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[Sheb]

If that's not a blatant abuse of anti-terrorism loaws, I don't know what it is.

Why do we need those laws anyway? It's not like killing people was legal before 9/11, and the threat simply ain't big enough to justify any special treatment.

[SalmonGod]

It seems quite clear to me that the War on Terror was a power grab from Day 1. 

"There was an attack?... WE NEED TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF FANCY TOYS AND ABSOLUTE FREEDOM TO KIDNAP, TORTURE, AND SPY ON ANYBODY IN THE WORLD RIGHT NOW! _{(including you if you have a problem with it)}"

Didn't ever add up for me.

[Baffler]

Intimidation aside, this just doesn't sound like a good idea. They've pissed off the Brazilians (at least a little, hard to tell how behind it they are from the Guardian's article, maybe someone else knows more.) They couldn't realistically charge him with anything without an uproar anyway. It just looks like some blatant and petty dickishness to me. Although as I think about it a little more, knowing they will pull this kind of blatant and petty dickishness is pretty intimidating...

[Urist McDepravity]

There's apparently more on that Guardian story,

The man was unmoved. And so one of the more bizarre moments in the Guardian's long history occurred – with two GCHQ security experts overseeing the destruction of hard drives in the Guardian's basement just to make sure there was nothing in the mangled bits of metal which could possibly be of any interest to passing Chinese agents. "We can call off the black helicopters," joked one as we swept up the remains of a MacBook Pro.

I wonder if Reporters Without Borders or other journalistic associations will dare to call out Cameron on these crimes.

[Scoops Novel]

There's apparently more on that Guardian story,

The man was unmoved. And so one of the more bizarre moments in the Guardian's long history occurred – with two GCHQ security experts overseeing the destruction of hard drives in the Guardian's basement just to make sure there was nothing in the mangled bits of metal which could possibly be of any interest to passing Chinese agents. "We can call off the black helicopters," joked one as we swept up the remains of a MacBook Pro.

I wonder if Reporters Without Borders or other journalistic associations will dare to call out Cameron on these crimes.

Given the Guardian already has done so, and bearing in mind that i don't believe we have a free press, I'm surprised people are getting riled up about this. My query is not what precisely prevents this from being the current state of affairs, but my expectation that it would die down quicker then this given that it's being openly reported.

[Scoops Novel]

Salmongod, please give me links to the agent provocateurs and sabotage used against Occupy Wallstreet, preferably the larger scale one you mentioned beyond particular protests in i think a particular state?

[SalmonGod]

That would be appropriate for the Occupy thread.  Don't have any links for you readily on hand anyway.

[olemars]

To follow up on the detainment of Miranda on Heathrow, the Guardian chief editor has had his own share of government bullying:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/19/david-miranda-schedule7-danger-reporters

A little over two months ago I was contacted by a very senior government official claiming to represent the views of the prime minister. There followed two meetings in which he demanded the return or destruction of all the material we were working on. The tone was steely, if cordial, but there was an implicit threat that others within government and Whitehall favoured a far more draconian approach.

The mood toughened just over a month ago, when I received a phone call from the centre of government telling me: "You've had your fun. Now we want the stuff back." There followed further meetings with shadowy Whitehall figures. The demand was the same: hand the Snowden material back or destroy it. I explained that we could not research and report on this subject if we complied with this request. The man from Whitehall looked mystified. "You've had your debate. There's no need to write any more."

During one of these meetings I asked directly whether the government would move to close down the Guardian's reporting through a legal route – by going to court to force the surrender of the material on which we were working. The official confirmed that, in the absence of handover or destruction, this was indeed the government's intention. Prior restraint, near impossible in the US, was now explicitly and imminently on the table in the UK. But my experience over WikiLeaks – the thumb drive and the first amendment – had already prepared me for this moment. I explained to the man from Whitehall about the nature of international collaborations and the way in which, these days, media organisations could take advantage of the most permissive legal environments. Bluntly, we did not have to do our reporting from London. Already most of the NSA stories were being reported and edited out of New York. And had it occurred to him that Greenwald lived in Brazil?

The man was unmoved. And so one of the more bizarre moments in the Guardian's long history occurred – with two GCHQ security experts overseeing the destruction of hard drives in the Guardian's basement just to make sure there was nothing in the mangled bits of metal which could possibly be of any interest to passing Chinese agents. "We can call off the black helicopters," joked one as we swept up the remains of a MacBook Pro.

Whitehall was satisfied, but it felt like a peculiarly pointless piece of symbolism that understood nothing about the digital age. We will continue to do patient, painstaking reporting on the Snowden documents, we just won't do it in London. The seizure of Miranda's laptop, phones, hard drives and camera will similarly have no effect on Greenwald's work.

The state that is building such a formidable apparatus of surveillance will do its best to prevent journalists from reporting on it. Most journalists can see that. But I wonder how many have truly understood the absolute threat to journalism implicit in the idea of total surveillance, when or if it comes – and, increasingly, it looks like "when".

[Sheb]

People hated on Manning for supposedly just dumping all his files, but it incrisingly seems like it's the only way to do thing, or risk having them seized by the government.

[Ringmaster]

So, for anyone interested, I've seen a few links to the "other side" of this story, what it boils down to are a few key points:

1. Glenn Greenwald has lied in news articles before, and been caught in those lies.
2. Edward Snowden has also lied, he grossly exaggerated his salary for one year and some reports indicate he may have been exaggerating/lying about some NSA capabilities.
3. Greenwald's partner, Miranda, was likely caught carrying computer equipment for a Berlin-based journalist who also had access to Snowden's files, it was not an intimidation move on the part of the UK.

Snowden's salary lie.
Did Greenwald and Snowden lie about key claims?
Greenwald's partner was likely carrying Snowden's secure files with him when detained.
Article pointing out some of Greenwald's grossly exaggerated claims.

Some people are speculating that if Snowden was willing to lie about something as small as his salary, that paints a different picture of the man than what the media is aiming for. There's speculation that the actual truth of the matter is quite different to what Snowden and Greenwald are trying to paint it as. What they're doing should ideally be given a bit more scrutiny, rather than being accepted as gospel truth by so many people on the internet.

[Sheb]

1. We don't actually know if they were lies. He claimed capabilities the NSA later denied, but it's possible he either misunderstood something (after all, he doesn't have access to the NSA computers, only some files Snowden gave him) or he's right an the NSA had been denying.

2. Who cares about the salary? It's totally irrellevent, and its not clear he lied. Mistakes happens in journalism. Meanwhile, the director of national intelligence was lying under oath to congress. Who should we trust?

3. The Guardian never hid that fact, although all the details ay not have been present in all the pieces. But then that's irrelevent, people are unnerved because the government is using laws designed to fight terror to crush any debate and hinder the press. What we're seeing is exactly what they've been telling us is not happening: the intelligence agencies being used to crush dissent (in this case, opposition to those same agencies) with power that are supposed to fight terrorrism.

Basically, your post can be summed up by this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Ringmaster]

I guess the point I wanted to make was that people will vehemently and aggressively defend Greenwald and Snowden as if they're godlike, while it deserves acknowledging that they certainly aren't perfect. I guess the borderline-insulting way you reply to my argument sort of proves that.

I read the comic, I think it implies I/the reports are launching ad hominem attacks at Snowden, it's worth clarifying that if he's been caught in a lie before then the things he says now should be taken with a certain pinch of salt. President Obama's been caught in several lies (Half his election campaign, for example) and hardly anybody trusts him anymore.

[Sheb]

Yeah, reports are launchin ad hominem attacks on fairly irrelevents points (who cares if Snowden made 122,000 or "around 200,000"?) so as to divert the attention from the NSA and generally use FUD to prevent the debate taking place.

We don't venerate Snowden or that journalist as godlike being. We just don't care if they had babies for breakfast, or if they secretely listen to 50's pop music. We don't care if Greenwald saying Obama's locking up whistleblowers for decade ain't correct yet because he's only been in power for 5 years.

What we care about is that the US government is taking action in secret that defile the spirit of an already intrusive laws, and that power granted to the government to fight terrorrists are turned on journalists and dissenters. What we care is that intelligence agencies are mass spying on anything we do online while claiming anything they do should be kept secret.

Maybe Snowden is exaggerating things. Maybe Greenwald is lying all the time. Well, prove them wrong. Be transparent, tell us the truth, let us see the FISA memos and the list of programs, explain to us why you need everyone metadata, the whole time.

Instead, we got a mix of half-truth, ad hominem and diversions attempt while the secret services of the UK try to attack the leak.

[Another]

I generally tend to agree with high rating user comments on slashdot.org site and this one I think is worth quoting entirely:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

So far, Poitras and Greenwald have done an incredibly good job of handling the Snowden material. They have been implementing a long term, strategic, plan that seems to have 2 goals:

    * Restore the US Constitutional limits on the Executive branch.
    * Make the Executive branch accountable to the Legislative and Judicial branches.

As ambitious as it seems, this level of correction has happened several times in US history. I believe that these goals can be achieved if 3 conditions are met:

    1) Poitras and Greenwald must succeed in maintaining public awareness of the problem.
    2) Poitras and Greenwald must continue to be regarded as responsible journalists.
    3) The Public must agree that the threat of an unbridled Executive is greater than the external threat.

So far, Poitras and Greenwald have played Obama and the US Intelligence like a hooked trout. They have skillfully countered every attempt to divert or end the discussion. It looks like they have a chance of advancing reform of the US Executive branch. They may also help bring reform to England.

But now, I think we are seeing the beginning of more strategic responses from the US Intelligence community. I suspect that they are now trying to end the discussion by re branding Poitras and Greenwald as traitorous threats. This approach worked so well with Manning and Assange. Not only did they succeed in discrediting the messenger, they also turned the messenger into an external threat. Now, they can use 'Traitors' to justify Executive excess.

I suspect that the goals of US Intelligence are now:

    * Get Poitras and Greenwald to do an irresponsible disclosure. From the Intelligence communities viewpoint, even an immediate, complete disclosure of the Snowden material is a small price to pay in return for swift end to the discussion and discrediting the whistle-blowers.
    * Or create an irresponsible disclosure of the Snowden material. Remember, neither Manning nor Assange/WikiLeaks did the big, irresponsible disclosure. But, they were blamed when it happened. On considering this objective, it seems to me that the primary objective of the Miranda incident may have been to acquire the secret key of the distributed file, so they could create an irresponsible disclosure.

If they can't shutdown or re-brand Poitras and Greenwald, then I expect the next step will be to create an immediate, external threat that requires an unbridled Executive.

I am praying for Poitras and Greenwald. We need their help. And their enemies are capable of doing terrible things.

In short: that last attacks on Miranda and the Guardian headquarters may seem pointless intimidation of journalists at first but may actually have been attempts to get material that will be anonymously disclosed in a way to show the Guardian in bad light and minimise the "damage" to US spy agencies in the long term.

That is a testable theory - time will tell. Or maybe one day a new leaker will provide information about whether what happened in this case was really gross incompetence (physical destruction of a local copy of the data, really?) or malice (can detaining a public person for the maximum possible under law 9 hours without charges even be explained away under incompetence?).

[GlyphGryph]

I guess the point I wanted to make was that people will vehemently and aggressively defend Greenwald and Snowden as if they're godlike, while it deserves acknowledging that they certainly aren't perfect. I guess the borderline-insulting way you reply to my argument sort of proves that.

They are imperfect human beings. The fact that human beings are imperfect is exactly why something like this would be a problem even if it was only being run by people we could trust. And none of it's relevant to whether the actual issue at hand is a problem, and the government has practically confirmed most of it is true so unless you're accusing them of being part of some lie they've created in conspiracy with the US and UK governments, I'm... not sure what your point is? And even then, it's incredibly tangential "evidence". I mean, I could argue that we should never trust the government doing surveillance because they have a history of stealthily drugging their own citizens until that person dies, but you'd be right to say "That's fucked up, sure, but not actually relevant" because, as stated, it wouldn't be. If I was using it as a general example of the fact that great secret powers with poor safeguards are often abused by the petty egos in charge of the program who will often end up using it as a vehicle for their own ends, and cited the MK-Ultra experiment as a whole with some details, that would be relevant, but I'd have to actually say that - I'd have to make a point that demonstrates it's relevance.

So the important question is - assuming your right, why do we care? What relevance does it have to the issue at hand? How important is the connection? How should it change our views on the situation as a whole and why?

You might be able to make an actual argument out of it, but right now you're doing not doing anything of the sort, so if it's an issue that actually concerns you, you will have to try harder. The only thing approaching an argument you made was that we should treat them as god beings, but that was kind of blatantly a strawman (no one here, and pretty much no one anywhere I'd hope, actually does that).

In other news, important websites are still shutting down in response to the NSAs actions. Groklaw has been turned off.