Guardian teams up with New York Times for future Snowden GCHQ coverage Faced with a mounting backlash from UK authorities, The Guardian newspaper has announced that it will collaborate with The New York Times to release further documents detailing the activities of the UK's Government Communications Headquarters. "In a climate of intense pressure from the UK government, the Guardian decided to …
".....In any case there are some major differences there and that's the fact that people are going to jail for their actions in the NI hacking scandal...." Because what they did was illegal, whereas what the NS and GCHQ are doing is legal. And there are safeguards like the FISC in place to make sure that is so.
"....Nobody in the NSA or GCHQ is accountable, and they never will be as things stand....." How do you know? People in either that overstep their authority are usually caught by the safeguards in place, otherwise how would you know about the few cases of NSA employees misusing the tools? There is a very good reason for their subsequent censure not to be punished with civil legal proceedings in that what they do in general needs to be kept secret more than the public needs to know about those "few in decades" cases of misuse.
"Yes, just terrorists. Because of course every NSA worker is a stand-up apple pie and baseball loving member of Roger Ramjet's American Eagles, nobly guarding the secrets of the nation against abuse and certainly not using PRISM data to stalk or harass any.... oh, wait:"
And they couldn't possibly be using sniifed data to play the stockmarkets with what's effectively insider information. That'd be very naughty.
Just how many NSA agents/contractors seem to be living beyond their federal incomes?
"...,And they couldn't possibly be using sniifed data to play the stockmarkets with what's effectively insider information. That'd be very naughty. Just how many NSA agents/contractors seem to be living beyond their federal incomes?" Since you have no evidence of that happening all you are doing is bleating more conspiracy theories and paranoid delusions.
Go home matt, your mum's calling you in for dinner.
The only thing that's being done is to find an excuse to keep the US federal absurdity running. As long as there's an external bogeyman they can keep in an extended state of emergency and not go back to the peacetime situation of a small federal govt and more state autonomy.
This is all about keeping hold of power and has nothing to do with any actual "enemies"
You appear not to know the difference between "liberal" and "left". Are you by any chance a citizen of the US? Because that's usually their problem.
The Guardian supported New Labour - which was by postwar British standards a right wing party - and the Lib Dems in the last election. The Lib Dems are far from left wing.
It is in fact a newspaper of the middle and upper middle classes; if you have a household income under 6 figures it is a bad idea to read the Saturday edition, full as it is of £65 a head restaurant reviews, £1500 dresses, cruise and long distance holiday adverts and the like.
The Guardian's political position is simple; instead of being run by the 1300 (or whatever it is) families that currently run Britain, it should be run by a broader base of upper middle class people. This is a classical Liberal position, in the usual sense of widening the scope of permitted behaviour and relying less on the "traditional" beliefs of the small number of people that run the country. But the Guardian would be horrified if there was any real chance that the country would be run by the lower middle and working classes.
The "left" consists of (a) people who believe in democracy and believe that the country should be run using the collective views of everybody (a small number) and (b) a larger group of people who believe it should be run by the representatives of the proletariat and the peasantry - i.e. union leaders, and political organisers who have identified themselves with the interests of the workers. There are books about it, but I guess you've been too busy to read them.
The interests of Liberals and the Left are very different. A left wing government would have the staff of the Guardian up against a wall, while the staff of the Sun would be having it explained to them that they could, as usual, peddle the agenda of their new masters or they could alternatively die. The next day the Sun would publish as usual, with beautiful shop steward's daughter Tanya on Page 3 and a long editorial about how the new Government was entirely on the side of Sun readers, and, along with historical inevitability of the triumph of Marxist-Leninist doctrine, it was the Sun wot done it.
The Independent, now...there's a definite leftish agenda starting to creep in there.
"You appear not to know the difference between "liberal" and "left"....." LOL, I just bet this one comes with some really warped standard!
"....The Guardian supported New Labour - which was by postwar British standards a right wing party....." And there we have that warping - only if your definition of the Left spectrum starts at Trotsky!
".....and the Lib Dems in the last election......" Because their fave Blair had been booted out of the Labour leadership by Gordon Brown.
"....The Lib Dems are far from left wing....." The Lib Dems are mass of refugees from a number of parties, held together more by a desperation for power than any shared political viewpoint. As just one example, Ming Campbell looks like a reject from the Glasgow unionists of old, with his "punish the rich" fanaticism, which very obviously grates with ex-Financial Times journo Nick Clegg's knowledge of the business world. Campbell was fired from being the leader of the Lib Dems as he was horrifically unelectable, whereas Clegg's is supposed to be the window-dressing to convince voters the Lib Dems have a clue. He has failed almost as badly as Campbell.
"....It is in fact a newspaper of the middle and upper middle classes...." It is the fashion rag of the trendy "socialist", typical of the Islington crowd, the type that wore a Che Guevera t-shirt at college whilst studying politics/law/media-studies, without actually having a clue what Che did or stood for. They usually like to lecture all around them on how they should be living in a hair shirt whilst enjoying a consumer lifestyle replete with luxury trimmings. They are the type that drives a hybrid Chelsea tractor because they think Al Gore was right.
".....The "left" consists of (a) people who believe in democracy....." LMAO! All Lefties pay lip service to democracy, but the first thing they do when they get power is start curtailing the freedoms of others. Even "right-wing" Blair. Nu(t) Labour was riddled with Lefties that talked democracy but were very quick to decide the people were simply too stupid to make decisions for themselves. And Deadhead Ed Milliband is even worse as he is the unions' choice, their puppet, beholden to them by the ridiculously archaic and undemocratic block vote. The Left wouldn't know democracy if it bit them on the collective arse.
No doubt they did, they sometimes take the "unbiased" thing too far and avoid reporting things which might influence elections.
There was a lot of that going on during the 2004 election. My favorite is that the Democrats had a "gentleman's agreement" with the republicans that they'd not press the issue of how the Bush administration had pressured CIA into fabricating evidence to support the Iraq war, and in return the republicans would agree to a full inquiry after the election. It goes without saying that as soon as Bush had won he reneged on that deal (and presumably burnt all evidence). Bush's complicity in the forging of evidence for the Iraq war has never been investigated, and in all probability never will.
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The whole "Snowden leaked material to the independent" could also be a cover for another leaker with info on the gchq. Someone who has seen what has happened to snowden and doesn't want to live in exile, but wants more of the story to come out.
May be the Independent did some earlier spying on the Guardian (basement whatever)
and are proving the point, post-hoc, that there really was a security risk until the GCHQ thugs
saw the MacBook + disks done to death.
I doubt it but the spin is possible.
PS:
Which film was it (Carry On?? ) where the servile thug picked up the phone and said in a Neanderthal voice "Intelligence here"
?
"If I were to write some fiction based on the known facts so far, I might weave a tale around the owner of The Independent having once worked for the KGB." I think a much simpler explanation would be that, apart from Snowjob and Greenwald, the other party with access to the docs has been Laura Poitras. Maybe she just thought the leaks weren't moving at the right pace and passed one to a contact at the Independent.
Given the ingredients in the exhaust from a lot of rockets, I do wonder how many people might be killed by launching them from ground level in a densely populated area. Things that can release stuff like CO and HF when they take off can have unpleasant side effects on the ground.
I also wonder how easy it is to distinguish a chemical weapons attack from a conventional shell or two landing in a storage warehouse or factory, or even a straightforward industrial accident?!
Imagine if Bhopal had happened on the middle of some sort of military incident..
I was sceptical when the Chelsea Manning story came out, because that is really a good way to get political support for clemency, if you're in the USA. Then various people I knew, with a less sheltered life than I have had, started pointing out the clues which supported it.
But it would be rather unprofessional not to have stopped David Miranda, even though I seriously doubt anyone would be silly enough to have had him carrying Snowden data. Are the Moscow Rules fiction or not? They are at least an echo of truth, and anyone working with Snowden should be assuming they are in enemy territory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Rules
That doesn't stop anyone being stupid, on either side, and the Miranda affair does fit with a hope of stupidity.
I know a former civil servant who resigned over arms for Iraq. For years afterwards MI5 would visit him periodically and try to put the frighteners on him in case he felt like revealing anything, and each time he would explain that the goon was acting illegally, and did he know it?
Not everyone in the secret services is an Oxbridge graduate, and (sadly) ,Nick Griffin was at Downing. Simple thuggery can never be ruled out.
Yeah, hm.... That concept of "prior restraint" is pretty pliable, and US courts extremely biased in favor of the government. During the Bush era, US newspapers were barred from reporting about cases where innocent people had been "extraordinary rendition"d to torture or murder, e.g. Canadian citizen Maher Arar who was kidnapped by the US and sent to Syria for torture because his name was similar to that of a terrorist.
Unlike some other similar cases, Maher Arar survived the ordeal, but still have received no compensation from the USA and is banned from suing for compensation on the grounds that it would expose US secrets.
Then again, while the Obama administration hasn't exactly turned out to be champions of transparency and free speech, it's not nearly as secretive and oppressive as the Bush administration, so perhaps they'll let Snowden leaks be published.
" it's not nearly as secretive and oppressive as the Bush administration, so perhaps they'll let Snowden leaks be published."
you high or something? Barry is Bush without the charm. Nothing has changed, the administration is not "better" in any way whatsoever. The only difference seems to be that the media is willing to let this thug get away with it because he's not the previous thug.
I haven't heard the Independent claiming they have had sight or have copies of the Snowden documents, just that "information on its activities was contained in the leaked documents obtained from the NSA by Edward Snowden".
However I expect it's all just some sharp-eyed reporter on the Independent repeating claims from an article in the Guardian on 21 Jun: http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jun/21/legal-loopholes-gchq-spy-world which mentions the GCHQ support station in Cyprus (Ayios Nikolaos Station), and says they tap cables etc.
As that earlier Guardian article is at least partly based on the Snowden documents, I suppose the Independent isn't lying when it says their article is too.
"......the us and them drivel he's posting in this thread." Which I note you are unable to counter. Surely, if it is "drivel", it should be quite easy for you to disprove, or is it that you got all shrieky because you don't like what was posted but know you can't counter it?
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