

Re:Idiots

[xenobyte]

All the Snowden data is stored in a safe place outside the UK (and the US of course) according to the people at The Guardian. This is standard procedure for all sensitive information and this was also the case with the exclusive parts of the Wikileaks material. They told the intelligence agents this but they didn't care and proceeded to destroy only the local storage media. So stupid!

The data is out there. It cannot be removed or contained in any way. This is how it is in this day and age, and this is a good thing. Information still wants to be free.

Re:Idiots

[chris.alex.thomas]

one word: bittorrent

Re:Idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

It's hilarious that you have +4 insightful when your post is just angry rambling over a complete misunderstanding of the basic facts.

Miranda's harassment has nothing at all to do with the Guardian's destroyed hard drive. Miranda had no Snowden data at all, he was just a way of pressuring Greenwald.

The Guardian's hard drive was not "seized". The government made it clear to them that they wouldn't tolerate the Guardian having that data in the country, and the Guardian decided to destroy the hard drive under GCHQ direction rather than enter into a legal battle and possibly be forced to hand it over. They have copies of the data, outside the country. It's just bureaucracy.

Please read the original article

[Virtucon]

Geebus, the factual errors on these summaries are becoming eye-watering!

The Guardian destroyed the laptop and the hard drive rather than turn them over. Shit, the title of the article has that in it:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/20/nsa-snowden-files-drives-destroyed-london

I consider it a brave act of defiance on the part of the Guardian, good for them. It won't affect the fact that there's probably stashed copies of this stuff everywhere but the British Authorities wanted the actual hardware, so rather than give it to them they used an angle grinder themselves.

Re:If you have nothing to hide...

[Ziest]

Yes, the government says they have nothing to hide BUT their actions scream "We have metric shit loads of things to hide". Things are going to get "interesting" in the next few years. It would be best if people started being more paranoid and start learning how to drop off the grid. We here in the west spent 40 years in a cold war with the Soviet Union. Some of the lessons that were learned on how to conduct activities while dealing with those guys, eg. Moscow Rules, would be instructive to those peoples and groups the government is and will be going after. Google the phrase, "Green in the new Red"

Funny you should mention Groklaw

[Kelson]

Considering this news...

Re:Small Correction

[AHuxley]

It seems to be the same method used in Australia over a book called Axis of Deceit.
Destroy the drive in front of the gov 'now' or the gov will take the drive.
http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22library%2Fprspub%2FN16J6%22
".... office to cleanse the offending material from our computers. They transferred the data to a hard disk then gave us the option of having it taken away or destroyed in front of us. We chose the second option, then watched them do it with a special little disk-breaking hammer. They graciously followed up this service with a customer satisfaction form.12"
..."also had their hard drives cleansed around early September 2004, several months after the amended book had gone on sale."

Whitewash

[Camael]

Yea, but once it all comes out, and we read it ... we realize there isn't anything amazing or unknown in it, and the whole big deal was actually nothing new.

Interesting whitewash.

The details in the released cables was one of the triggers that sparked the Tunisian revolution. Maybe not new or important to you, but I imagine the Tunisians would beg to differ.

Re:we need people like PJ spreading encryption

[b4dc0d3r]

Pj got dragged through the mud and personally attacked just covering a minor intellectual property skirmish. Reporting the mundane briefs and filings of copyright proceedings.

Sure it was big news here, but in mainstream msm media it was a mousefart.

After that, in a real showdown with the actual government on one side, would you stick around? I wouldn't.