
Footage released of Guardian editors destroying Snowden hard drives - rajbala
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jan/31/footage-released-guardian-editors-snowden-hard-drives-gchq?CMP=twt_gu
======
atmosx
I wonder how many newspaper would go as far as the Guardian, battling their
government, to protect information. On the other hand, there are not many
_western democracies_ would do something so stupid as to force a newspaper to
destroy the hard-drives.

We are ruled by idiots at all levels. All management authors I've read so far,
were pointing from 2009 that EU is out of _real political leaders_ with any
_management skill_. Watching what is happening to France (SK got ousted by the
CIA and France became irrelevant...), the UK (it's hard to even remember
Cameron's name without Googling it and it's 4 years since he took office!),
Germany has Angela Merkel which is famous for doing _nothing_ , _never_
(Something German voters appreciate apparently, I'm eager to see what will
happen in the years to come with German exports decreasing), Italy is non-
existent, Spain doesn't matter and Russia is not a democracy anyway... And
that's Europe in 2014.

~~~
dobbsbob
NYT sat on a story for a year because it would anger the state, thus meaning
they would be denied access to any gov officials or military so they waited
for somebody else to do it. US press is largely neutered. As for Italy their
MPs were brawling each other yesterday like drunken yabbos

~~~
cryoshon
I agree that the press in the US is neutered. They're petrified of appearing
adversarial because they know their access will be cut off.

It's a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy if they never test the length of
their leash-- they could easily make a story out of "we said X and so our
access was cut off, this isn't right" but it'd require an ounce of spine.

~~~
vinceguidry
> They're petrified of appearing adversarial because they know their access
> will be cut off.

Oh they're all for _appearing_ adversarial. They just want to never actually
be adversarial.

------
logfromblammo
America's security clearance program demands that people authorized to handle
its most sensitive secrets be held to a certain standard. They cannot be
addicts. They must refrain from imprudent sexual relationships. They must pay
their taxes. They must obey the laws. They cannot lie to the government, or
keep their embarrassing, blackmailworthy secrets from it.

And one of these people has the _unmitigated gall_ to take evidence of
unethical government activities which had been _clearly_ classified as SECRET
and TOP SECRET and just _release it_ to the American public, along with the
rest of the world.

Clearly, if the clearance process worked as intended, every single person
authorized to see this stuff should feel a tiny bit queasy after reading it.
The problem is that people who try to escalate within the system are denied
promotion, are not awarded the contract when it is up for re-compete, or they
are simply fired outright and blacklisted from further work. And then nothing
else changes. Clearly, if your choice is between losing your livelihood and
making no impact whatsoever and losing your livelihood and maybe also your
freedom, and possibly changing things for the better, you might take that
additional risk.

America, if you don't want your specialist personnel, specifically chosen for
high ethical standards, to spill secrets, maybe, just maybe, you should
arrange your affairs such that speaking truth to power isn't the stupidest
thing someone could possibly do. And it would also be nice if you would stop
acting like the sleaziest boss/customer on Earth in front of the people most
likely to actually be bothered by that.

~~~
cryoshon
They're not chosen for high ethical standards. The things you mentioned are
attributes of painfully normal/boring people, not people of high moral
standing.

They're chosen for being the best at being square and following orders without
dissent. These kinds of people are the least likely to speak out by
definition.

~~~
logfromblammo
The best at being square _OR_ best at following orders. _OR_ , not _AND_. I
think they only tolerate the squares because we^Wthey can actually get the
work done.

------
loceng
Even though there are digital copies, this felt similar to the extremes of
book burning.

~~~
DanBC
This feels worse than book burning.

I've generally given GCHQ an easy ride but this is pretty fuckin dodgy.

When someone burns a book or a flag they're just saying "I really hate this
book and the ideas in it" \- and it's great that people do this so visibly
because it means I know how to talk to them.

But government agents watching while journalists destroy journalistic
materials to protect other journalists? That's something that must not happen
in Britain again.

~~~
anigbrowl
Wouldn't it be a lot worse if the government agents had seized the drives,
arrested the journalists, and gone on a witchhunt to root out everyone else
who was involved? As it was the Guardian journalists stood on principle and
said 'we really don't want to hand this over' so the GCHQ chaps helpfully sat
around and let them destroy the evidence. This is really quite a reasonable
compromise.

~~~
DanBC
I would audit the living heck out of everything after letting GCHQ have access
to my building.

I doubt the grauniad have even checked for clumsy kludges like keyghost USB
keyboard sniffers.

~~~
anigbrowl
OK, but what does that have to do with what I posted above?

Also, if you think spooks only come in the front door you don't have any
security anyway. More so in the UK, with the extremely stringent Official
Secrets Act.

------
henryaj
Well, this is completely insane. The material exists elsewhere - what did the
security services expect to achieve here?

~~~
jessedhillon
Read TFA -- Guardian decided to destroy the materials in order to protect its
journalists. They were afraid that recovered computers would contain
information about which Guardian staff accessed the machines and when, and
that could be used as evidence against them.

The material was destroyed in this way because the alternative was to hand it
all over to the UK government agency mentioned.

 _...what did the security services expect to achieve here?_

To stop or severely impair The Guardian's ability to report classified
materials.

~~~
henryaj
> To stop or severely impair The Guardian's ability to report classified
> materials.

And how will it do that, exactly, when copies of the material exist at its US
offices?

------
blutack
_He said he was unimpressed by east London 's multiracial neighbourhoods,
telling one British user of the forum: "It's where all of your Muslims live. I
didn't want to get out of the car."_

Is this quote verifiable? If so, it's certainly changed my perception of the
guy.

~~~
Pxtl
He was 23 at the time. I posted a lot of stupid crap online at 23 too. He
posted this at the end of a lengthy screed complaining how racist Europe is.

context:

    
    
       < User7> 	we don't have ghettos in the UK
       < TheTrueHOOHA> 	sure you do
       < TheTrueHOOHA> 	i went to london just last yearit's    
          where all of your muslims live
          I didn't want to get out of the car.
       < User7> 	no, that's Bradford
       < TheTrueHOOHA> 	I thought I had gotten off of plane in the wrong country
          I don't know where it was, but it was by London City Airport and it was terrifying
       < User8> 	same thing in France
       < User7> 	TheTrueHOOHA: east London
          yeah, a lot of ethnic groups have settled there
       < TheTrueHOOHA> 	I guess it's nice that they set up their own community, though
       < User7> 	TheTrueHOOHA: not many people here share your opinion
       < TheTrueHOOHA> 	they just seemed awfully... orthodox
       < TheTrueHOOHA> 	i mean it wasn't like, "hi, we're your friendly neighborhood muslim community. welcome to our main street."
       < TheTrueHOOHA> 	it was more like, "SUBMIT TO THE WILL OF ALLAH. SHARIAH REGULATIONS POSTED AT ALL CORNERS."
    

Not perfect, but not quite as bad as the original quote. He seems to have
matured since then.

~~~
AJ007
Is being uncomfortable by religious fundamentalism racist?

------
lectrick
He should have released it as a torrent. The whole damn thing.

There are too many motherfucking secrets.

~~~
dalke
There are a few advantages to releasing a stream rather than a torrent.

First, it keeps the story going. Had it been a single torrent, there would
have been a lot of stories, and then on to the next thing. That this may also
be more commercially successful does not escape me.

Second, it give the government a chance to really put their foot in their
mouths. With Wikileaks, the US mostly said nothing about the details. With the
Snowden documents, government officials respond to one thing, then further
documents reveal where they are lying or weaseling.

Third, once the torrent is done, the government can do a whitewash
investigation, and then say "all that is behind us. We've fixed the problems
and now we're focusing on the future." It's not possible to have a whitewash
investigation unless you know all that needs to be covered.

Fourth, this is a complex issue, and the process of reporting lets the
reporters have time to get feedback from the analysis of other people, and
integrate new information into their reporting.

Of these, I think #3 is the most important advantage to a stream over a
torrent.

~~~
jobu
Great points, but I think #1 is the most important for affecting change
(although #2 is the most entertaining). Keeping government shenanigans in the
top of the news cycle means that elected officials are constantly under
pressure to actually do something about it.

------
theDustRoom
Seems stupid to me; why are they wasting PCBs - can you recover any data from
anywhere other than the platters?

Surely one very powerful magnet would render it useless anyway?

~~~
PeterWhittaker
tl;dr: No, not for Top Secret information - one must assume that one's
attacker is more capable than one's self, but ruled by the same physics.
Therefore, one destroys media utterly (heating to the Curie Point, grinding to
dust, etc.) rather than assume that the adversary cannot recover from a
degaussed disk. For other levels of information, guidelines vary.

Guidelines for media destruction vary based on sensitivity of the information
and the risks associated with its disclosure. There are two basic categories
of information, private interest and national interest, and various levels
within the categories.

Private interest refers to individuals, businesses, etc., that is, anything
that isn't "in the national interest". National interest refers to anything
that could seriously impact the country and its interests, its overall
security, etc. The classic examples are intelligence and military operations.
Others include government plans that have yet to be made public, e.g., cabinet
confidences in the UK and Canada, etc. There is a debate as to whether certain
types of economic information, even if private, should be considered national
interest, because the impact of disclosure could be recession, depression, or
complete collapse, which would seriously impact national interest.

Many jurisdictions use the term "Classified" to refer to information related
to the national interest; Confidential, Secret, Top Secret, and Cosmic are
some common western/NATO terms for various levels of classified information.

Labels for private interests vary; for example, Canada uses "Protected A" for
information about an individual that could lead to minor, recoverable harm
(think a slap upside the head - it hurts, you might need ice, but it doesn't
really impact you), "Protected B" for moderate harm that is difficult to
recover from (think a broken arm - you will need medical attention, your life
is impacted, possibly seriously, but you will recover), and "Protected C" for
serious or grave harm (think being shot - you're done).

Degaussing is often considered sufficient for "Protected A" and "Protected B"
type information - but there are debates as to quantity: While aggregating
doesn't change the label (10,000 Protected B records are still Protected B),
it can increase the harm (compromise of 100,000,000 Protected B records might
seriously harm the nation, e.g.).

Degaussing is not considered enough for "Protected C" information and for
Classified information: The degaussing may be imperfect, there may "edge
effects", etc. We just don't know - and we assume our adversary isn't as
ignorant as we.

So we destroy the media, utterly, so that it cannot be recovered.

That's what was happening here. Use of grinders is pretty standard practice.

Yes, this information had all been revealed. As far as we know. Seems pretty
pointless, doesn't it?

~~~
dfc
> Use of grinders is pretty standard practice.

It is? I thought everyone used giant shredders.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yd_O7-rqcHc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yd_O7-rqcHc)

~~~
alextingle
I'm not sure that's enough for this level of classified. I can imagine fairly
large sections of the drive platter surviving more or less intact from that.
Theoretically, quite a lot of the data might be recovered.

------
yetanotherphd
Why did they have to smash up the fax machine too? That was just gratuitous.

~~~
logfromblammo
That fax machine knew what it did. Don't think for a second it didn't deserve
everything that it got.

------
izzydata
I laughed at the "Rubish" sticker.

------
doubt_me
I am getting sort of sick of this propaganda scheme that seems to be
developing.

I honestly think this entire Snowden fiasco is a lie. Not some conspiracy
stuff either. Its just to perfect + out of the 1% of the documents that have
been released so far most of it was already public knowledge since the 90s.
Now I obviously cannot prove that its all a lie and I sound stupid crazy right
now so I am just going to leave this alone and see what happens once Snowden
takes the Noble for doing his job.

~~~
epipsychidion
>most of it was already public knowledge since the 90s

There is a difference between innuendo and leaked powerpoint slides.

>Now I obviously cannot prove that its all a lie and I sound stupid crazy
right now

Very astute.

~~~
DanBC
It wasn't innuendo!

There were EU parliament reports; the industrial espionage was known; spying
on friendly nations was well known.

The slides give more detail, they include names or programmes, and they are
about modern abuses. But it is wrong to say that we didn't know that
governments surveilled their citizens. Some people might have ignored it.

~~~
epipsychidion
As the saying goes, the devil was in the details. It's not the existence of
spying but the extent that made everyone take notice. "surveilled their
citizens" is too general a term;it can include anything from monitoring
international communication for a handful of citizens to collecting metadata
for every single phone call ever made (as was the case). I never said or
implied that there was no proof that governments spied on their citizens so
don't represent that as my belief.

