They missed their chance to make the ultimate episode of “Will it Blend?”
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So far, it’s been much more effective with them not knowing for certain what’s out there. News says “the documents say this was done”, various agencies respond with “well, we didn’t do this, so it’s ok”, news says “actually, the documents say that was done also”…
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Actually this does make sense at a political level but not in the way people might think.
The problem for the UK government would be the pressure from the NSA and US DoD to stop further leaks from the UK. Cameron’s problem is dealing with the US pressure, stopping the leaks is Obama’s problem and Clapper’s.
So from the very narrow standpoint of Cameron’s problems, destroying the drives makes perfect sense even though it obviously won’t stop further leaks from the copies in Brazil or Germany. Incidentally, we are now up to a million stolen documents.
Destroying the drives also prevents the US from pressuring the UK government to attempt to subpoena the drives as evidence so that they can find out which documents Snowden took. The NSA still doesn’t know what they lost. If the Guardian had kept them, there would have been pressure on HMG to get them back.
The UK has a national interest in protecting the special relationship with the US. In particular the unique intelligence sharing relationship. But the UK does not have a national interest in help the US avoid looking stupid.
Cameron stopped the hunt by shooting the fox.
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It’s infuriating when people who refuse to understand technology try to regulate it as if they can force it to work how they wish it would. See the DMCA, DRM, Cameron’s firewall. Your ego does not shape how technology works
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But Rusbridger makes the point in the video that he’d made it clear to GCHQ that the Guardian still had other copies. It was nothing more than a pointless ritual.
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No, the Guardian did not have other copies. What Rusbridger said was that other copies existed. But as we know, those are in Brazil and Germany and perhaps elsewhere but not in the UK.
The objective of HMG was to ensure that there were no copies under their control, that is all.
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I will gladly give the UK or US government my old laptop (a 2001 iBook) for symbolic destruction purposes, for the cost of a new replacement. Given how much they spend on the clown-car clusterfuck of national intelligence, it would be a stone bargain.
I think I recall a suggestion/threat that these files could be released as torrents. What would be wonderful is if they already have been, broken up into fragments and hidden within hundreds of other torrents.
The passage quoted by Foucault describes the execution of Robert-Francois Damiens, a Frenchman executed by the French government.
We did learn about the hung drawn and quartered thing rather earlier than France. The scots have still not got over the hanging drawing and quartering of a Welshman seven centuries ago next year.
Snowden and those journalists can just send NSA and GCHQ a link to this video and say “I can’t hand it back to you as it’s been destroyed”.
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No, that actually makes good sense. Doesn’t matter that the Guardian actually has other copies. Officially, they don’t, and that’s the important part. It also means that they can trash talk and threaten Snowden all they want, but their ability to prove that he took any particular document is now even more damaged. For all they know, wikileaks got it from somebody else and passed it on.
This kind of thing always starts out with a lot of big talk, but when it gets down to it, those threats can’t usually stand up to any real scrutiny by the courts (which is the threat they’ve been slinging - but are deathly afraid of, themselves.) It takes time, but this one isn’t going to just fade away and be forgotten.
I’m watching all of this, and remembering Nixon’s game. It was was eerily similar. He talked a whole lot of smack, right up until the Supremes made him turn over those tapes. And he was a lot scarier than Obama’s minions. Keep in mind - he’d been using this very same law to persecute people, and some of them were actually executed! He was the guy who wanted to imprison and deport citizens for opposing him without a trial. Hello, Guantanamo, and all those secret detentions. Nixon actually thought he was untouchable…right up until he wasn’t.
Obama and his crew act the very same way. That’s why Snowden’s smart not to trust their bs about returning, and Cameron made the right move. Cameron’s remains a snide, uppity total jackass - but he’s still got a little game. The critical piece, at this point, is discovery of specific abuses of individuals domestically. That would put these guys in some deep doo-doo, and they know it.
they just don’t get it though… in the digital age, copying is easy, information wants to be free…
I was for long time more or less skeptical about the whole Snowden thing but after that laptop smashing I became 120% confident.
They could not have proven their guiltiness more clearly…
It’s at the same time scary and stupid, and it reminds me of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQGX3J6DAGw
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