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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsGreenwald: 'Sending a Message': What the US and UK Are Attempting To Do
'Sending a Message': What the US and UK Are Attempting To DoState-loyal journalists seem to believe in a duty to politely submit to bullying tactics from political officials
Wednesday, August 21, 2013 * The Guardian * by Glenn Greenwald
Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger on Monday night disclosed the remarkable news that UK authorities, several weeks ago, threatened the Guardian UK with prior restraint if they did not destroy all of their materials provided by Edward Snowden, and then sent agents to the basement of the paper's offices to oversee the physical destruction of hard drives. The Guardian has more details on that episode today, and MSNBC's Chris Hayes interviewed the Guardian's editor-in-chief about it last night. As Rusbriger explains, this behavior was as inane as it was thuggish: since this is 2013, not 1958, destroying one set of a newspaper's documents doesn't destroy them all, and since the Guardian has multiple people around the world with copies, they achieved nothing but making themselves look incompetently oppressive.
But conveying a thuggish message of intimidation is exactly what the UK and their superiors in the US national security state are attempting to accomplish with virtually everything they are now doing in this matter. On Monday night, Reuters' Mark Hosenball reported the following about the 9-hour detention of my partner under a terrorism law, all with the advanced knowledge of the White House:
One US security official told Reuters that one of the main purposes of the British government's detention and questioning of Miranda was to send a message to recipients of Snowden's materials, including the Guardian, that the British government was serious about trying to shut down the leaks."
~snip~
... vowing to report on the nefarious secret spying activities of a large government - which is what I did - is called "journalism", not "revenge". As the Washington Post headline to Andrea Peterson's column on Monday explained: "No, Glenn Greenwald didn't 'vow vengeance.' He said he was going to do his job." She added:
"Greenwald's point seems to have been that he was determined not to be scared off by intimidation. Greenwald and the Guardian have already been publishing documents outlining surveillance programs in Britain, and Greenwald has long declared his intention to continue publishing documents. By doing so, Greenwald isn't taking 'vengeance.' He's just doing his job."
But here's the most important point: the US and the UK governments go around the world threatening people all the time. It's their modus operandi. They imprison whistleblowers. They try to criminalize journalism. They threatened the Guardian with prior restraint and then forced the paper to physically smash their hard drives in a basement. They detained my partner under a terrorism law, repeatedly threatened to arrest him, and forced him to give them his passwords to all sorts of invasive personal information - behavior that even one of the authors of that terrorism law says is illegal, which the Committee for the Protection of Journalists said yesterday is just "the latest example in a disturbing record of official harassment of the Guardian over its coverage of the Snowden leaks", and which Human Rights Watch says was "intended to intimidate Greenwald and other journalists who report on surveillance abuses." And that's just their recent behavior with regard to press freedoms: it's to say nothing of all the invasions, bombings, renderings, torture and secrecy abuses for which that bullying, vengeful duo is responsible over the last decade.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/08/21-4
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)gopiscrap
(23,674 posts)fascist state intimidation
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)WillyT
(72,631 posts)Hey PTB... FUCK... YOU...
polly7
(20,582 posts)kelliekat44
(7,759 posts)And I am not buying their crap either.
iamthebandfanman
(8,127 posts)are they saying they destroyed a full sized PC/Mac as well as a MacBook ? Because that red PCB full sized PCI-E video card shown in the picture is not from a MacBook.
99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)that's why I chose NOT to reproduce it in the OP; as I had geeks
quibbling about it endlessly on another string. arghh.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023498621
iamthebandfanman
(8,127 posts)doesn't help the articles validity when it labels something one thing but its clearly not whats stated...
I have no idea why people are dribbling none stop about raid arrays and controllers...
none of those things there are that either...
you have a random computer parts just laying together...
sheesh, I could probably replicate it almost completely (assuming I wanted to take a heatsink off a video card and put dust on everything) and I don't even own a MacBook (nor have I ever)
very unfortunate choice to either use the photo without asking someone with at least a lil computer hardware knowledge
99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)nor am I the person who chose the picture.
I'm just the messenger, so lecturing me about
the bad picture is to little avail.
But I'm not taking it personally, so it's all good.