That line is particularly infuriating.
Of course, the converse is generally true: the laughably incorrect explanations that "government people" always seem to come up with for "our" behavior often are the result of them interpreting events, statements, etc. through their lens- a lens informed by a completely different set of optical principles than the ones that we are used to using (to abuse the figure of speech a little bit).
In other words, when you read or hear about a "government person" doing or saying something head-deskingly stupid, the odds are very good that the statement or action made perfect sense in the context of that government person's world. It's not that they're (necessarily) stupid, or even ignorant- just that they're not living in our world, and so have dramatically different motivations, constraints, first principles, etc. etc. Their actions may be perfectly follow an internal logic- but it's not our logic, and so we have a hard time making sense of it.
And all of this goes double or triple when we're talking about military or IC people. The classified nature of their work, with its attendant organizational, cultural, technical, political, and psychological distortions, makes their "bubble" look more like a bathysphere.
Interestingly enough, the more senior (and experienced) civil servants that I have had the opportunity to talk to have been very careful to emphasise that the department answers to the minister.
Of course, the relationship between the civil service, ministers and the media is an unnatural, strained and stressful one -- I do not envy any of these parties, although I think that the media has the most (effective) power out of these three, given the proportion of central government activity (60-70%?) that is driven by whatever happened to be in the headlines that week.
So his "joke" might have been a sinister indication that they are sidestepping political control, or just pointing out the realities of who does the actual work.
But in a government "of the people, by the people, for the people", it is The People who have final say.
(edit: yes, I am aware that this particular incident happened in England, not the U.S....)
Watching "Battlestar Galactica", 3rd season beginning. Cylons trying to live peacefully with humans they occupied on New Caprica. "Either we increase control or we lose control" ...
It isn't power, it is the illusion of power and the attempt to keep it up that corrupts.
Is all the lies you have to tell people about the things you claim to control and all the fakes you have to pull all the fucking time, just to make people think that you genuinely have some clue about what is going on so that you can retain authority.
But you never do.
No one can.
For all the technology in the world, nobody can do more than the amount of time they have and their ability to comprehend, and after a while the amount of information becomes a hindrance and you wish you could plug the flow, and you would in a moment, apart from the fact that if people thought you were not watching it for even a second, forever trapped in watching it with far too much to understand, that you wouldn't know what was going on and you can never let that happen.
[1] I nicked this phrase from Harry Mulisch, from his book "The Discovery of Heaven". Is a good book.
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.
This bleak humour is typical of British public servants, and not at all unlikely, e.g. on leaving office after 10 years, a treasury secretary for the Labour government left a note for his successor:
'I'm afraid to tell you there's no money left.'
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/may/17/liam-byrne-n...
These off-hand comments don't materially change the story any in my view - the important points are that the government insisted on shutting down reporting as much as possible, and destroying any materials in the newspaper's possession.
They visited a newspaper office to destroy evidence - that's the important point here.
I received a phone call from the centre of government telling me: "You've had your fun. Now we want the stuff back."
Would be a direct quote.
The demand was the same: hand the Snowden material back or destroy it.
Would be a paraphrase.
Are you done spreading FUD yet?
That is, by definition, paraphrasing the meeting. I'm not accusing Rusbridger of mischaracterizing the interaction, I'm clarifying that this is probably isn't a direct quote. Note that this is an op/ed.
What's your evidence that it's not a direct quote? Aside, of course, from your personal disbelief that a government official would say something ridiculous.
EDIT: If you must downvote me, go ahead, but I'm not making a statement here. I'm joking. I think HN could use it these days.
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."