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

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

138 points by tippytop 12 years ago | 36 comments

nwp90 12 years ago |

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...

viraptor 12 years ago | |

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.

youngtaff 12 years ago | |

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.

joezydeco 12 years ago | |

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

firloop 12 years ago |

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_v2 12 years ago |

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...

pinaceae 12 years ago | |

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.

lostlogin 12 years ago | | |

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.

jlgreco 12 years ago | | |

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.

boi_v2 12 years ago | | |

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.

coldcode 12 years ago |

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.

state 12 years ago | |

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

coldcode 12 years ago | | |

Yeah they think the are a roadmap.

alexeisadeski3 12 years ago | | |

It describes Stalinism as it already existed at the time.

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

norswap 12 years ago |

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

flaktrak 12 years ago |

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!

ihsw 12 years ago | |

> 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.

oceanstone 12 years ago |

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

snitko 12 years ago | |

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.

oceanstone 12 years ago | | |

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.

beedogs 12 years ago | |

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.

lostlogin 12 years ago | | |

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...

youngtaff 12 years ago | | |

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

snitko 12 years ago | |

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

oceanstone 12 years ago | | |

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