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Laptop Destroyed Over Snowden Leaks Is Now an Art Exhibit
An anonymous reader sends word that a busted MacBook Air and a Western Digital hard drive that once held Snowden revelations are going on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. "The remains of computer hardware which had contained the Guardian's London trove of Snowden documents – and which was destroyed on the rather spiteful demands of GCHQ personnel – have gone on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum. While the frankly unremarkable remnants of a MacBook Air are uninteresting in and of themselves – who among us has not taken an angle grinder to an errant machine? – the causes of the MacBook Air's destruction are seemingly interesting enough to merit those remnants being considered art and subsequently included in V&A's new exhibition about 'the museum as a public space and the role of public institutions in contemporary life.' Disconcertingly titled All of This Belongs to You, the exhibition is to include 'three specially curated displays,' among which is Ways to be Secret, which will examine what the curators describe as 'the contradiction between our concern for online privacy and our obsession with sharing via social media.'"
Even though data remanence is merely a widely-believed urban legend, who actually thinks that the GCHQ actually let that hard drive or laptop leave their grasp either at the point of contact/destruction or silently behind the scenes after the fact.
This is an ART exhibit? It may be art, and it definitely belongs in a museum, but not because it's art.
they couldn't take the SSD out and smash it but had to destroy the entire thing?
I'm sick of being fed what my feelings about something should be even before I'm presented with the facts. This isn't journalism, it's propaganda.
Given that GCHQ's behaviour achieved nothing of objective value - the data was safely backed up elsewhere - I've always suspected this was a piece of performance art, and this appears to prove it. The only question is whether it was funded out of GCHQ's art budget, or the Arts Council...
It's well documented that the laptop was physically destroyed under instruction and careful monitoring by the UK government's security agencies. It's also not a matter of doubt that it was destroyed out of pure spite, since the destruction had no impact whatsoever on the availability of Snowden's leaked documents.
They did it to send a message, and the only possible message in the circumstances was "We are annoyed at this." Pure spite.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Take your pick GCHQ:
1) Either you're too stupid to realize that this data was backed up in about a million places by the time you destroyed it, or
2) You're a bunch of spiteful dicks.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
How about a hammer?
blog
who among us has not taken an angle grinder to an errant machine?
I haven't. Maybe you have anger management issues?
I own an angle grinder, and I've never thought of using it on a computer. I have, however, considered my table saw on a couple of occasions.
Happy to oblige, modded you down :)
I live out in the country, so errant electronics are often used as shooting targets. Much more fun than cans.
It should in a museum of historical artifacts, not in an art museum. There's no artistry in it, but there is history.
Strange country you're living in ....
aaaaaaa
I've taken a sledge hammer to a bunch of old gigantic DEC Alpha servers and some full-cabinet size IBM AIX systems. This was while working for Gannett it was a celebration to commemorate moving past this old tech and to direct to plate pre-press technology.
"Being alive is a crock of shit." --Kilgore Trout
Hard drives were a lot more fun to shoot when they spun up as soon as they were powered. Also when they contained copies of Netmare 2.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
From the Guardian:
In two tense meetings last June and July the cabinet secretary, Jeremy Heywood, explicitly warned the Guardian's editor, Alan Rusbridger, to return the Snowden documents.
Heywood, sent personally by David Cameron, told the editor to stop publishing articles based on leaked material from American's National Security Agency and GCHQ. At one point Heywood said: "We can do this nicely or we can go to law". He added: "A lot of people in government think you should be closed down."
It's a museum not a gallery. So the laptop makes sense in the context it's displayed.