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...
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.