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Aug 20, 2013

UK officials destroy Guardian hard drives in misguided effort to stop Snowden stories/The Guardian: destroying hard drives allowed us to continue NSA coverage

UK officials destroy Guardian hard drives in misguided effort to stop Snowden stories

Officials from the British intelligence agency GCHQ raided The Guardian's offices to destroy hard drives related to the newspaper's stories about National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden — despite the fact that the information had already been disseminated to other sites around the world. In a chilling post today, Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger said the British government has put increasing pressure on editors to surrender all of the information that Snowden provided to the newspaper and its chief reporter on the stories, Glenn Greenwald. Prior to the destruction, an official reportedly told the paper, "You've had your fun. Now we want the stuff back." News of the raid comes a day after Greenwald's partner was detained for nine hours and questioned under terrorism statutes at Heathrow Airport.
Rusbridger said he explained to the unnamed government officials that there were other copies of the information they sought to destroy outside of England. But the officials insisted on destroying the drives anyway. Rusbridger said The Guardian would not be dissuaded from continuing to report the Snowden stories, but cautioned that intimidation tactics from government officials in Britain and the United States were making work increasingly difficult for journalists. "We are not there yet, but it may not be long before it will be impossible for journalists to have confidential sources," Rusbridger wrote. "Most reporting — indeed, most human life in 2013 — leaves too much of a digital fingerprint."

 

 

Rusbridger: destroying hard drives allowed us to continue NSA coverage

 Guardian editor-in-chief says he agreed to 'slightly pointless' task because newspaper has digital copies outside Britain

Alan Rusbridger, the Guardian editor-in-chief, has said that the destruction of computer hard drives containing information provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden allowed the paper to continue reporting on the revelations instead of surrendering the material to UK courts.
Rusbridger told BBC Radio 4's The World at One on Tuesday that he agreed to the "slightly pointless" task of destroying the devices – which was overseen by two GCHQ officials at the Guardian's headquarters in London – because the newspaper is in possession of digital copies outside Britain.
The move followed weeks of private discussions with Whitehall officials who eventually threatened legal action over the material "unless we handed it back or destroyed it", he said.
"It was a rather bizarre situation in which I explained to them that there were other copies and, as with WikiLeaks, we weren't working in London alone so destroying a copy in London seemed to me a slightly pointless task that didn't take account of the way that digital information works these days," said Rusbridger.
"Given that there were other copies and we could work out of America, which has better laws to protect journalists, I saw no reason not to destroy this material ourselves rather than hand it back to the government."
Rusbridger added that the alternative to destroying the computer hard drives would be "essentially surrendering control of that material" to the courts while fighting a lengthy legal case with only a small prospect of winning.
"It seemed to me fruitless to go through that exercise of fighting that case, which would have meant that we could not write about the Snowden material when there were other copies. So it's simply a matter of transferring our reporting to America," he told The World at One's Martha Kearney.
Rusbridger described as "alarming" the detention of David Miranda, the partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, in Heathrow airport under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act for nine hours on Sunday.
Miranda is threatening legal action against the Home Office and the Metropolitan police unless they agree to return the electronic devices taken from him and not share any material taken from them with others.
"The problem is the use of this little-noticed schedule to the Terrorism Act, because what it does is to say that Britain's ports and transit lounges in airports are an area of Britain where the normal rules don't apply. I think that's what has shocked the rest of the world," said Rusbridger.
"If they were to arrest David Miranda in Heathrow car park they would have to use bits of the law which have checks and balances to protect journalistic material, among other things, but by doing it in a transit lounge they are operating in a kind of stateless way where they can interrogate someone for nine hours, seize whatever they want, under rules that are about terrorism. Once you start conflating terrorism and journalism, as a country I think you're in some trouble."
Rusbridger said the Snowden revelations had started a public debate about fears that the US and UK are on the road to "a much more complete regime of surveillance than anything that was imagined by anybody or by the laws that we have".
"That argument was made to us early on that writing anything about this would be letting the bad guys in on the methods, and that is an effective way of shutting journalists up and saying let's actually not have a public debate," he said.

ANY COMMENTARY FROM GERMANY :
"Guardian"-Affäre

Zuviel James Bond geguckt

Von Jens-Peter Marquardt, NDR, ARD-Hörfunkstudio London
Der "Guardian"-Chefredakteur nennt die Aktion des britischen Geheimdienstes "bizarr", und in der Tat: Sie ist bizarr - und ziemlich lächerlich. Es sieht so aus, als hätten die Regierungsbeamten zusammen mit ihren Geheimdienstagenten zuviel James Bond geguckt.
Da steigen zwei Schlapphüte mit dem Chefredakteur in den Keller des "Guardian" und kommentieren die Zerstörung der Festplatten zufrieden mit den Worten "Jetzt können wir die schwarzen Hubschrauber abbestellen." Es scheint so, als würden die Agenten ihrer Majestät immer noch einen Aston Martin fahren. Haben sie eigentlich keine Ahnung, dass man Dateien auch noch woanders speichern kann?
"Guardian"-Reporter Glenn Greenwald lebt in Rio de Janeiro und muss keine Angst haben, dass die brasilianischen Behörden bei ihm die Festplatten durchsuchen. Edward Snowden hat Asyl in Russland, wo Putin keine Anstalten macht, den Amerikanern und Briten die schmutzige Arbeit abzunehmen. Die amerikanische Regisseurin Laura Poitras, die mit den beiden zusammenarbeitet, lebt jetzt in Berlin, wo sie wohl auch vor Nachstellungen der Behörden sicher ist. Und Wikileaks teilt mit, die Organisation sei im Besitz von Sicherungsdateien. So funktioniert die moderne Medienwelt, und längst nicht mehr so, wie zu Sean Connerys besten 007-Zeiten.

Kein Terrorismus, sonder gute journalistische Arbeit

Selten haben sich die britischen Behörden so täppisch angestellt. Gleichzeitig beweisen sie aber auch, dass sie von Rechtsstaatlichkeit und Pressefreiheit wenig halten. Sie hielten am Wochenende den Lebensgefährten und Arbeitspartner von Greenwald unter einem obskuren Terrorismusverdacht neun Stunden lang auf dem Flughafen fest. Terrorismus? Wo um alle Welt geht es hier um Terrorismus? Weder Snowden noch Greenwald noch sein Partner Miranda laufen mit einem Sprenggürtel durch die Welt.
Sie haben lediglich veröffentlicht, wie massiv die Geheimdienste private Daten kontrollieren und damit wohl zumindest in einigen Ländern gegen die nationalen Gesetze verstoßen. Terrorismus? Nein. Sondern gute journalistische Arbeit - die Medien erfüllen hier vorbildlich ihre Wächterfunktion.

Ein Eigentor der Briten

Und sie werden das weiter tun. Die britischen Behörden erreichen mit ihren lächerlichen Aktionen jedenfalls genau das Gegenteil von dem, was sie eigentlich beabsichtigen. Der "Guardian" wird weiter aus den Snowden-Dateien veröffentlichen, er wird sie nur nicht mehr in London lagern. Reporter Greenwald hatte schon gestern angekündigt, er sei so sauer wegen des Verhaltens der Londoner Polizei gegen seinen Partner, dass er nun noch aggressiver gegen die Geheimdienste arbeiten werde. Die Briten haben eindeutig ein Eigentor geschossen.
Auf den ersten Blick mag man natürlich kritisieren, dass der "Guardian"-Chefredakteur die Agenten in den Keller seiner Redaktion gelassen hat. Auf den zweiten Blick zerfällt diese Kritik. Die Arbeitsfähigkeit des "Guardian" wird dadurch nicht beeinträchtigt. Und die angedrohte Zensur für kommende Enthüllungen hätte Wirklichkeit werden können, weil die Pressefreiheit in Großbritannien weniger geschützt ist als zum Beispiel in Deutschland oder den Vereinigten Staaten.
Außerdem hat der "Guardian" so eine wunderbare Story bekommen, über die die ganze Welt spricht. Und die die britische Regierung ziemlich schlecht aussehen lässt. Was kann einem Chefredakteur eigentlich Besseres passieren?

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