

Britain forced Guardian to destroy copy of Snowden material - danboarder
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/19/us-usa-security-snowden-guardian-idUSBRE97I10E20130819

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random42

        "*Britain* forced Guardian to destroy..."
    
        "*a british official* advised ... "
    
        "*two "security experts" from Government Communications Headquarters* ...  visited the Guardian's London offices."
    
        ".... was detained by *British authorities* ...." 
    
        "the NSA", "the Government" etc.
    

One of the _tactical_ mistake is not to "name" people on the other side this
asymmetric warfare against the world police states, and put the individuals in
the spotlight. The of agencies and governments is abstract and non-tangible.
Unlike the "Snowdens, Mannings, Greenwalds and Mirandas" they do not have
fear, and hence accountability.

At the end of the day, these agencies are made of people, who make decisions.
While the aim should be to keep the 'agencies' under check, the general
population resisting them need to target (and I do not mean attack their home
or family members or something like that, I only mean to put the individuals
under the spotlight) to "name and shame" the entity with feelings, family,
emotions, weaknesses etc. under scrutiny. Just as the Snowdens and the
greenwalds choices come with with the consequences, so should be the case for
the _british officials_ who chose to take a stand.

~~~
danboarder
Or perhaps the Guardian staff don't want to bring down more hell on
themselves? It might seem cowardly from an armchair quarterback position but I
would expect they are thinking things through.

~~~
random42
I do not think it is cowardly. It is just the existing convention of
reporting.

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acron0
"In the building's basement, Rusbridger wrote, government officials watched as
computers which contained material provided by Snowden were physically
pulverized."

Oh well, that's it then. The data's all gone now. Job done, boys. Bravo.

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digitalengineer
I feel like pretty soon we'll need 'Johnny Mnemonic' style data smugglers just
to get data from one country to another...
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0Ak4N36CMo](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0Ak4N36CMo)

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ballard
SWAT proof

def. a distribute system where content is sufficiently replicated and
anonimized, and can survive partial loss. Whereas storing on a single server
at your or your friends' house is not.

Present examples may include Tahoe LAFS

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kalleboo
Do they actually believe they've destroyed any data, or is this just a mob-
style show of power?

~~~
gotofritz
I think the latter

------
Questioneer
I beg of you all, stop with the immediate reaction of trying to figure a way
to code around men with lawyers and assault rifles.

Think of where this leads, the current actors who have taken this route. Hosts
are "bulletproof" operators sacrificing themselves until raided or de-peered
for a low low(high) cost. Nights are slaved away making private end to end
networks of proxies and vpns, built to buffer contact from your own servers.
You end up paying people to buy your phones.

In the end most are jailed after 'parallel' investigations are made upon them.
Associates are thrown in jail with violent offenders so they can be used as
snitches when they flip. You are threatened with rape by men of law, "those
boys will fuck you good."

Enough with the pathetic urges to code out of this. Please.

~~~
jgg
You know, it's funny. There's this image cultivated of some elite team of
soldiers waiting to snipe a pasty nerd at his computer as he attempts to write
the characters "#include <openssl/" for civil disobedience, and yet when I
take a stroll around firearms enthusiast sites (a group much more directly
threatening to the government at large), I (still) find references to this:
[http://sofrep.com/16644/1000-green-berets-sign-letter-of-
sup...](http://sofrep.com/16644/1000-green-berets-sign-letter-of-support-
for-2nd-amendment/) ?

How can it be that active-duty soldiers working for the government advocating
civilians owning firearms for the explicit purpose of overthrowing the
government if and when it becomes tyrannical doesn't warrant the "lawyers and
assault rifles" approach, but an intelligent person creating the next great
encryption application does?

Hmm...

The only thing worse than a decline into fascism is not doing something when
you should because of the ironic fear of what is going to happen when you
do...

