dagblog - Comments for "New York Times And Guardian Will Publish More Snowden Revelations"

Freedom of Information A

artappraiser — Tue, 01 Oct 2013 05:36:23 +0000

In reply to New York Times And Guardian Will Publish More Snowden Revelations

Freedom of Information
A British newspaper wants to take its aggressive investigations global, but money is running out.
By Ken Auletta, The New Yorker, available online now and in October 7, 2013 issue

[....] Since June 5th, the Guardian had been publishing top-secret digital files provided by Edward Snowden, a former contract employee of the National Security Agency [....]

Such articles have become a trademark of the Guardian. [....]

Now Rusbridger was poised to publish a story about how the G.C.H.Q. not only collected vast quantities of e-mails, Facebook posts, phone calls, and Internet histories but shared these with the N.S.A. [....]

Heywood had learned about the most recent revelation when Guardian reporters called British authorities for comment; he warned Rusbridger that the Guardian was in possession of stolen government documents. “We want them back,” he said. Unlike the U.S., Britain has no First Amendment to guard the press against government censorship. Rusbridger worried that the government would get a court injunction to block the Guardian from publishing not only the G.C.H.Q. story but also future national-security stories. [....]

At 5:23 P.M., roughly eight hours after the encounter in his office, Rusbridger ordered the Guardian to post the G.C.H.Q. story on its Web site and then in its print edition. Although the British government had taken no further action, the mood in the Guardian’s offices was anxious. As the stories based on Snowden’s revelations were taking shape, Rusbridger had hired additional security for the building and established a secure office two floors above the newsroom, just down the corridor from the advertising department, to house the documents. When he flew to New York to work with his team there on the stories, “he couldn’t talk on the phone,” his wife, Lindsay Mackie, said. “He couldn’t say what was going on.” [....]

Extensive story on The Guardian's situation--goes on for 9 pages.

I didn't know about that

artappraiser — Sun, 25 Aug 2013 21:31:23 +0000

In reply to Here is some opinion and

I didn't know about that Sengupta op-ed. Woodward's essay is written along the lines of what I initially suspected: the Independent article is the result of pushback from intelligence services, wanting to explain their side of the story for hassling the Guardian and Miranda. But I wonder about that now, taking into consideration the headline of Sengupta's op-ed, which Woodward does not seem to have paid much attention to:

Agencies should not be upset if we reveal that they run a listening centre in the Middle East
Our national security is vital – but those that enforce it are not beyond scrutiny

Isn't that basically saying: hey UK government, don't get real stupid now and hassle us now too for publishing this leak, we're trying to do this responsibly and actually it shows your side of things? That op-ed headline certainly doesn't suggest their sources are intel-agency approved. I went back to the original article and it's curious that the sources are kind of muddied and unclear, it's almost like the editors are trying to protect him/her/them, it's really not that clear about how they got this info. And the op-ed article headline suggests to me that the Independent is trying to promote the government being a little more transparent about why they are doing certain things.

Woodward is certainly entitled to have a beef with the intel policy revealed, but I am not so convinced that he should have the beef with The Independent that he is making.

Here is some opinion and

A Guy Called LULU — Sun, 25 Aug 2013 14:43:02 +0000

In reply to Looks like serious pushback,

Here is some opinion and analysis using that article as a jumping off point.

http://warincontext.org/2013/08/23/independent-of-gchq/

Looks like serious pushback,

artappraiser — Sun, 25 Aug 2013 05:53:21 +0000

In reply to New York Times And Guardian Will Publish More Snowden Revelations

Looks like serious pushback, maybe from UK government sources, on detention of Miranda, the smashed Guardian computer, and countering Rusbridger & Greenwald, in The Independent:

Exclusive: UK’s secret Mid-East internet surveillance base is revealed in Edward Snowden leaks
Data-gathering operation is part of a £1bn web project still being assembled by GCHQ

By Duncan Campbell , Oliver Wright , James Cusick , Kim Sengupta, The Independent, 23 August 2013

Britain runs a secret internet-monitoring station in the Middle East to intercept and process vast quantities of emails, telephone calls and web traffic on behalf of Western intelligence agencies, The Independent has learnt.

The station is able to tap into and extract data from the underwater fibre-optic cables passing through the region.

The information is then processed for intelligence and passed to GCHQ in Cheltenham and shared with the National Security Agency (NSA) in the United States. The Government claims the station is a key element in the West’s “war on terror” and provides a vital “early warning” system for potential attacks around the world.

The Independent is not revealing the precise location of the station but information on its activities was contained in the leaked documents obtained from the NSA by Edward Snowden. The Guardian newspaper’s reporting on these documents in recent months has sparked a dispute with the Government, with GCHQ security experts overseeing the destruction of hard drives containing the data.

The Middle East installation is regarded as particularly valuable by the British and Americans because it can access submarine cables passing through the region. All of the messages and data passed back and forth on the cables is copied into giant computer storage “buffers” and then sifted for data of special interest.

Information about the project was contained in 50,000 GCHQ documents that Mr Snowden downloaded during 2012. Many of them came from an internal Wikipedia-style information site called GC-Wiki. Unlike the public Wikipedia, GCHQ’s wiki was generally classified Top Secret or above.

The disclosure comes as the Metropolitan Police announced it was launching a terrorism investigation into material found on the computer of David Miranda [.....]

continues at length

from The Guardian's

artappraiser — Sat, 24 Aug 2013 06:21:53 +0000

In reply to New York Times And Guardian Will Publish More Snowden Revelations

from The Guardian's announcement article, 'Guardian Partners with NYT over Snowden GCHQ files':

Journalists in America are protected by the first amendment which guarantees free speech and in practice prevents the state seeking pre-publication injunctions or "prior restraint".

It is intended that the collaboration with the New York Times will allow the Guardian to continue exposing mass surveillance by putting the Snowden documents on GCHQ beyond government reach. Snowden is aware of the arrangement.