UK Government Destroys Hard Drives During Raid in Effort to Stop Snowden Revelations

UK authorities reportedly raided the Guardian’s office in London to destroy hard drives in an effort to stop future publications of leaks from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. RTAugust 20, 2013 Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger revealed in a Monday article posted on the British newspaper’s website that intelligence officials from the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) told him that he would either have to hand over all the classified documents or have the newspaper’s hard drives destroyed. After more talks, two “security experts” from GCHQ – the British version of the National Security Agency – visited the Guardian’s London offices. Rusbridger wrote that the government officials then watched as computers, which contained classified information passed on by Snowden, were physically destroyed in one of the newspaper building’s basements. “We can call off the black helicopters,” Rusbridger said one of the officials joked. Another source familiar with the event confirmed to Reuters that Guardian employees destroyed the computers as UK officials observed. During negotiations with the government, Rusbridger said that the newspaper could not fulfill its journalistic duty if it satisfied the authorities’ requests. But GCHQ reportedly responded by telling the Guardian that it had already sparked the debate, which was enough. “You’ve had your debate. There’s no need to write any more,” Reuters quoted the unnamed official as saying. In the article, Rusbridger explained that because of existing “international collaborations” between journalists, it was still possible to report the story and “take advantage of the most permissive legal environments.” “I explained to the man from Whitehall about the nature of international collaborations…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 [reporter Glenn] Greenwald lived in Brazil?” wrote Rusbridger. “The man was unmoved.



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