The Remains Of A Macbook: pic of one of the stranger episodes in history of digital-age journalism

[kpete]

So, here's a picture from one of the stranger episodes in the history of digital-age journalism - the remains of a Macbook that once contained copies of some of the NSA and GCHQ secret files leaked by Edward Snowden.


The remains of a Macbook that held information leaked by Edward Snowden to the Guardian and was destroyed at the behest of the UK government. Photograph: Roger Tooth


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Here's an interesting take on the destruction of that Macbook, from the White House.

Spencer Ackerman, US national security editor at the Guardian, tweets that a spokesman has said that it's hard to imagine such a thing being "appropriate" in the US.

WH spokesman on govt destroying media hard drives in US: "very difficult to imagine a scenario in which that would be appropriate here."

— Spencer Ackerman (@attackerman) August 20, 2013

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Julian Borger, the Guardian's diplomatic editor, has now filed a piece about it (which you can read in full here). http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/20/nsa-snowden-files-drives-destroyed-london

A snippet:

A senior editor and a Guardian computer expert used angle grinders and other household tools to pulverise the hard drives and memory chips on which the encrypted files had been stored.

As they worked, they were watched intently by technicians from the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) who took notes and photographs, but who left empty-handed.

The editor of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, had earlier informed government officials that other copies of the files existed outside the country and that the Guardian was neither the sole recipient nor steward of the files leaked by Snowden, a former NSA contractor. But the government insisted that the material be either destroyed or surrendered.

Twelve days after the destruction of the files, the Guardian reported on US funding of GCHQ eavesdropping operations and published a portrait of working life in the British agency's huge "doughnut" building in Cheltenham

MORE:
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/2013/aug/20/david-miranda-detention-latest-developments

[onehandle]

1. If anyone wants the information, just ask China and Russia.

They have all of his files.