Re:David Miranda, schedule 7 and the danger that all reporte...
by grey-area on Tuesday August 20, 2013 @02:40AM
(#6242155)
Remember that the people executing these commands (civil servants) are probably well aware of just how absurd and futile they are, and likely to make that clear with dark humour. On the destruction of the hard drives:
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:
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.
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.