U.K. Government Thought Destroying Guardian Hard Drives Would Stop Stories(washingtonpost.com)

U.K. Government Thought Destroying Guardian Hard Drives Would Stop Stories

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/19/u-k-government-thought-destroying-guardian-hard-drives-would-stop-snowden-stories/

7 comments

nwp9013년 전

I don't think there's any indication that they actually thought destroying the hard drives would stop anything; seems more likely that:

1) They didn't want anyone else to get access to the material that the Guardian had but would not end up publishing;

2) The rules said that that's what they had to do, so they did it;

3) That's all they could do on "their patch", so CYA;

4) A little intimidation would never go amiss, surely...

viraptor13년 전

Also, there was always a possibility that the guys in the guardian slipped somewhere. Didn't have a copy of all the files, some password/key was stored only on that drive, note/edited information that's easy to forget was only on that drive, etc.

Backups are hard - if there was even a slight chance that they destroyed the only copy of something, why not go ahead with it? They're not that stupid.

youngtaff13년 전

I see the drives being destroyed as a compromise i.e. spooks wanted them, Guardian refused, so a they agreed to destroy them instead.

I sense the Guardian piece doesn't tell the whole story.

joezydeco13년 전

5) Now if the Guardian is seen in possession of this material, would that constitute lying to the authorities?

firloop13년 전

Here's the original story at the Guardian, which is definitely worth a read.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/19/david-m...

boi_v213년 전

Sounds quite similar to me.

"As Gestapo chief of operations and later (after 1939) its chief, Müller played a leading role in the detection and suppression of all forms of resistance to the Nazi regime.[12] Under his leadership, the Gestapo succeeded in infiltrating and to a large extent destroying the underground networks of the Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party by the end of 1935."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_M%C3%BCller_%28Gestapo...

pinaceae13년 전

oh yes absolutely. just like the Gestapo. and the NKWD. i mean this is like a photocopy. sending people to concentration camps/gulags, murdering families. it is so 1:1 it is downright scary. you're so brave. so brave.

lostlogin13년 전

Partaking in arguably illegal wars. Killing and torturing innocents at military bases. Kidnapping people and flying them off to be tortured (mainly a US hobby, but helped by the UK), lying to press and parliament about what is happening, helping out dictators etc. There are parallels to be found.

jlgreco13년 전

boi_v2 noted a similarity between specific actions. No reasonably intelligent adult could read his comment and come to the conclusion that he thinks they are gassing Jews; the exaggeration is your own. Take your "bravery" bullshit back to reddit.

pinaceae13년 전

bullshit. you don't bring up the specific example of the gestapo for comparison on how they filed their reports. his intent was to align the current actions of the UK/US intelligence services with the Gestapo, conjuring a very specific image.

which is laughable in the very redditesque way you just brought up.

jlgreco13년 전

"Bullshit" yourself.

> "sending people to concentration camps/gulags, murdering families."

Those are things you said, not him. You uncharitably read an absurd statement of equivalence where he merely made a comparison.

The refusal to see parallels or accept comparisons to dark periods in recent history unless they are 100% equivalent is a disease that threatens our ability to learn lessons from the past. If we only accept comparisons to the Gestapo when they begin gassing people en-masse, then it is too late.

pinaceae13년 전

so if someone mentions the Gestapo they explicitely do not mean to bring up the overall context of the third reich, gotcha.

i am an austrian of polish decent. for me bringing up the fucking nazis in this context is completely laughable.

the securitate? maybe. the stasi? same. but only internet nerd rage immediately brings up nazis, fascism, etc. the whole discussion here at HN is an exercise in hyperbolic bullshit.

boi_v213년 전

My point was to emphasise the similarities between the text and what is actually happening. The text talks about how Gestapo suppressed all forms of resistance and how they've done that by destroying the network of communications of these resistances, a quite alarming similarity that in my opinion has to be observed.

coldcode13년 전

Why bother to read to 1984 or Animal Farm anymore. We see in every bloody story these days. This story is perfectly 1984 in a nutshell.

state13년 전

It seems to me that some people read those books and didn't understand them to be cautionary.

coldcode13년 전

Yeah they think the are a roadmap.

alexeisadeski313년 전

It describes Stalinism as it already existed at the time.

1984 was neither prophetic nor cautionary; it was merely descriptive.

norswap13년 전

So private property is down too. Do these guys keep a todo-list?

flaktrak13년 전

These people are dinosaurs. That is the most scary aspect. Imagine if Dinosaurs still existed but new how to search internet databases to find their targets!

ihsw13년 전

> These legislators and business leaders are dinosaurs.

This would more accurately portray the threat that they pose -- they're people in charge of running the world, and their backwards notions of how the world should operate will lead us down a very dark hole of no return. They need to be stopped quickly.

oceanstone13년 전

What goods or services could be boycotted, to protest these actions by the British Gestapo?

Largest UK companies (that seemed recognizable): HSBC, Shell, BP, Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays, GlaxoSmithKline, Unilever, Vodafone, Anglo American (thought the name was funny for a huge British company), Prudential, Coldplay

Edit: Added services

Edit 2: Added list of largest UK companies

Edit 3: Added Coldplay

snitko13년 전

Money. The less government money you use, the less they can tax. Cash or Bitcoin. Don't give them a cut. I wouldn't advocate tax evasion, although the truth is, if you pay taxes, you finance this bullshit.

oceanstone13년 전

I'm actually an American. It looks like Unilever, Shell, BP, and HSBC are all based in Britain. Those brands are pretty popular in the USA, so that was an interesting find.

beedogs13년 전

Does the UK actually make anything anymore? I thought they were like the US and had become a "service-based" economy. I guess you could boycott visiting.

lostlogin13년 전

A shiite ton of military equipment - Britain is a big arms exporter.

Here is a story about exports to repressive regimes, this bit alone is troubling, and a believe it's just a fraction of exports. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/blood-money-uk...

youngtaff13년 전

Cars, loads of them and we even export cars built by Japanese car companies to Japan

snitko13년 전

Why boycott companies? It's not companies who did this.

oceanstone13년 전

Companies based in Britain bring in tax revenue, which then funds the British authorities, who look to be rather corrupt.

snitko13년 전

Right. So what happens if a company decides to protest and not pay taxes? Government is going to make its life very difficult, to say the least. How is this a company's fault if a gang of bandits steal money from it to finance nasty things?

It's like saying "Let's not go to this bar anymore, because mafia comes in every now and then and confiscates profit from the owner". Owner is not responsible and the mafia is going to invade every bar you switch to, because it follows the money.

oceanstone13년 전

Tax evasion isn't a good way to protest. If it were, you'd see a lot of people jumping on that bandwagon, just so they could have more money at the end of the year! Imagine that being pitched on a shareholder's meeting. "This fiscal year... we are going to protest our taxes. We project a 30% increase in profits."

snitko13년 전

It's not a good way to protest and people don't jump on that bandwagon simply because government is gonna make their lives very very unpleasant. That's why I say that I wouldn't advocate it - it is immoral to demand from people that they complicate their lives by engaging into a fight with IRS or whatever your tax agency is in your country. But essentially, taxes are forced payments. If it wasn't so, I guarantee you, 90% (if not more) would stop paying.

oceanstone13년 전

You bring up an interesting idea. What if taxes were completely voluntary... would anyone pay them? Would anyone elect to pay sales tax if it were not required? I feel like the world might resemble Mad Max if this were the case.

snitko13년 전

If taxes were voluntary, they wouldn't be taxes anymore, but rather payments for services. No one would have to elect anybody - not more so than we need to elect officials who decide which car everyone should buy - people would just start paying to service providers they like (includes police, fire department, education, law and yes, roads). As soon as this service provider stops doing a good job, people would stop paying. That would be a real accountability tied to actual profit, not to some vague promise by a government official who doesn't give a shit after he's elected.

And of course, the usual question - but what about the poor who can't afford it? Well, if a democratic system means that the majority of people agree that helping the poor is a good idea, I see nothing impossible in those very same people giving money to charities voluntarily, without any system forcing them to. Except that in a voluntary system the charities are also much more accountable than a government, because as soon as this charity fails to deliver what was promised, people stop donating.

lostlogin13년 전

Pick other issues you have concerns about (human rights, animal rights, dubious banking practices, tobacco etc) and you get 2 birds with one stone.

oceanstone13년 전

Totally. There are a lot of reasons to boycott a few of those companies. The tail end of your comment reminds me an animal related reason to boycott BP.

takluyver13년 전

If less tax is raised in UK, do you think that's actually going to stop things like this happening? Of course not, it's just going to make life slightly shittier for British people. The way to fix this is to make it a big enough political issue in the UK that the government backs off.

[deleted]13년 전