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U.K. Government Thought Destroying Guardian Hard Drives Would Stop Stories
- firloop 13y agoHere's the original story at the Guardian, which is definitely worth a read. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/19/david-miranda-schedule7-danger-reporters http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/19/david-m...
- flaktrak 13y agoThese people are dinosaurs. That is the most scary aspect. Imagine if Dinosaurs still existed but new how to search internet databases to find their targets!
- ihsw 13y ago> These legislators and business leaders are dinosaurs. This would more accurately portray the threat that they pose -- they're people in charge of running the world, and their backwards notions of how the world should operate will lead us down a very dark hole of no return. They need to be stopped quickly.
- boi_v2 13y agoSounds quite similar to me. "As Gestapo chief of operations and later (after 1939) its chief, Müller played a leading role in the detection and suppression of all forms of resistance to the Nazi regime.[12] Under his leadership, the Gestapo succeeded in infiltrating and to a large extent destroying the underground networks of the Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party by the end of 1935." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_M%C3%BCller_%28Gestapo%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_M%C3%BCller_%28Gestapo...
- pinaceae 13y agooh yes absolutely. just like the Gestapo. and the NKWD. i mean this is like a photocopy. sending people to concentration camps/gulags, murdering families. it is so 1:1 it is downright scary. you're so brave. so brave.
- lostlogin 13y agoPartaking in arguably illegal wars. Killing and torturing innocents at military bases. Kidnapping people and flying them off to be tortured (mainly a US hobby, but helped by the UK), lying to press and parliament about what is happening, helping out dictators etc. There are parallels to be found.
- jlgreco 13y agoboi_v2 noted a similarity between specific actions. No reasonably intelligent adult could read his comment and come to the conclusion that he thinks they are gassing Jews; the exaggeration is your own. Take your "bravery" bullshit back to reddit.
- pinaceae 13y agobullshit. you don't bring up the specific example of the gestapo for comparison on how they filed their reports. his intent was to align the current actions of the UK/US intelligence services with the Gestapo, conjuring a very specific image. which is laughable in the very redditesque way you just brought up.
- jlgreco 13y ago"Bullshit" yourself. > "sending people to concentration camps/gulags, murdering families." Those are things you said, not him. You uncharitably read an absurd statement of equivalence where he merely made a comparison. The refusal to see parallels or accept comparisons to dark periods in recent history unless they are 100% equivalent is a disease that threatens our ability to learn lessons from the past. If we only accept comparisons to the Gestapo when they begin gassing people en-masse, then it is too late.
- pinaceae 13y agoso if someone mentions the Gestapo they explicitely do not mean to bring up the overall context of the third reich, gotcha. i am an austrian of polish decent. for me bringing up the fucking nazis in this context is completely laughable. the securitate? maybe. the stasi? same. but only internet nerd rage immediately brings up nazis, fascism, etc. the whole discussion here at HN is an exercise in hyperbolic bullshit.
- nwp90 13y agoI don't think there's any indication that they actually thought destroying the hard drives would stop anything; seems more likely that: 1) They didn't want anyone else to get access to the material that the Guardian had but would not end up publishing; 2) The rules said that that's what they had to do, so they did it; 3) That's all they could do on "their patch", so CYA; 4) A little intimidation would never go amiss, surely...
- viraptor 13y agoAlso, there was always a possibility that the guys in the guardian slipped somewhere. Didn't have a copy of all the files, some password/key was stored only on that drive, note/edited information that's easy to forget was only on that drive, etc. Backups are hard - if there was even a slight chance that they destroyed the only copy of something, why not go ahead with it? They're not that stupid.
- joezydeco 13y ago5) Now if the Guardian is seen in possession of this material, would that constitute lying to the authorities?
- youngtaff 13y agoI see the drives being destroyed as a compromise i.e. spooks wanted them, Guardian refused, so a they agreed to destroy them instead. I sense the Guardian piece doesn't tell the whole story.
- norswap 13y agoSo private property is down too. Do these guys keep a todo-list?
- ChrisAntaki 13y agoWhat goods or services could be boycotted, to protest these actions by the British Gestapo? Largest UK companies (that seemed recognizable): HSBC, Shell, BP, Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays, GlaxoSmithKline, Unilever, Vodafone, Anglo American (thought the name was funny for a huge British company), Prudential, Coldplay Edit: Added services Edit 2: Added list of largest UK companies Edit 3: Added Coldplay
- beedogs 13y agoDoes the UK actually make anything anymore? I thought they were like the US and had become a "service-based" economy. I guess you could boycott visiting.
- lostlogin 13y agoA shiite ton of military equipment - Britain is a big arms exporter. Here is a story about exports to repressive regimes, this bit alone is troubling, and a believe it's just a fraction of exports. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/blood-money-uks-123bn-arms-sales-to-repressive-states-8711794.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/blood-money-uk...
- youngtaff 13y agoCars, loads of them and we even export cars built by Japanese car companies to Japan
- snitko 13y agoMoney. The less government money you use, the less they can tax. Cash or Bitcoin. Don't give them a cut. I wouldn't advocate tax evasion, although the truth is, if you pay taxes, you finance this bullshit.
- ChrisAntaki 13y agoI'm actually an American. It looks like Unilever, Shell, BP, and HSBC are all based in Britain. Those brands are pretty popular in the USA, so that was an interesting find.
- coldcode 13y agoWhy bother to read to 1984 or Animal Farm anymore. We see in every bloody story these days. This story is perfectly 1984 in a nutshell.
- state 13y agoIt seems to me that some people read those books and didn't understand them to be cautionary.
- coldcode 13y agoYeah they think the are a roadmap.
- alexeisadeski3 13y agoIt describes Stalinism as it already existed at the time. 1984 was neither prophetic nor cautionary; it was merely descriptive.