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 …
"...for the umpteenth time the concern is that personal data is destroyed in line with ISO 27001: 2005. We accept, albeit reluctantly, that you have the data and will run stories based on it. Even you realise that there's some things that shouldn't be broadcast or you wouldn't redact them."
"So you're not going to arrest me?"
"No", Agent Smith sighed "we're not going to arrest you. We just want to make sure that equipment you no longer need is disposed of securely".
...20 minutes and 3 wrong turns later...
The big boss was clearly confused, as he struggled to remember my name. "This is er....our...er..."
"Hello, Simon"
"Hello Dave, what brings you down here?"
"Security audit basically. We need to make sure you don't leak the data that was leaked to you. If I could take a copy of the secure destruction certificates I'll be on my way."
"No can do...we do it in-house I'm afraid. Stephen can show you if you like?" I say as I pick up the Head Beancounter's Macbook
...Five minutes of the PFY with a sledge hammer later...
"I think I can safely say that's securely destroyed" said Dave as he brushed plastic fragments from his suit.
"So everything's OK" said the Big Boss
"Yes, we can call off the black helicopters. Thanks Simon - pint later?"
Thought experiment: suppose they had successfully destroyed the Guardian's copy of everything, and any copies they'd made or distributed.
Might that leave the KGB with the only remaining copies? Can't imagine Snowden got his asylum without going through an interview with Russian police, and in his case that would mean something more than a bog-standard immigration officer. Seems likely they demanded copies - maybe all copies and originals - of everything.
That's what you get by putting a man so totally at the mercy of a foreign power. If he could've returned home without facing Manning's fate, none of that need have happened.
Should we conclude that TPTB are happier for the KGB than the Guardian to have its secrets?
"So this can only fuel the development of secure email and a more secure internet."
We (tech enthusiasts) may think that.
Ms Bloggs and your gran don't have a clue about what is going on and will not be discussing.
So the reality is, No, this will not fuel the development of secure email and a more secure internet.
even if paranoid computing becomes mainstream, "the Feds" will always demand backdoor access in the name of keeping us safe from terrorists.
Governments have 'something to hide' (how innocent of me to take this long); Detaining partners of journalists "just because" stinks of total fucking hypocrisy when all I hear is 'I've got nothing to fear'. Well fuck them and stop abusing all of us in anyway you can think of thanks...
They are obviously scared shirtless (as it seems are most major European governments) that something will come out that compromises the gchq's activities, or causes the NSA such a blow that the gchq has to go looking for another sugar daddy.
For instance, not picked up here on el reg were all the references to "fveye" (if I am remembering synonym accurately) in the audit report and training materials that came out late last week. That stands for "five eyes", and my understanding was that means that any example of querying/surveilling proceeded by that designation meant those capabilities were available to each of the now famous "five eyes". The gchq can't have been happy to see that pop out.
A whistleblower escapes to another country after revealing publicly damning evidence that world society is under a total surveillance scheme without any regard for individual privacy, contrary to the very legal foundations of said country.
After the initial shock period, spook centers around the world work in concert to lock down the leak, find the whistleblower and silence him.
In order to do so, authorities have demonstrated that they are now willing to :
1) force ambassadorial entities to stop and prove that the whistleblower is not on board
2) harass and intimidate people related to the whistleblower, or that are in professional relations with him, using clearly abusive pretexts
3) abuse state powers and proceed to destroy private equipment without any justification
What is next ? Night visits to anyone who has contacted the whistleblower, with complementary beatings ? Some "unfortunate" accidents ? Waterboarding people who have read about this whole affair on the Web ?
I have the very unfunny feeling that, for the first time in recent history, Goodwin's Law should be invoked.
Because it is starting to look like the Gestapo have not disappeared at all. They have become Gestapo Incorporated, and they are watching you from your local Beating Center.
You will behave, Citizen.
I am not British, so maybe I am offbase with this:
Frankly, if I were the Queen, I'd blow a fuse over hearing a story such as this. I would call the PM in and demand an explanation. I know the Queen is not the political ruler of the country, but her opinion counts to both the people and the government and I know Queen Elizabeth II is very thoughtful and conscientious of Great Britain's system. If I were the Queen, I'd warn the PM that if I EVER heard of another occurrence such as this, I'd make a public statement of my dissatisfaction with the government's handling of same, calling it almost a level of embarrassment on the overstepping of governmental power.
What the hell is going on with our governments? The only answer is to throw them ALL out, vote for a wholesale changing of the guard, get all new politicians in even if they are loyal to the same party. But that won't happen - the voting power is still with the people yet they constantly vote back the same individuals who abuse the power we give them.
We've caused this on ourselves.
I would certainly be worried about my security - what with Brazillian terrorists being released into the country and such.
At my next weekly meeting with the PM I would make sure I had a couple of beefy members of the Scots and Irish guards standing behind him with their sabres drawn.
"What the hell is going on with our governments? The only answer is to throw them ALL out, vote for a wholesale changing of the guard, get all new politicians in even if they are loyal to the same party. But that won't happen - the voting power is still with the people yet they constantly vote back the same individuals who abuse the power we give them.
We've caused this on ourselves."
Said this for years but most just think I'm a nut!
It's only when you, rarely, hear what is really happening that small numbers of people sit up and listen. But the great unwashed just don't give a shit and will say "meh" and go back to posting shitting links to kittens and kids on Fakebook.
Did someone from HM government seriously say that? Maybe its just me, but that seems just a tad at odds with the concept of "democracy".
And then they show up on premises to smash some hard drives that probably don't contain anything more seditious than sedoku sheets?
You Brits have it even worse than we do in the U.S.!!
The really sad thing is that my grandfather used to be a director of radio interception for GCHQ back in the 50s and 60s. I'd like to think he would think this kind of authoritarian stongarming would be pretty stupid. He was the kind of guy who would never hurt a fly and basically your somewhat eccentric Brit technologist stereotype.
But then again he was also something of a company man....
"The point is, it indicates an serious dis-respect for democracy and the people of the UK"
And this is surprising? These are the people who kept files on Labour Ministers (but not of course Conservative ones).
The recruitment base for Intelligence officers (not the technical staff, as revealed by Spycatcher, which I was careful at the time to read in the US) probably has a very high intersection with the right wing of the Conservative Party and the families who, in the 1930s, thought a dose of Hitlerism would sort out the country. Would one expect their perception of the world to be anything but warped? On the contrary, a reasonable hypothesis is that secret police everywhere are pretty much the same, and what they get away with depends only on the extent to which the Government is more representative of the population as a whole. This really is one for the Lib Dems to unite on with Labour.
Notice that UKIP is silent on the subject, presumably because they appeal to the core demographic that's in favour of a bit of oik-bashing.
It's a bit like Rupert Murdoch dismissing all those allegations as being a waste of police time.
Do you think these people take their real world behaviour from the films they watch? It could explain a lot. I vaguely recall an article some years ago suggesting that some members of the Manchester police believed that various TV programmes were a realistic portrayal of policing in the US.
We in the west havent had real democracy for decades. Only an illusion of it.
Whomever you vote for the same old agenda goes on. The few cherry picked bits of differing but irrlevant ideology is just there to let us know the difference.
Pick a western country and you'll see the pattern. Look at Bush/Obama/Cameron/Brown
Same song, different tempo.
Bit late to change it now though.
W B Yeats said it, after being disillusioned by the Irish Civil War:
"Hurrah for revolution, and more cannon-shot
A beggar on horseback lashes a beggar on foot.
Hurrah for revolution, and cannon come again
The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on".
I'm sure those HDDs contained the only copies in existence other than on Snowden's personal laptop. None of the data is stored a dozen different places on the internet...
Here's a hint for the cops. The only likely reasons the entire trove isn't all publicly available, are that releasing a bit at a time A) keeps Snowden in the public mind so he feels safer and B) it sells a LOT more papers. If the US feds don't work out something with Snowden before the effectiveness of that strategy inevitably wanes due to the public going SQUIRREL!, it will all be available via wikileaks/torrent/etc.
"More likely, it's Matt Bryant desperately showing that he isn't "sheeple" who are wrong in our distrust of the government he seems to implicitly trust!" So, you show me where this mythical threat from The Man is, without just spouting a load of leftie bullshit and conspiracy theories, and then I might take your posts as anything more than paranoid delusions. And pointing to the other sheeple that have been spoonfed the same paranoid delusions is not evidence of anything other than the gullibility of the herd mentality.
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