Lots of circumstantial evidence supports this view. Apart from the specific focus of the story being a "positive" use of spying, the use of distorting phrases like "the Snowden controversy" and "the arrest of Mr. Miranda" (who was "illegally" detained, not arrested) are suspicious.

Also, it comes almost immediately after the government became aware of what was leaked (thanks to David Miranda). Not knowing this put them at a severe disadvantage before, as they were constantly a step behind and being continually caught lying was ruining their credibility. As others have noted, "was contained in the leaked documents obtained from the NSA by Edward Snowden" are weasel words of the highest order, and the linked article by the Guardian is clearly calling this out.

It's easy to picture a narrative where the government wishes to ham up the "national security risk" posed by these leaks, which they couldn't do effectively when they didn't know what was in them. Intercept David Miranda to find out, cherry pick some information that sounds important but non-threatening to UK nationals, and leak it to The Independent in exchange for a sympathetic story. This also explains even the nonsensical "destroyed hard drives" affair - they weren't trying to delete the data, they wanted to make a big show of "trying" to.

I think in an interview with David and Glenn, Glenn had said that what they could have taken from David either couldn't be decrypted or was the type of information that wouldn't change a thing in terms of Glenn's journalism and the flow of leaks.

That's not inconsistent with what we've seen - they don't neccesarily need to have decrypted it to deduce some of what it contains. All it would take is a reference to a deleted folder somewhere in the filesystem named "Middle East Listing Posts" or some other piece of carelessness to have enough info to leak somethng like this. As for disturbing the flow of Glenn Greenwald's journalism, insofar as it has not already done that by provoking the linked article, it's possible Greenwald wasn't planning to discuss these particular listening posts at all.

I wonder if Snowden and co. were that stupid to keep all their files with Miranda. The fact is the gov can never be sure if whatever he was carrying is in fact the complete set.

An interesting and insightful analysis. +1

It's a tactic called Flak: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model

Also interesting that the Telegraph's reporting on the same story (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/1026117...) is pretty much a straight regurgitation of the Independent's version with no editorialising.

Normally there's always a dig when reporting something that originally came from the Guardian or the Independent.

Yeah, they would normally have a pop at those papers.

So, with in the world of my theory, I'd say this is a Tory paper echoing the "good spying" line.