Authorities smashed Guardian hard drives
Print Edition
British authorities forced the Guardian newspaper to destroy material leaked by Edward Snowden, its editor has revealed, calling it a “pointless” move that would not prevent further reporting on US and British surveillance programs.
In a column yesterday, Alan Rusbridger said he had received a call from a government official a month ago who told him: “You’ve had your fun. Now we want the stuff back.” The paper had been threatened with legal action if it did not comply.
Later, two “security experts” from the secretive Government Communications Headquarters visited the paper’s London offices to oversee computer hard drives containing Snowden material being reduced to bits of metal.
Rusbridger said the destruction of the material was “pointless” as there were other copies, and it would not stop the Guardian pursuing Snowden stories.
Asked by the BBC who he thought was behind those events, Rusbridger said he had “got the sense there was an active conversation” involving government departments, intelligence agencies and the prime minister’s Downing Street office.
Downing Street and GCHQ declined to comment.
Rusbridger said the “bizarre” episode and the detention at London’s Heathrow airport on Sunday of the partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald showed press freedom was under threat.
The nine-hour detention of David Miranda, Greenwald’s Brazilian partner, has caused a furore, with Brazil, British opposition politicians, human rights lawyers and press freedom watchdogs among those denouncing it. Greenwald was the first journalist to publish US and British intelligence secrets leaked by Snowden.
Miranda, on his way from Berlin to Rio de Janeiro where he lives with Greenwald, was questioned for nine hours before being released without charge, minus laptop, mobile phone and memory sticks. He had been ferrying material from Snowden between Greenwald and Laura Poitras, a filmmaker in Berlin.
The White House said Washington was given a “heads up” ahead of Miranda’s detention but had not requested it.
Dunja Mijatovic, media freedoms chief at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a human rights and security watchdog, said she had written to the British authorities to express concerns about Miranda’s detention.
“The detention can be interpreted as putting pressure on Glenn Greenwald after his recent reporting on security issues in the Guardian,” she wrote.
Britain also came under attack from press freedom group Index on Censorship, which denounced the forced destruction of computers revealed by Rusbridger in his Tuesday column.
“It is clear that the Snowden and NSA story is strongly in the public interest ... It seems that the UK government is using, and quite literally misusing, laws to intimidate journalists and silence its critics,” the group said.
Rusbridger said the destruction of the computer material was “pointless” as there were other copies of what was lost, and it would not stop the Guardian from pursuing Snowden stories.
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