Guardian Releases Video From That Time Its Editors Were Forced To Destroy A Laptop That Had Snowden Documents
from the remember-that-one-time,-at-idiot-camp? dept
You may recall how, last summer, there was a ridiculous situation in which David Cameron ordered a government official to go down to the Guardian's offices in London and force them to physically destroy a computer that had stored some encrypted documents from the batch of documents that Ed Snowden had given to reporters. The whole thing was ridiculous on multiple levels, as the Guardian's editor Alan Rusbridger clearly told the government officials that there were other copies outside of the UK, and that the Guardian would continue reporting on those documents from its offices in NY. Apparently unaware of how stupid they looked, the government officials continued the charade, and the Guardian physically destroyed the drives and memory cards.The Guardian has now released a short video that intersperses some commentary and news clips about the event with some actual footage of Guardian employees taking power tools to the components in question. As Rusbridger noted at the time, this was a particularly "pointless piece of symbolism that understood nothing about the digital age." And, really, that line could apply to an awful lot about the NSA/GCHQ affair lately. Yes, they understand a lot about how to spy on everyone via digital tools, but they've shown little to no recognition of the problems this creates for the economy, for technology, for innovation, for privacy, for security and for public sentiment.
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Filed Under: alan rusbridger, david cameron, ed snowden, free speech, freedom of the press, hard drives, uk
Companies: the guardian
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I can't see how the copyright in any of the film would belong to the Government or Cameron. Some of it (the shots from the Parliamentary committee) will be owned by Parliament, but is released under a fairly permissive licence.
And then there are the exceptions to copyright; fair use for news reporting. Plus the lack of actual damage.
So no, I don't think anyone will be suing Rusbridger (or the Guardian) for copyright infringement. Or anything else...
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Where have you been living for the past 200 years? Granted, it's not as a bad as the KHmer Rouge etc. but Britain was the biggest dictatorship for a whole century.
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Ignorant Americans should go back to school.
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The Queen can't
• declare war
• levy taxes
• avoid taxes
• try people or order executions
• enact laws
without an Act of Parliament ratified in the House of Lords.
So now you know.
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There is? Might want to tell the people of Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, and Brunei.
Guess it depends on how much power lies in the hand of the monarch. An autocracy is an autocracy regardless to whether the person in power is called an absolute monarch or dictator.
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Even if I had hundreds of backups...
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Re: Even if I had hundreds of backups...
Their organization was threatened by the government, and nasty things would have happened if they hadn't of destroyed them.
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The interesting and alarming part is "last summer"...
It's consistent with a limited hangout psyop to have this little information after six-eight months. I've yet to see anything either new or non-obvious.
And the co-conspirator corporations have receded yet more into background: the pointless court case to release some meaningless unverifiable numbers has been "won", and so Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, and others are totally off the hook for past crimes and won't do it again, right?
Someone tell me what has changed from ALL the Snowden "leak" except what Naomi Wolf predicted from the start: now the dolts are more aware of how much they're surveilled.
Techdirt's official motto: This isn't surprising. (11 of 193)
11:59:19[m-482-1]
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Unless they basically believe it is possible to flash a BIOS chip with secret data and still have it boot.
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it *IS* possible they were technically clueless...
the point was the use of naked state power and intimidation, and they won that battle, didn't they ? ? ?
*IF* there's a 'next time' and the computers they have *ARE* the only/unique repositories, they have nothing to push back with, they've capitulated before, they have nowhere left to go...
first, they came for the 'puters, and i said nothing, 'cause i knew it was on other 'puters;
then they came for the laptops, and i said nothing, 'cause i wiped mine;
then they came for the tablets, smartphones, usb sticks, SD cards, servers, backups, DVDs, etc, and i (AND EVERYONE ELSE IN 'THE RESISTANCE') was screwed...
again, the 'game' isn't "your technology/logic wins!" the game is "THE STATE can crush you if you don't do what we want"...
alone, you don't stand a chance...
'we must all hang together, for surely, we will all hang apart'...
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Rusbridger is a drama queen. I see no gun pointed to his head in the pics.
So, how exactly were you forced Mr Rusbridger?
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"Forced" can be as simple as "A really goddamn credible threat from the fucking government to come in and fuck your shit up".
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My point is even someone with very basic computer skills knows that a document can only be temporarily stored in RAM and is gone as soon as you shut down. This was just childish retribution for embarrassing the government. They even knew that Rusbridger isn't the only reporter that has the documents. You would think that they would at least want to know what else Snowden leaked because it is obvious they don't have a clue.
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It failed In the worse way though , It shows that the Government has very little respect for it's people.
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Snowden TV interview blacked out in US
Use Firefox addon VideoDownloadHelper and grab a copy while (or if) you can. Then you can post it to any webserver to which you may have access. Blocking this stuff is like waving a red flag in front of a bull.
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Re: Snowden TV interview blacked out in US
http://vimeo.com/85153645
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You target it and we will multiple it!
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Re-education
A clear message
I dont think they'll like the response
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Shoud we
1. tar, feather, and publicly humiliate them to set an example of what happens to people like them
2. send them off to a remote location from which they will never bother anyone again. (except themselves, of course)
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