GCHQ Tells Guardian Newspaper:"You've had your fun..Now We Want the Stuff Back"/Destroys Hard Drives

[KoKo]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/19/david-miranda-schedule7-danger-reporters
David Miranda, schedule 7 and the danger that all reporters now face

As the events in a Heathrow transit lounge – and the Guardian offices – have shown, the threat to journalism is real and growing
Alan Rusbridger--Editor of the Guardian

A little over two months ago I was contacted by a very senior government official claiming to represent the views of the prime minister. There followed two meetings in which he demanded the return or destruction of all the material we were working on. The tone was steely, if cordial, but there was an implicit threat that others within government and Whitehall favoured a far more draconian approach.

The mood toughened just over a month ago, when I received a phone call from the centre of government telling me: "You've had your fun. Now we want the stuff back." There followed further meetings with shadowy Whitehall figures. The demand was the same: hand the Snowden material back or destroy it. I explained that we could not research and report on this subject if we complied with this request. The man from Whitehall looked mystified. "You've had your debate. There's no need to write any more."

During one of these meetings I asked directly whether the government would move to close down the Guardian's reporting through a legal route – by going to court to force the surrender of the material on which we were working. The official confirmed that, in the absence of handover or destruction, this was indeed the government's intention. Prior restraint, near impossible in the US, was now explicitly and imminently on the table in the UK. But my experience over WikiLeaks – the thumb drive and the first amendment – had already prepared me for this moment. I explained to the man from Whitehall about the nature of international collaborations and the way in which, these days, media organisations could take advantage of the most permissive legal environments. Bluntly, we did not have to do our reporting from London. Already most of the NSA stories were being reported and edited out of New York. And had it occurred to him that Greenwald lived in Brazil?

The man was unmoved. And so one of the more bizarre moments in the Guardian's long history occurred – with two GCHQ security experts overseeing the destruction of hard drives in the Guardian's basement just to make sure there was nothing in the mangled bits of metal which could possibly be of any interest to passing Chinese agents. "We can call off the black helicopters," joked one as we swept up the remains of a MacBook Pro.

Whitehall was satisfied, but it felt like a peculiarly pointless piece of symbolism that understood nothing about the digital age. We will continue to do patient, painstaking reporting on the Snowden documents, we just won't do it in London. The seizure of Miranda's laptop, phones, hard drives and camera will similarly have no effect on Greenwald's work.

The state that is building such a formidable apparatus of surveillance will do its best to prevent journalists from reporting on it. Most journalists can see that. But I wonder how many have truly understood the absolute threat to journalism implicit in the idea of total surveillance, when or if it comes – and, increasingly, it looks like "when".

We are not there yet, but it may not be long before it will be impossible for journalists to have confidential sources. Most reporting – indeed, most human life in 2013 – leaves too much of a digital fingerprint. Those colleagues who denigrate Snowden or say reporters should trust the state to know best (many of them in the UK, oddly, on the right) may one day have a cruel awakening.[/b One day it will be their reporting, their cause, under attack. But at least reporters now know to stay away from Heathrow transit lounges.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/19/david-miranda-schedule7-danger-reporters

[sabrina 1]

1. The takeover of the press is now out in the open. They were a lot more subtle

before when they simply had their Corporations BUY IT then CONTROL IT. But the Independent media became a huge problem for them. They could not control it, Wikileaks, Bloggers and other publications from the New Media that began to emerge when the Internet took off.

They thought when they went after Wikileaks for exposing Bank Corruption and stole the records they had, they had successfully reigned in the 'Independent Media' but it is like jello, when they squeeze out one courageous journalist or another, more spring up.

So now they are showing their desperation to hide their wrongdoing very publicly. And in a strange way, this may be their undoing.

[Marrah_G]

2. They are idiots if they didn't have copies

[enlightenment]

3. When I was a teen,

my parent's made weekly sweeps of my room, confiscating drugs (pills and pot . . . it was the deep long-ago . . .)

Every week they found my stash - which, every week, I obligingly deposited in a new location for them to find.

Every week, a doobie and a few pills were ceremoniously flushed down the toilet.

Theatre of the Absurd.


I don't think the Guardian reporters are idiots.

[KoKo]

4. The article explains why their tactics showed clueless desperation

though. You don't have to go to the link...the explanation is in the OP.

Why are they so desperate to get what Snowden has. There must be information that will blow the lid off something they are trying to suppress.

[Marrah_G]

5. Oh I agree

Snowden has to have some very incriminating stuff or at least they THINK he does.

[KurtNYC]

6. or is the point merely intimidation?

Events like this and Miranda show us all that they can come and take or destroy your stuff if you don't do what they want.

[Fire Walk With Me]

7. They've already shut down 1st Amendment peaceful protest (Occupy) via militarized police

and DHS/FBI spying and harassment. Now they're coming for the journalists.

Don't worry, they'll never come for YOU.

[KoKo]

8. I'm hoping this sets off an outcry over here ....but, so far not hearing much.

Maybe the Big US Newspapers have already succumbed to those tactics years ago and so there's no fight left. this has probably been going on long enough now that NSA already has passed along the information that can be used for blackmail of US and EU Reporters and Editors to the FBI (up to their old Hoover tricks) and CIA.

This was so brazen that they seemed to feel there would be no outrage or push back.

And, this is after the huge scandal of Murdoch. Murdoch is still going strong and over here buying up newspapers.

[KoKo]

9. The Week that WAS...In RECAP!

[kentuck]

10. And now...

They are working with our government to control the information at the source.