UK Authorities Destroy Guardian's Hard Drives
pressfreedomfoundation.org
pressfreedomfoundation.org
At this point they are the only newspaper that seems to have the balls to tell the thugs from Whitehall to go and fuck themselves.
This stuff is absolutely insane, We didn't behave like this when the IRA was setting bombs off on a regular basis and shooting up the landscape.
It's always been obvious that the land grabs for power had little to do with actual terrorism.
Pick up that can.
http://killerapps.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/07/17/3_degre...
Heh.
All the while he gets to pretend he is a courageous reporter, standing up to power, when the only person really doing that is Greenwald.
- Large scale arrests and imprisonment without trial - "internment"
- Massacres of innocent civilians by British Army soldiers - Bloody Sunday
- Officially supported interrogation techniques that bordered on torture - the "Five techniques"
- Innocent people forced into admitting that they committed terrorist acts, convicted and given long jail sentences - the Guildford Four
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Demetrius
Not our finest hour, really.
There for, one can understand (note: not condone, excuse, etc) the extreme reaction of the UK government. Although, for all that time, the US was funding the IRA. So........er.......
A lot of the really nasty atrocities on both sides in the Civil war where hushed up until relatively recently.
Funny you quote HL2. It's a quite subversive game. I only recently had the chance to play the HL1 expansion packs - yay being a mac gamer - and they struck me as having a quite anti-authority message, too.
It's only recently that it occurred to me that HL2 brainwashed a generation of gamers into believing that photography drones were naturally the enemy. Very interesting.
I think where HL2 sets itself apart is that it thoroughly builds out the world and details in it so that you get a slight (very slight) feeling of what it would be like to exist in that world.
On that level I regard its value as a work of art to be greater than its value as a game (though both are high).
Sadly, as an American, I have to point out that the main impetus seems to be coming from this side of the Atlantic this time and both places' governing bodies seem to be complicit and stepping on the gas.
Citizens overcame the tyranny last time. Let's hope we can do it again this time.
On another note: The government itself is showing either it has something to hide, in which case it's showing that it's lying to us, or they have nothing to hide, in which case here's your answer to "What's the problem if you have nothing to hide?"
I'm starting to believe the only way to change this isn't to get people outraged or make them understand the effects of pervasive surveillance on freedom. The solution is to instead make it clear just how ineffective it is at its stated purpose of keeping us all safe.
If anything, this is how this whole power grab got started in the first place. "If we could spy on everyone we could've stopped 9/11."
Yeah, we pushed on Yemen too:
http://www.thenation.com/article/166757/why-president-obama-...
I've gone from angry, to completely and utterly 'defeated'. I think I agree with Groklaw where the only way to win, is not to play. Get off the net and go bush. Take up golf (I hate golf). No idea. It's like being back in school being beaten up by the bullies for being a geek, no words can make it stop, nothing I say or do will make a difference.
Jesus christ could we cut down on the hyperbole a LITTLE?
Open your eyes. Look how far things have come. This is not about LOLPOINTS™ on the internet, this is actually getting pretty damn real, and people are worried.
It is excessive hyperbole that helps nobody and serves only to polarise discussions. In reality the statements so far indicate that they stopped Miranda in order to determine if he was carrying information likely to be of use to terrorists. This seems to be an illegitimate use of the powers, which we'll find out soon.
That is a reasonable take on the matters, not 'JOURNALISM NOW IS TERRORISM!!!!!'
Of course I think their actions are outrageous and unreasonable. In the light of them, however, hypothesising that supporting The Guardian financially may be construed by those in power as financing terrorism is mere extrapolation.
No, it's hyperbole. It's unsupported nonsense.
Do you think repeating yourself makes you right? It does not. You've not earned any kind of right to dismiss the matter with statements like that.
I actually looked at the age of your account before replying because I thought you were a troll. Unfortunately it looks like those suspicions were well-founded. 822 days - wow, you bided your time.
You are not the arbiter of discussion.
> I actually looked at the age of your account before replying because I suspected you to be a troll. Unfortunately it looks like those suspicious were well-founded. 822 days old - wow, you bided your time.
Ironically I was just discussing how irrational conspiracy theorists use contradictory information to confirm their existing beliefs. Thank you for providing me with a perfect example.
Do you know what a troll is? It's someone who asserts deliberately stupid/annoying arguments to get a rise out of everyone else, who are trying to have a sincere discussion.
In other words, someone who sounds exactly like you. I won't be wasting any more time here.
I am calling for rational discussion and no hyperbole. You must be practically incapable of reading to confuse yourself in such a manner.
So... it's not hyperbolic at all to say that journalism is equated with terrorism, because the state us using laws designed for use against terrorists against journalists.
Wake up.
Incorrect, it is applicable to all travellers entering the United Kingdom
> to detain them in airports for up to nine hours without counsel
Incorrect, he refused counsel.
> Also to not answer questions would land him in prison.
There's no real evidence of this, there is a 'must not interfere' clause but it has never been tested.
> So... it's not hyperbolic at all to say that journalism is equated with terrorism, because the state us using laws designed for use against terrorists against journalists.
> Wake up.
Could you use more of a cliché? It's hyperbole, you have just proven as much by your complete ignorance on the subject.
If you aren't permitted counsel of your choice (and he wasn't) but only counsel selected by the police (which he was offered), then you are effectively denied counsel.
While there is still a potential agency problem, duty solicitors (or, in American parlance, public defenders) aren't an alternative to counsel of choice, they exist to provide the choice to have some counsel to people who otherwise would have none, without denying them the choice of securing any of their own to the extent they can.
Providing the option of a duty solicitor is not, then, at all the same as denying someone access to willing counsel of their choice.
It was written for use against terrorism, not against terrorists. It is notable because it doesn't require any suspicion that the target actually is a terrorist. So targeting a journalist under it isn't equating journalism with terrorism, because it is not, and never has been, a requirement of the law that the police have any basis to think you are a terrorist to target you under the law.
The Guardian has clear motive to play up any interaction like this with the government. That doesn't mean they would, but I'm not going to suspend critical assessment of the situation just because it plays to be beliefs.
The ratio of verified information to editorializing rants is very low here, at the moment.
To see them intimidated like this by thugs that could have walked right out of something by Bulgakov or even Kafka is a sobering prospect.
It translates into: the free press is now classed an enemy of the state and equates to terrorism.
I've lived in Poland before the iron curtain came down, in the years when Jaruzelski ruled the country and when Solidarnosc was just beginning to form, the free press was classed an enemy of the state there as well. Mere posession of an illegal book or paper could get you into a lot of trouble.
The state sanctioned media were extremely circumspect in their reporting of what was going on in Gdansk and Gdynia but word trickled out and slowly Polish people everywhere started to see light at the end of the tunnel.
Reagan, the Afghan war and Gorbachev all played a part in the fall of the Soviet Union. But Poland and especially Solidarity, Wałęsa and Popiełuszko deserve a good chunk of the credit too.
A not so visible part of all of this is that the free press in Poland (called the samizdat) spread not only books but also 10's of thousands of copies of the underground newspaper Solidarnosc, many of which were read by multiple people, passed from hand to hand to trusted friends. These were the only counterweight to state media (newspaper, radio, television) and the contrast between the two was stark.
I wonder if the Solidarity movement would have gotten off the ground as well as it did and whether Poland would have made the early move to freedom without such a free press (and in some cases it wasn't even a press but simply hand-copying or re-typing!).
It is the only historical change that I have had the privilege of observing at very close quarters, so my experience is limited. But a free press to me is a must have, it is as important as having a system of government, and to have a free press we must have journalists and newspapers that are free to operate.
Otherwise one of these days we'll have to resort to underground presses like in the days of communism in Poland, press freedom is very important no matter who governs you, and government officials intimidating the press is a very bad sign.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samizdat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_%28Polish_trade_unio...
This Time article gives some details: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,159069,00.h...
I love the idea of subverting a regime by supplying communication tools!
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Unglued-Empire-Communications-Technolo...
"US project worker Alan Gross has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for crimes against the state in Cuba."
"Gross, 61, was arrested in December 2009 accused of setting up illegal internet connections in Cuba under a programme funded by the US government."
It's a theme in a book by Charles Stross, Singularity Sky.
It's probably appropriate that the UK is swarming with polish immigrants. Older ones might remember how it's done.
Hmmmm.... The British (Or US) Resistance, any one? Really annoy our right wings by taking inspiration from the "evil surrender monkey" French? Or too ironic?
The representation of the Resistance vs the Communist Resistance in 'Allo 'Allo! is not that far from the fact and internal infighting between royalist and communist is also a theme in Captain Corelli's Mandolin.
There is a big difference between being concerned, advocating for, and helping those in other nations, yet still being a citizen of your nation, and imagining yourself as a global citizen who is above the laws of any one nation.
Why shouldn't we know about our own governments spying on us? Why shouldn't we be informed about how our government is governing?
The US Constitution, at least, was written in remembrance of the privations of an occupying army. The country was founded on the belief that the people are sovereign. If the people are to be sovereign, then they need to know what the government is doing. This is why we have freedom of the press, etc., and why this right is more important than any short-term goal.
The governments of the US and UK are acting like occupying armies. They disregard the rule of law, act arbitrarily, arrogantly, and without accountability. Fixing this is more important than any marginal security the NSA's secrecy provides. It's probably worth more than everything the NSA provides altogether.
This episode bothers me in a different way than most violations of basic human rights. Because the violation is around privacy/secrecy, the violating entities have to attack the very means we have set up to correct violations. It's like a virus that attacks the immune system, something to be taken more seriously than the actual damage done, because it destroys the ecosystem's ability to correct other violations.
In any case, I was simply encouraging you to actually say something, rather than just say what sorts of things we should say, and then demonstrating what I meant.
Surveillance won't be a major political issue unless it tangibly affects a lot of people in a negative way. That's just not happening now. Most people don't care. But there are other things they do care about because they feel the effects.
Back in the day, I used the cablegate affair to gauge the "balls" of all the publications that were involved in the coordinated release. It might interest some of you that only El País had no "we're sorry but we have to do this because we are journalists" article in it.
If papers such as the independent, etc. had been given this information, im sure there professionalism would have been the same or higher. Outside of handed-on-a-platter reporting, the Guardian has massively cocked up in the past (leading to the arrest of sources, etc.).
To look at those papers you wouldn't suspect something of this magnitude is even going on.
Journalists are particularly cynical people constantly chasing after anything that will get their by-lines in front of faces.. i dont think we're looking at a paper which has suddenly found its 21st C. political morals, but rather a paper that has suddenly found whistle-blowers queuing up at their door.
What's really disconcerting is that the other outlets have decided this isn't sufficiently "in the public interest" as to disobey the notice.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_of_the_World_phone_hackin... The whole story goes far beyond what is mentioned in that article: huge corruption in the Met, an axe murder in a london car park and of course a government communications director, his prior involvement in the hacking and his affair with a certain newspaper executive
edit: less-copyright-blocked link: http://www.snotr.com/video/3167/Are_we_the_baddies
I'm not saying this action by the British government isn't troubling, but there is no single symbol of being "the baddies".
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen%27s_Royal_Lancers [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Marine_Corps_Reco...
As a long-time student of history I get very annoyed when Nazi symbology is presented as something they invented, particularly when used to demonstrate that we should have known they were evil to begin with. They ripped all their shit off from someone else, and some of it is only viewed as evil today because of them.
@dansabbagh "Reason Gdn destroyed the computers was to avoid a lengthy legal UK battle that wld have prevented more reporting of Snowden files."
In another comment in the Guardian Rudsbridger mentioned only the potential liability, not the impact to reporting.
If they can't ask the Guardian to overwrite the drives a few times and expect the Guardian to comply with that, what good does physically destroying the drives do? The Guardian could download the encrypted data from some (backup) cloud storage location and have it back in an hour.
Of course not. The idea was to frighten people who haven't been obedient and to create a lot of costs to reduce the profitability of running stories on unwelcome subjects.
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/britain-forced-guardian-destroy-cop...
Whenever anyone asks this kind of question, please give them citations.
Journalist is a risky profession, even when you're not going into some warzone.
It's like they've never heard of off-site backups.
It excludes acts of terrorism and terrorism related activity. If jackboots show up demanding to physically demolish servers in any of our dozen datacenters around the world, claiming Section 7 or Patriot Act, will our insurance replace them? A government's categorization of data as terror related could quickly put a cloud provider out hundreds of thousands or millions (mass video storage is expensive) in unrecoverable costs.
We're covered for business continuity if the DMCA or SOPA troops show up and make off with servers like with Mega. But looks like we're not covered if the insurance company can prove a government called the destruction terror related. Ugh.
This kind of subject makes it really hard not to Godwin the thread right away., because you know what other government used thugs to intimidate and destroy.
https://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-barometer-journalists-kille...
They may not even provide the most throughout look on these things, but they seem to cover most incidents regarding persecution of journalists.
Book burnings general don't end well for the party in power.
Also the Guardian hasn't stopped printing these stories in the UK or online. They've been staffing up in New York (including Nick Davies who brought down much of Rupert Murdoch's print empire last year and crucially prevented newscorp from buying the rest of bskyb).
It's interesting to me that the US has a better low-level legal framework for a free press, but it's not plain sailing at all (i.e.: the nytimes and washington post "asked dad" before looking at wikileaks files; judith miller and now james risen have no shield laws).
AlanC said:
If you meekly give into their demands without insisting that they
take you to court then you've as good as admitted that they can do
whatever they like as far as the UK press is concerned. ...
Alan Rusbridger replied:
Play out the scenario for me in which fighting this case in court would
have enabled us to do a better job of reporting the Snowden documents.
I'm not sure I quite see it...
To send Alan Rusbridger an email of support: alan.rusbridger@theguardian.com
I'm drafting an email here http://blog.mikadosoftware.com/2013/08/20/supporting-a-free-... but send something - a few people standing up are worth supporting.
We are not living in 80's Poland, or 30's Russia, or modern Iran / Syria. So on the spectrum of courage-shown-by-news-editors he is never going to choose between his family and his editorial page, but he is doing better than all the rest of his peers - and we sorely need it.
But no one asked Rudsbridger to sacrifice his family nor was he at risk to. As an editor he should have demanded a court order before destroying source material. He should not now pretend he is a courageous government-defying reporter when he has minimized risk to himself.
Or from head of MI5, head of Civil Service, Attourney Generals, Prime Minister.
There is a lot unknown here, but I think you are assuming he allowed the destruction so that it could not be proven they had it in the first place (making him safer).
There are other explanations - including a desire not to let UK courts have jurisdication over his sources. He is moving the entire reporting to NY - thats a pretty clear indication of his thinking. Choose your jury wisely.
No, what made him safer was obeying the government and also, I presume, removing himself from direct involvement in reporting the story.
That's why the portrayal of courage and rebellion is laughable.
No UK reporter will do any work on surveillance any more, simply because the UK has too much power over the press when it really wants to. Going to court in the US gives him a near certain win, going to court in the UK a near certain loss.
To paraphrase Napoleon: I would rather have a clever editor than a brave one, and a lucky editor than a clever one. He got lucky with the UK destroying the disks in a heavy handed manner.
About Guardian Weekly:
http://www.theguardian.com/weekly/subscribe/about-guardian-w...
It's also interesting that Snowden likely has more freedom. At least he can move around Russia, while Assange is stuck inside a room. (security vs freedom)