Guardian lets UK spooks trash 'Snowden files' PCs to make them feel better GCHQ spooks reportedly rocked up at The Guardian's London headquarters and oversaw the destruction of some computer hardware - because the machines may have stored copies of documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The move came after the newspaper's editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger refused to comply with demands to …
What mistake? They're married!
From http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/mar/26/gay-marriage-supreme-court-defeatism
"DOMA is what prevents me, and thousands of other gay Americans, from living in the US with my spouse, while the legal and social stigma of officially sanctioned inequality is, by itself, devastating for gay children"
I can't begin to entertain the idea, as some are suggesting, that they thought destroying this copy would destroy all traces. What appears to me to be far more likely is that they are trying to lock down the data so it is in as few a places as possible, and therefore less readily accessible.
Who knows what tiny, seemingly insignificant, detail in these documents could actually be a crucial piece of information to those with ill intentions.
And that is where the difficulty lies. You and Matt Bryant have the opinion, for whatever reason, justified or not, that there is an external "ill-intentioned" person or persons that could have a significant negative effect on the lives of you and, presumably, significant numbers of others. The government is, therefore, entirely justified, in your opinion, in doing these things.
On the other hand, there are a significant number of people on here, and, presumably elsewhere, who see the "ill-intentioned" as being the government, which is taking action far in excess of anything proportional to any significant risk. It is acting not in the best interests of the populace, but of itself. It is unable to accept that it might have gone too far, that it is looking ridiculous, and has become the body most likely to cause a significant negative effect to all - you and Matt included.
In my opinion, what the government and security forces are doing is utterly horrifying. I know they are nasty fuckers at the best of times, but it looks as if they are acting with overweening arrogance. The deaths of David Kelly and Gareth Williams look more and more like assassinations by those that should have protected them. The police look more like a paramilitary force to be feared by the population. The government, and, by extension, Parliament, looks like a threat to health and well-being of anyone that dares to question it.
What do you see in the actions and justifications of those you are defending that I don't?
"And that is where the difficulty lies. You and Matt Bryant have the opinion, for whatever reason, justified or not, that there is an external "ill-intentioned" person or persons that could have a significant negative effect on the lives of you and, presumably, significant numbers of others. The government is, therefore, entirely justified, in your opinion, in doing these things....." Difference being there is concrete evidence for both the intent and a history if actions by people like Al Quaeda, whereas the majority of your bleating a are just conspiracy theories wildly looped together into a fantasy of paranoid delusions.
".....On the other hand, there are a significant number of people on here, and, presumably elsewhere....". Yeah, plenty of like-minded posters on all the conspiracy junkie websites, also with zero actual proof and nothing more than wild ramblings.
"....,and has become the body most likely to cause a significant negative effect to all - you and Matt included....." Really? So please do show where I am being harmed? As a Westerner I am under threat from people that think like AQ, that you would have to be a completely blind and paranoid numpty to deny (well, actually that does cover quite a few of your fellow sheeple posting here), but apart from wild accusations that my email may be being read (which it is very cleat is not happening because the authorities don't have the time and resources to waste in everyone, just those they target), please do show me what harm the authorities are doing me? And don't spout some farcical bullshit about "losing liberties" as I have not lost any liberties at all, thanks.
"....I know they are nasty fuckers at the best of times....". How, because some wannabe Z-lister celeb told you so? Did you read it on some conspiracy theorists website? Or was it just spoonfed to you at home by some equally paranoid and delusional family of losers that wanted to blame "the system" for their lack of success?
I normally support the concept that sometimes we cannot know something in order to protect a useful source who risked their life to pass us information and the concept that the secret service can have additional powers to protect us.
However, this incident has made a mockery of the entire establishment. This is a monumental abuse of power out of nothing more than spite. To stand up and say this was legally sound is either a lie or evidence that they have powers under the law they should not have. To abuse powers extended to them in order to protect us from severe harm for nothing more than trying to punish someone who may or may not have played a part in uncovering a constitutional and legal nightmare of a spying scandal is childish and far more dangerous to our national security than the release of the documents in the first place. I really hope the people who ordered this are taken aside and punished, they have provided us with proof that they cannot be trusted with the powers they have but potentially may need.
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The only word that adequately describes the recent pointless behaviour of the security services. They're incapable of doing anything effective, so they start detaining people and smashing kit to show how tough they are.
It's especially disturbing that stuff leaked from an American agency by an American national is safer in New York than London.
The balance of probabilities tends to indicate that the Grauniad is more trustworthy than any spokesbeing of the security apparatus of the British state (or any other state, for that matter).
And unless-and-until said security apparatus is willing to divulge a full, detailed, and factually accurate account of their actions and the decision-making process leading to those actions (and maybe not even then), that will remain the case.
the Grauniad is more trustworthy than no other side of the story? Tautology surely? We only have one side of the story, it sounds absolutely ridiculous, so it almost certainly needs a hefty pinch of salt.
If you know the people you are talking about can not and will not respond, then you can say what you like about them. If you happen to have a bit of an issue with said people, whether through antagonising interactions, ideological differences etc, then you not only can, but probably will say what you want. Plus issues around driving up readership and the Guardian brand.
It sounds like the Snowden files actually cover possible wrongdoings by the UK security services, hence why they are so keen to get it back and force the horse back into the stable, unless the information belonged to them directly, I don't see how they can demand that the data is returned to them or destroyed.
"You've had your fun" -- Well, all I can say is that the security services in both the United Kingdom and the United States both feel they are well beyond any repercussions for their actions and they are probably correct. In reality, we have not had fun, we are all alarmed that there simply is no privacy at all in the world today and that everyone is treated with contempt by our overlords regardless of any criminality.
This incursion against the press demonstrates to me that UK and US governments are guilty as hell for crimes that they are trying to hide behind the veil of "National Security" and "Our Protection". Fuck them and the horse they rode in on, remember these are the guys that actually cannot stop terrorist attacks (unless they are lame attempts, like the shoe bomber) even though they already had monitoring schemes in place that were beyond oversight and beyond reproach.
Of course we won't, this is driven by career spooks/civil servants who know that the politicians will blame them for failing to prevent atrocities no matter what powers they are given and use. So the only solution is to ask for more powers, at least in their minds.
From my perspective I would willingly trade a tiny risk of death at the hands of a mad idealogue terrorist during my lifetime against the certain knowledge that everything I do is watched, stored and pored over behind my back. I hope that enough people who feel that way are able to articulate their anger at what is being done and convince the establishment that this time it has gone too far, I don't know if we will be able to get people to take notice or not but surely an attempt to do away with this morally bankrupt approach to government.
I shall await the next installment in the Snowden revelations with interest, but I suspect not very much surprise.
Instead of paying someone to destroy your decommissioned hard drives/storage media all you have to do is call Whitehall and tell them that the decommissioned kit may have some of Snowden's files stored in it. From the article it looks like they sweep up afterwards too. :)
...this country couldn't look any more pathetic and stupid, our 'security services' go and do something like this. All they achieved was some pointless vandalism. They didn't bother taking drives, and clearly anything that might have been on them would have been distributed around the globe in several forms anyway.
Seriously, to the International community, we look like a shit version of the USA. And that's saying something. It makes you proud to be British.
This reminds me a little of the time I bought a Mac off my ex-company and they absolutely insisted on wiping the disk even though I could (and did) take a backup of the stuff I wanted to keep prior to them doing it. They got to waste a bunch of time and tick a box for zero gain.
The days where data stays in one place put has long gone. I imagine that the Guardian has the means to push large files around its sites over it's internal network (which is presumably encrypted) and they absolutely would do it in this case. I'm also sure they could slip out to a public wifi spot and upload it with nobody the wiser. Or post it. And most likely they did some or all of these things. Wouldn't surprise me if this journalist's partner was stopped and searched on the suspicion that he might be a courier for this information, and quite possibly he was.
I think you give a lot of credit to the newsroom networks in modern newspapers. They're run on a shoestring, lots of local storage on laptops etc. etc.
Also, how does there seem to be this opinion that the guys from GCHQ are all idiots and that the non-tech journos from the Graun are all IT geniuses. I've met some of them and I can assure you they're not.
I'm not giving them a lot of credit since what I suggest is what any medium size enterprise could do these days - connect two sites over a VPN. And I assume that a newspaper (such as the Guardian is) which has 500 editorial staff and offices in the US, plus a very large website to run and administer, and large files like images, PDFs, videos etc. to exchange is capable and has the necessity of doing it.
Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria each had their governments rocked by popular uprising in 2012 due to a dissatisfaction with their governments oppressive natures.
That worries other governments and now others are taking draconian measures to control what their citizens see and do on line. Twitter, Facebook, Google, et al. all now must report the information passing through their care directly into government hands. Communications are monitored and what you do, where you go and who you associate with is indexed and stored.
Governments are empowered by the people. When a government tries to control its populace, it typically falls. The road that several major governments are taking today is a dark one that will lead to a lot of misery and suffering.
Security can never be placed above individual freedoms. Control of media by government should not be tolerated. We crossed the channel in 1944 to take out a government who did control the newspapers and treated their own citizens with disdain. Now we don't even need to take the Chunnel to see oppression and a police state interfering with the press.
"All great things are simple, and many can be expressed in single words: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope."
~ Sir Winston Churchill
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