I don't think it is. It seems pretty clear you misunderstood. As posted in another comment, this Tweet shows that The Guardian destroyed the hard drives at the government's behest: https://twitter.com/dansabbagh/status/369794535464767488
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.