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Comment by monsterix | Hacker News Reader

I think it's quite important to share the names of the men from Whitehall to the world. I mean we all know names of only the people defending public interest so far: aka Greenwald, Snowden, Miranda and a few others.

We should be told about everyone from the other side too.

Like we learned about Keith Alexander of NSA, you know. It is of utmost importance to make names of public servants well - truly public - because they're the ones using tax-payers money and should have been defending public interest instead.

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Agree. But, FWIW, Alan Rusbridger, the author of the article, explains in the comments that in this case, this would not be legal, as the conversations he is quoting from took place after he had agreed to keep names off the record.

When the bastards make the rules at whim, there is nothing to be gained from playing by those same rules.

I'd guess that the gain for Mr. Rusbridger is that he retains his privilege to be able to quote from similarly absurd conversations with government officials in the future.

That rule is actually made by journalists, not governments.

A journalist who violates conditions of 'off-the-record' is not going to be a journalist for much longer, because nobody will tell him anything. The 'bastards' who made the rules, in this case, are the journalists themselves.

It's not a matter of legality, it's a matter of keeping your word. He says as much in a comment.

http://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-permalink/26170409

"Off the record" is not an actual legal thing.

Off the record is privilege given from the journalist to the person speaking.

Since journalists have showed willingness to go to jail but to protect their sources they take things such as these very seriously.

Agreed.

Perhaps another good journalist could score a one-up on this one? That aside, it doesn't seem coherent that the owner of the laptop containing the sensitive materials would voluntarily agree to conceal the names of the agents, and at the same time let their machine/drives be destroyed by the same sleuths (crooks?).

Seems fishy, but then what is not given the circumstances.

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