The ONLY thing I would say to all that is that the IRA actually existed, and civilians were constantly attacked by them, for over 30 years. The IRA even managed to blow up the UK government. The threat was real. IMHO, the AQ threat is 99% bogus. It all hangs on 9/11, and the London Underground bombings. One single event in the US, then the UK. Yes I know other events have been attributed to AQ, but frankly, one by one, they all fall down as actual organised terrorist activity. Its mostly pissed off people aligning themselves with Islam or AQ. Frankly, now journalist's partners are considered a threat to national security and arrested as terrorists, we can see how lose and there for useless the term "terrorism" now is. Its is not even slightly the same as the IRA. They were "proper" terrorists.
There for, one can understand (note: not condone, excuse, etc) the extreme reaction of the UK government. Although, for all that time, the US was funding the IRA. So........er.......
Funny you quote HL2. It's a quite subversive game. I only recently had the chance to play the HL1 expansion packs - yay being a mac gamer - and they struck me as having a quite anti-authority message, too.
It's only recently that it occurred to me that HL2 brainwashed a generation of gamers into believing that photography drones were naturally the enemy. Very interesting.
Not sure I would agree with "brainwashed" as that is a little strong and dystopian authoritarianism is a common trope in games and sci-fi.
I think where HL2 sets itself apart is that it thoroughly builds out the world and details in it so that you get a slight (very slight) feeling of what it would be like to exist in that world.
On that level I regard its value as a work of art to be greater than its value as a game (though both are high).
Nah, we behaved worse, but only to Irish people, so the privileged English public and press felt free to ignore it. What's new is that now the public (and the press) is "the enemy".
It would be great if many more people use a subscription as a form of support. The Guardian has been making a loss for a number of years now and the next logical step to silence them would be to put financial pressure on them. Now would be the perfect time for the Guardian to launch a web subscription level (they only seem to do print + IPad sub atm.)
The IRA were actually murdering people in Northern Ireland, not just "shooting up the landscape", and as already pointed out "we" behaved worse, in addition we had a level of privacy invasion at NI borders and within NI borders the rest of the UK and Ireland have, even now, no experience of.
You don't get a full pat down when you visit Marks & Spencer, you don't walk to school with a soldier looking at you down the barrel of a rifle.
How much did he actually stand up though? The UK gov told him to destroy source material and presumably stop publishing. He said "okay", will have no more involvement in the story, thereby removing risk to himself and instead will let someone else take the heat.
All the while he gets to pretend he is a courageous reporter, standing up to power, when the only person really doing that is Greenwald.
From the article: "forcing a newspaper’s editor into exile over a report it doesn’t like sounds like a story from the 18th century reign of King George III, not of a supposed 21st century democracy."
Sadly, as an American, I have to point out that the main impetus seems to be coming from this side of the Atlantic this time and both places' governing bodies seem to be complicit and stepping on the gas.
Citizens overcame the tyranny last time. Let's hope we can do it again this time.
On another note: The government itself is showing either it has something to hide, in which case it's showing that it's lying to us, or they have nothing to hide, in which case here's your answer to "What's the problem if you have nothing to hide?"
The citizenry will not overcome the tyranny because most of the citizens are either (1) unaware of how the power effects them (2) do not understand it.
I think it's actually worse than that. Obviously I have only anecdotal evidence, but as far as I can tell, a large minority (maybe even a small majority) of people support what the NSA has been doing. They don't necessarily understand the technical details, but they completely understand the implications and consequences and they explicitly approve. When I go outside of my usual online and real life social circles the attitude about government surveillance is shockingly complicit.
I'm starting to believe the only way to change this isn't to get people outraged or make them understand the effects of pervasive surveillance on freedom. The solution is to instead make it clear just how ineffective it is at its stated purpose of keeping us all safe.
I disagree, if you make clear how ineffective these surveillance measures are, the natural response for the powers that be is that they need MORE power. "See, if we were able to arrest anyone who spoke about terrorism online or by phone, we could've prevented this attack." "If only we were allowed to jail anyone indefinitely we could've disrupted this sleeper cell."
If anything, this is how this whole power grab got started in the first place. "If we could spy on everyone we could've stopped 9/11."
3 - They don't care. 4 - they think it's a good idea because they would never stray from the boundaries set by their benevolent tribal leaders, so this only affects other people
. And when it starts to affect them they'll find out that everyone just assumes they're 'other' and does not care about their fate because they think the same way.
> Sadly, as an American, I have to point out that the main impetus seems to be coming from this side of the Atlantic this time and both places' governing bodies seem to be complicit and stepping on the gas.
Now that they basically consider journalism to be terrorism, if I subscribe to The Guardian am I "funding terrorism"?
I've gone from angry, to completely and utterly 'defeated'. I think I agree with Groklaw where the only way to win, is not to play. Get off the net and go bush. Take up golf (I hate golf). No idea. It's like being back in school being beaten up by the bullies for being a geek, no words can make it stop, nothing I say or do will make a difference.
I know you think you're being very clever, with your disingenuous "A LITTLE", but ironically it really is only a little hyperbole in the grandparent comment. For fuck's sake, partners of journalists in the UK are being intimidated by the government. If I was the journalist I'd be very hesitant to travel at all. This is in bloody england, remember, the progenitor of everything we think about when we think "the west".
Open your eyes. Look how far things have come. This is not about LOLPOINTS™ on the internet, this is actually getting pretty damn real, and people are worried.
If you think that equating journalism with terrorism is only slight hyperbole then you have no place in reasonable discussion.
It is excessive hyperbole that helps nobody and serves only to polarise discussions. In reality the statements so far indicate that they stopped Miranda in order to determine if he was carrying information likely to be of use to terrorists. This seems to be an illegitimate use of the powers, which we'll find out soon.
That is a reasonable take on the matters, not 'JOURNALISM NOW IS TERRORISM!!!!!'
I can't tell if you're arguing against me, or the UK government - you know, the ones who detained the partner of a journalist using anti-terrorism law. That is where this connection was made.
Of course I think their actions are outrageous and unreasonable. In the light of them, however, hypothesising that supporting The Guardian financially may be construed by those in power as financing terrorism is mere extrapolation.
> In the light of them, however, hypothesising that supporting The Guardian financially may be construed by those in power as financing terrorism is mere extrapolation.
Do you think repeating yourself makes you right? It does not. You've not earned any kind of right to dismiss the matter with statements like that.
I actually looked at the age of your account before replying because I thought you were a troll. Unfortunately it looks like those suspicions were well-founded. 822 days - wow, you bided your time.
> Do you think repeating yourself makes you right? It does not. You've not earned any kind of right to dismiss the matter with that kind of language.
You are not the arbiter of discussion.
> I actually looked at the age of your account before replying because I suspected you to be a troll. Unfortunately it looks like those suspicious were well-founded. 822 days old - wow, you bided your time.
Ironically I was just discussing how irrational conspiracy theorists use contradictory information to confirm their existing beliefs. Thank you for providing me with a perfect example.
I honestly have no idea what you are talking about. What conspiracy theories? We are talking about the frigging news.
Do you know what a troll is? It's someone who asserts deliberately stupid/annoying arguments to get a rise out of everyone else, who are trying to have a sincere discussion.
In other words, someone who sounds exactly like you. I won't be wasting any more time here.
> Do you know what a troll is? It's someone who asserts deliberately stupid/annoying arguments to get a rise out of everyone else, who are trying to have a sincere discussion.
> In other words, someone who sounds exactly like you
I am calling for rational discussion and no hyperbole. You must be practically incapable of reading to confuse yourself in such a manner.
David was detained using a law explicitly written for use against terrorists, to detain them in airports for up to nine hours without counsel. Also to not answer questions would land him in prison.
So... it's not hyperbolic at all to say that journalism is equated with terrorism, because the state us using laws designed for use against terrorists against journalists.
> David was detained using a law explicitly written for use against terrorists
Incorrect, it is applicable to all travellers entering the United Kingdom
> to detain them in airports for up to nine hours without counsel
Incorrect, he refused counsel.
> Also to not answer questions would land him in prison.
There's no real evidence of this, there is a 'must not interfere' clause but it has never been tested.
> So... it's not hyperbolic at all to say that journalism is equated with terrorism, because the state us using laws designed for use against terrorists against journalists.
> Wake up.
Could you use more of a cliché? It's hyperbole, you have just proven as much by your complete ignorance on the subject.
If you aren't permitted counsel of your choice (and he wasn't) but only counsel selected by the police (which he was offered), then you are effectively denied counsel.
> You may as well claim duty solicitors are in the palm of the Police.
While there is still a potential agency problem, duty solicitors (or, in American parlance, public defenders) aren't an alternative to counsel of choice, they exist to provide the choice to have some counsel to people who otherwise would have none, without denying them the choice of securing any of their own to the extent they can.
Providing the option of a duty solicitor is not, then, at all the same as denying someone access to willing counsel of their choice.
> David was detained using a law explicitly written for use against terrorists
It was written for use against terrorism, not against terrorists. It is notable because it doesn't require any suspicion that the target actually is a terrorist. So targeting a journalist under it isn't equating journalism with terrorism, because it is not, and never has been, a requirement of the law that the police have any basis to think you are a terrorist to target you under the law.
This title is completely misleading and paints the government here in a false light. It is clear to me from the original article that the GCHQ staff were ensuring that hard drives ALREADY slated for destruction by the Guardian were complying with their required destruction process for classified information. They were not destroying hard drives owned by a private corporation without their consent or seizing hard drives. I know it is tempting to read only one side of a story and jump on reactionary headlines, but let's try to continue giving benefit of the doubt to both parties like rational humans.
Hmm, I don't think that's entirely true - supposedly they were told "You've had your debate. There's no need to write any more." and "You've had your fun. Now we want the stuff back." Those quotes suggest they didn't intent on destroying their computers with a copy of the data they were working on.
I don't think it is. It seems pretty clear you misunderstood. As posted in another comment, this Tweet shows that The Guardian destroyed the hard drives at the government's behest: https://twitter.com/dansabbagh/status/369794535464767488
This is all very unclear to me. There's quite a bit indignation here which may be clouding people's rational assessment of the situation.
The Guardian has clear motive to play up any interaction like this with the government. That doesn't mean they would, but I'm not going to suspend critical assessment of the situation just because it plays to be beliefs.
The ratio of verified information to editorializing rants is very low here, at the moment.
The Guardian has been (together with the Scotsman by the way) a source of inspiration over the last decade or more.
To see them intimidated like this by thugs that could have walked right out of something by Bulgakov or even Kafka is a sobering prospect.
It translates into: the free press is now classed an enemy of the state and equates to terrorism.
I've lived in Poland before the iron curtain came down, in the years when Jaruzelski ruled the country and when Solidarnosc was just beginning to form, the free press was classed an enemy of the state there as well. Mere posession of an illegal book or paper could get you into a lot of trouble.
The state sanctioned media were extremely circumspect in their reporting of what was going on in Gdansk and Gdynia but word trickled out and slowly Polish people everywhere started to see light at the end of the tunnel.
Reagan, the Afghan war and Gorbachev all played a part in the fall of the Soviet Union. But Poland and especially Solidarity, Wałęsa and Popiełuszko deserve a good chunk of the credit too.
A not so visible part of all of this is that the free press in Poland (called the samizdat) spread not only books but also 10's of thousands of copies of the underground newspaper Solidarnosc, many of which were read by multiple people, passed from hand to hand to trusted friends. These were the only counterweight to state media (newspaper, radio, television) and the contrast between the two was stark.
I wonder if the Solidarity movement would have gotten off the ground as well as it did and whether Poland would have made the early move to freedom without such a free press (and in some cases it wasn't even a press but simply hand-copying or re-typing!).
It is the only historical change that I have had the privilege of observing at very close quarters, so my experience is limited. But a free press to me is a must have, it is as important as having a system of government, and to have a free press we must have journalists and newspapers that are free to operate.
Otherwise one of these days we'll have to resort to underground presses like in the days of communism in Poland, press freedom is very important no matter who governs you, and government officials intimidating the press is a very bad sign.
In David Hoffman's excellent book "The Dead Hand: Reagan, Gorbachev and the Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race" he describes how Reagan and John Paul II came up with a plan that saw the smuggling of large quantities of office equipment (photocopies, faxes etc.) into Poland.
Yeah right, we British might well need the skills of such immigrants to survive freely. Shame we dont have much of a tradition of immigrants from France...
Hmmmm.... The British (Or US) Resistance, any one? Really annoy our right wings by taking inspiration from the "evil surrender monkey" French? Or too ironic?
What you mean competing political organizations that where as concerned with internal politics and doing over the opposition as fighting the germans.
The representation of the Resistance vs the Communist Resistance in 'Allo 'Allo! is not that far from the fact and internal infighting between royalist and communist is also a theme in Captain Corelli's Mandolin.
Shouldn't we be doing more to discuss the nature of classified material that was exposed by the press, rather than just whether the "free press" is a good thing? Isn't there a continuum between reporting on e.g. D-Day invasion plans two days before and a judge who accepted cash to issue an injunction to stop vote counting in a contested election? And wouldn't the press be guilty of treason for the former, but fourth-branch status for the latter?
Why shouldn't we know about our own governments spying on us? Why shouldn't we be informed about how our government is governing?
The US Constitution, at least, was written in remembrance of the privations of an occupying army. The country was founded on the belief that the people are sovereign. If the people are to be sovereign, then they need to know what the government is doing. This is why we have freedom of the press, etc., and why this right is more important than any short-term goal.
The governments of the US and UK are acting like occupying armies. They disregard the rule of law, act arbitrarily, arrogantly, and without accountability. Fixing this is more important than any marginal security the NSA's secrecy provides. It's probably worth more than everything the NSA provides altogether.
It's been said here on HN, that if the anti-surveillance crowd were really serious, and constituted a good chunk of the voting public, then they would get organized like: Pro-Lifers, the Pro-Choice, Pro Gun, Civil Rights, etc. But it sounds like you are saying that your adversaries are agencies who by definition must act in secret, and there is no amount of political advocacy that can engage them on their level. It's only through some type of hacker-war, which you analogize to the revolution, that your concerns can be addressed?
I wasn't advocating a revolution, I think we can fix this inside the system we have. But I think that because we do have the means to allow us to fix it, like freedom of the press.
This episode bothers me in a different way than most violations of basic human rights. Because the violation is around privacy/secrecy, the violating entities have to attack the very means we have set up to correct violations. It's like a virus that attacks the immune system, something to be taken more seriously than the actual damage done, because it destroys the ecosystem's ability to correct other violations.
In any case, I was simply encouraging you to actually say something, rather than just say what sorts of things we should say, and then demonstrating what I meant.
I don't see any progress toward fixing this from within the system. Snowden and WikiLeaks are more analogous to an exiled resistance group than to people trying to work within the system. MLK stayed right here and got arrested and murdered.
Surveillance won't be a major political issue unless it tangibly affects a lot of people in a negative way. That's just not happening now. Most people don't care. But there are other things they do care about because they feel the effects.
I have no problem with allowances given to intelligence agencies at a time of war, however I do not recall that the UK or USA have declared war on anyone, let alone anyone whom the information pertains too.
Following the admission of the CIA and MI5 involvement in the 1953 military coup in Iran, and this has already been known/suspected but the war really wasn't on terrorism.
In the past the definition of public interest was much clearer because nationality was such a defining factor in how you would be treated. A friendly German in Britain during the war was still locked up even if they were no threat. Civilians were killed because they lived in a particular country rather than the ideology they supported. Identity is much more globalized and more diverse than in the past, and it is unreasonable to tie people down to a single national interest. The press need to consider what is in the public interest for the whole world.
I understand where you're coming from, but I just don't see how a more globally integrated society can be used as an argument to exempt members of the press, who are physically located in a nation, from being subject to the laws of that nation. We still manage to have international trade despite the fact that each nation has their own laws regarding money and trade, so a news organization (or reporter), like a business (or individual), can relocate itself to a country more favorable to its agenda.
There is a big difference between being concerned, advocating for, and helping those in other nations, yet still being a citizen of your nation, and imagining yourself as a global citizen who is above the laws of any one nation.
Agree 100%. Ironically terrorists give exactly the same "public interest" defense for their actions; appealing to a higher power than national interest. Personally I like the approach that Google adopts of having an overriding ethos, but also respecting local laws. The risk is that government will not be able to tell the difference between a noble ethos and a perverted terrorist one. I don't know what the solution to that is. Ignoring human rights is not the solution.
Yes. We absolutely should. But I personally think the actions by the state (completely ignoring due process and right to trial prior to the acquisition and destruction of a private entity's property) are even more treasonous.
At least these times are useful to find out which publications have the interests of the public at heart. I will cancel my subscription of the (shockingly silent) Economist and get a Guardian subscription instead.
Back in the day, I used the cablegate affair to gauge the "balls" of all the publications that were involved in the coordinated release. It might interest some of you that only El País had no "we're sorry but we have to do this because we are journalists" article in it.
All this Gaurdian praise neglects the fact that they have had all of their exclusives handed to them over the past few years, from WikiLeaks to Snowden... and for no good reason other than that's who it was given to last time.
If papers such as the independent, etc. had been given this information, im sure there professionalism would have been the same or higher. Outside of handed-on-a-platter reporting, the Guardian has massively cocked up in the past (leading to the arrest of sources, etc.).
That is true to some extent, but for UK local news they still do dogged investigating. The biggest example being the phone hacking scandal at Murdoch newspapers[1] . That police investigation would never have been reopened if not for the Guardian's reporting (they did make errors there too, but some of those I'd attribute to the unwise idea of allowing the showbiz gossip columnist to write about politics and police investigations…[2])
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_of_the_World_phone_hackin... The whole story goes far beyond what is mentioned in that article: huge corruption in the Met, an axe murder in a london car park and of course a government communications director, his prior involvement in the hacking and his affair with a certain newspaper executive
As that rightly states, D-Notices are requests to not publish. They have no legal standing, though they are frequently obeyed. (One relatively reason example was the D-Notice concerning Prince Harry's military deployments — for the sake of his safety and of those serving alongside him.)
What's really disconcerting is that the other outlets have decided this isn't sufficiently "in the public interest" as to disobey the notice.
Does that have more to do with the G. pushing it as a "unique selling point"? I dont know what the press landscape would look like if the indie/etc. had been given the exclusives, but I suspect it would be the same in reverse.
Journalists are particularly cynical people constantly chasing after anything that will get their by-lines in front of faces.. i dont think we're looking at a paper which has suddenly found its 21st C. political morals, but rather a paper that has suddenly found whistle-blowers queuing up at their door.
That doesn't change the fact that the Guardian is standing up for press freedom, and they're doing it very well. I'm sure there are other newspapers that would have done the same, but that in no way lessens what the Guardian is doing.
This seems like the digital equivalent of adding skulls to your officer's caps -- how have these guys not realised that they're the baddies yet? ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU )
The use of skull and death motif goes back the Napoleonic wars with Brunswick Hussars. Hitler and the Nazis where very good at nicking their imagery - I suspect Hindus are still at bit pissed off over the swastika
Actually, it goes all the way back to the War of Austrian Succession and Prussian Husaren-Regiment Nr. 5.
As a long-time student of history I get very annoyed when Nazi symbology is presented as something they invented, particularly when used to demonstrate that we should have known they were evil to begin with. They ripped all their shit off from someone else, and some of it is only viewed as evil today because of them.
Perhaps if the issue was brought to the courts the Guardian may have become subject to a court order (let's say, a gag order), which even if violated in the US could have lead the Guardian to be in contempt. I think in this case a small retreat was more effective than a direct confrontation.
What is this trying to accomplish? Did they really think the Guardian has the only copy of that data? They couldn't really believe that, could they, after the Guardian pretty much explicitly told them it wasn't true. So they're just government thugs playing whack-a-mole? Confiscate some usb sticks here, smash some Guardian storage devices there...
If they can't ask the Guardian to overwrite the drives a few times and expect the Guardian to comply with that, what good does physically destroying the drives do? The Guardian could download the encrypted data from some (backup) cloud storage location and have it back in an hour.
> What is this trying to accomplish? Did they really think the Guardian has the only copy of that data?
Of course not. The idea was to frighten people who haven't been obedient and to create a lot of costs to reduce the profitability of running stories on unwelcome subjects.
"One U.S. security official told Reuters that one of the main purposes of the British government's detention and questioning of Miranda" [note: using a clear abuse of a terrorism law] "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."
I agree, this seems to be all for show. The first thing that came through my mind when I read the title was "offsite backup". Makes even stranger really...
Can't imagine how this went down in person. Group of police turn up and tell you that they're going to destroy all your working media. How would you even go about authenticating such a ridiculous claim?
It's like they've never heard of off-site backups.
In all seriousness, though, reading about the smashed MacBook Pro has me reviewing our Chubb business operations and equipment insurance.
It excludes acts of terrorism and terrorism related activity. If jackboots show up demanding to physically demolish servers in any of our dozen datacenters around the world, claiming Section 7 or Patriot Act, will our insurance replace them? A government's categorization of data as terror related could quickly put a cloud provider out hundreds of thousands or millions (mass video storage is expensive) in unrecoverable costs.
We're covered for business continuity if the DMCA or SOPA troops show up and make off with servers like with Mega. But looks like we're not covered if the insurance company can prove a government called the destruction terror related. Ugh.
If the iTunes agreement contains a clause about not using it to make nuclear weapons (it does), you can be sure as anything most insurance policies are void if you lose things to government action. I had a flick through mine some time ago, the only ones I can remember are falling spacecraft and floods.
Think of this as 'sending a message'. It's backfiring spectacularly but the intended goal was evidently not the destruction of data, they can't be that stupid.
Thugs. That's the first thing in my mind. The UK government employs thugs to intimidate people and destroy property.
This kind of subject makes it really hard not to Godwin the thread right away., because you know what other government used thugs to intimidate and destroy.
Am I the only one that finds this part more Orwellian than any of the actual leaks? To me there's a fundamental difference (though I hate both) between collecting data, and attacking people who politically disagree with you and attempting to destroy data you don't like.
Book burnings general don't end well for the party in power.
Also the Guardian hasn't stopped printing these stories in the UK or online. They've been staffing up in New York (including Nick Davies who brought down much of Rupert Murdoch's print empire last year and crucially prevented newscorp from buying the rest of bskyb).
It's interesting to me that the US has a better low-level legal framework for a free press, but it's not plain sailing at all (i.e.: the nytimes and washington post "asked dad" before looking at wikileaks files; judith miller and now james risen have no shield laws).
Maybe they did. But the man who was contacted by UK officials about destroying the data, Alan Rusbridger, didn't say they went to court. He said (in reply to a comment) he doesn't see the need for it:
AlanC said:
If you meekly give into their demands without insisting that they
take you to court then you've as good as admitted that they can do
whatever they like as far as the UK press is concerned. ...
Alan Rusbridger replied:
Play out the scenario for me in which fighting this case in court would
have enabled us to do a better job of reporting the Snowden documents.
I'm not sure I quite see it...
I'm struggling with this - he is the editor, he supports his reporters when they are harrassed, he throws an idiotic government move into sharp relief, he is still pumping out page one stories when the rest of the press think "Prince says baby son is rascal" is news.
We are not living in 80's Poland, or 30's Russia, or modern Iran / Syria. So on the spectrum of courage-shown-by-news-editors he is never going to choose between his family and his editorial page, but he is doing better than all the rest of his peers - and we sorely need it.
Maybe he does more than some of his peers but the qualities you describe hardly meet the bare minimum of what the public should expect from an editor. And, while exceedingly few, there are reporters who are head and shoulders above Rudsbridger and who report in service to the public at great harm to themselves and their family, Greenwald being an example at hand.
But no one asked Rudsbridger to sacrifice his family nor was he at risk to. As an editor he should have demanded a court order before destroying source material. He should not now pretend he is a courageous government-defying reporter when he has minimized risk to himself.
> qualities you describe hardly meet the bare minimum of what the public should expect from an editor.
Or from head of MI5, head of Civil Service, Attourney Generals, Prime Minister.
There is a lot unknown here, but I think you are assuming he allowed the destruction so that it could not be proven they had it in the first place (making him safer).
There are other explanations - including a desire not to let UK courts have jurisdication over his sources. He is moving the entire reporting to NY - thats a pretty clear indication of his thinking. Choose your jury wisely.
He has removed himself and any reporter not based in New York. He knows the strength of the first amendment in US courts, National Security letters or not.
No UK reporter will do any work on surveillance any more, simply because the UK has too much power over the press when it really wants to. Going to court in the US gives him a near certain win, going to court in the UK a near certain loss.
To paraphrase Napoleon: I would rather have a clever editor than a brave one, and a lucky editor than a clever one. He got lucky with the UK destroying the disks in a heavy handed manner.
Me too. But don't be fooled into thinking anything different would have happened elsewhere, this definitely would have happened in the US, and I doubt he would even have been allowed a lawyer and most likely held indefinitely. And we have already seen Europe close off their airspace to the Bolivian presidential plane due to suspicions Snowden was on board.
I know that wikileaks' "torrent the encrypted archive, have the decryption key on a dead man's switch" approach didn't exactly work as intended, but it's starting to seem like a relatively good option again IMO :S
How do you know Assange's hide-out is safer than Snowden's?
It's also interesting that Snowden likely has more freedom. At least he can move around Russia, while Assange is stuck inside a room. (security vs freedom)
It worked fairly well, just not as intended (Unless I'm mis-remembering, the intention was to keep the key secret while wikileaks released small amounts of info at a time)
I truly hope so, but who for and what are they likely to be?
When many people in the UK read what the tabloid media writes, without questioning it or taking biases into account, if the events are even reported at all. An uninformed electorate is a dangerous thing.
Well, maybe, but the Guardian's circulation is only about 200,000, and I doubt more than 1% of its readers would have voted for Cameron anyway. (Or was that heavy irony?).
At this point they are the only newspaper that seems to have the balls to tell the thugs from Whitehall to go and fuck themselves.
This stuff is absolutely insane, We didn't behave like this when the IRA was setting bombs off on a regular basis and shooting up the landscape.
It's always been obvious that the land grabs for power had little to do with actual terrorism.
Pick up that can.