Showing posts with label secrets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label secrets. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Trump Shared Secrets with Russians in Oval Office

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Previous Related Posts:
Trump Unhinged
Trump Faces Backlash for Firing Comey
Trump Fires Director Comey
#Russiagate Speculation Round-Up
Comey Hearing Connects Trump to Russia
Flynn Flap a Big Flop for Trump

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When President Trump met with the Russian Ambassador and another Russian Operative in the Oval Office a few weeks ago, the big story at the time was that the American journalists were not allowed in the room.

But now the story has become something much worse and possibly world-shaking - while the Russians were there, Trump started bragging about U.S. intelligence on ISIS and let something slip that was so Top Secret that many in the government did not know about it, and some networks were told to hold back reporting it. Even more troubling, Trump's blabbing may have gotten the source of the information killed.



Trump sent General McMaster out twice to issue non-denial-denials on the issue, but in the end Trump himself admitted in a tweet that he had blurted out secret information. In 24 hours the story went from denial to acceptance as the norm. But there is nothing normal about this situation.




















































































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Friday, March 24, 2017

Nunes Goes Nuts Over Trump-Russia

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Representative Devin Nunes, R-California, is head of the House Intelligence Committee which has been looking into the connection between the Trump campaign and Russian hacking of the DNC last year.

But suddenly, he decided to have a press conference the other day, discussing secret material he had allegedly seen that would be damning to the Trump White House. He seemed to be tipping-off the members of Trump inner-circle that things they have said are on the record in secret documents.

Nunes did not share these revelations with the others on the Intelligence Committee, and it is probably illegal for him to discuss such matters at an open press conference. So why did he do it? Do the Russians have something on him? Was he threatened by Putin or others?

Stay tuned - we will hear more about this in the future for sure.











































Then Nunes Gave a Vague Apology










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Monday, April 14, 2014

All Hail The Snowden Pulitzer



Previous Related Posts:
Smashing Hard Drives ~ The Miranda / Snowden / Guardian Saga Continues
Was Miranda a Mule or a Journalist?
Greenwald Threatens to Spill UK Secrets
UK Detains Greenwald's Partner - Twitter Erupts
Guardian Editor Alan Rusbridger Spins Away
Edward Snowden Releases NSA Secrets

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Both the Washington Post and Guardian UK won Pulitzer Prizes for releasing many of the secrets Edward Snowden stole from the United States Government. The award also went to Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, Ewen McAskill and Barton Gellman for their Obama-slamming coverage as Snowden escaped his own country, first to Hong Kong and later Russia. Yeah, that's great. The Pulitzer Committee obviously overlooked the major flaws in the reporting, including contradictions, unfounded fear-mongering, and just pure lies (see previous posts listed above for examples). But that's okay - bad reporters win awards all the time. Have your happy day, but realize that while you may have "started a conversation" about U.S. Spy techniques it remains to be seen if the reporting was actually the "public service" you think it is. Hisory and future actions of spies like Snowden will judge this reporting much more harshly than critics on twitter. Good luck with that.


From Yahoo News
The Guardian and The Washington Post won a prestigious Pulitzer Prize on Monday for reporting on secret US surveillance programs revealed by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.
The shared award went to the two newspapers credited with breaking the news about NSA surveillance programs, without specifically citing the journalists involved.
The reporters who played key roles in the story included Glenn Greenwald, who has since left the Guardian, and colleague Ewen MacAskill. Barton Gellman, who already has two Pulitzers, was the writer of most of the Washington Post reports.
Laura Poitras, a documentary filmmaker who was the point of contact for Snowden, had the unusual distinction of sharing bylines in both the Guardian and the Post on the topic.

Disclosing the massive expansion of the NSA’s surveillance network absolutely was a public service. In constructing a surveillance system of breathtaking scope and intrusiveness, our government also sharply eroded individual privacy. All of this was done in secret, without public debate, and with clear weaknesses in oversight.”
. . . (Without Snowden) we never would have known how far this country had shifted away from the rights of the individual in favor of state power. There would have been no public debate about the proper balance between privacy and national security. As even the president has acknowledged, this is a conversation we need to have.
~ Martin Baron, Editor of Washington Post













We are truly honoured that our journalism has been recognised with the Pulitzer prize. This was a complex story, written, edited and produced by a team of wonderful journalists. We are particularly grateful for our colleagues across the world who supported the Guardian in circumstances which threatened to stifle our reporting. And we share this honour, not only with our colleagues at the Washington Post, but also with Edward Snowden, who risked so much in the cause of the public service which has today been acknowledged by the award of this prestigious prize.
~ Alan Rusbridger, the editor-in-chief of the Guardian

Today's decision is a vindication for everyone who believes that the public has a role in government. We owe it to the efforts of the brave reporters and their colleagues who kept working in the face of extraordinary intimidation, including the forced destruction of journalistic materials, the inappropriate use of terrorism laws, and so many other means of pressure to get them to stop what the world now recognises was work of vital public importance.
~ Edward Snowden, via Guardian UK









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Edward Snowden didn’t win a Pulitzer on Monday, but he might as well have.
~ Dylan Byers on Politico

The Guardian and Washington Post Don't Deserve Pulitzers Just for Sparking a Debate
. . . if sparking a debate is enough to earn the Pulitzer’s coveted public service medal, then sure. Congrats. I would note, however, that merely sparking a debate is an exceedingly low standard.
There was a time, and it wasn’t very long ago, when this medal meant something more, when “aggressive reporting” meant more than being a vehicle to shovel leaked documents to the public, with stops along the way for obligatory government comment, for fawning characterizations of one’s own sources, and for tendentious claims about what those documents say.
~ Benjamin Wittes on New Republic

Pulitzers don’t make Snowden a hero
. . . It is not the media or the Pulitzer committee that should judge what Snowden did. The main judgment should come from the courts, which are now considering what the government was up to in its collection programs and should also consider what Snowden did. You may think Snowden a whistle-blower, but the only way of knowing whether he is or not is for him to return to the US and face a jury of his peers. He may continue to refuse to do that, and prefer to be sheltered by a government whose behavior he surely knows is at least as bad as that of the one he fled, but that doesn’t make him a hero. It makes him a fugitive.
~ Daniel Serwer on Peacefare.net










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Monday, February 24, 2014

#Walkergate Email Dump in Wisconsin

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Previous Related Posts:
Grinchy Scott Walker: Don't Buy Your Kids Toys, Just Send Me Money
Wisconsin Judge Tosses Scott Walker's Anti-Union Law
Wisconsin Aftermath of Walker Recall Vote
Badgers Vote and the Whole World Watches

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Ever since a recall election failed to toss Governor Scott Walker from office in Wisconsin, there have been persistent rumors of wrongdoing on the part of his staff, and many have been tried and convicted. And now that the Chris Christie offenses are mounting up, prosecutors in Wisconsin seem to be zeroing in on Scott Walker once more. Like Christie, Walker downplays the scandal in hopes he might be a viable GOP candidate for President in 2016. But with baggage like this, his chances are shrinking daily, right along with Christie's.

Walkergate Commercial


A few weeks ago, a staffer named Kelly Rindfleisch was back in court appealing her charges when a Judge decided that her emails should be released to the public - probably not the outcome Rindfleisch was hoping for. She has become Walker's scapegoat in much the same way that Bridget Kelly, David Wildstein and others are falling under suspicion for being close to Chris Christie.

From Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal
Court of Appeals Judge Patricia Curley ruled last week that thousands of records in the appeal of Kelly Rindfleisch should be available in the court file of her misconduct in office case, even though the documents have long been sealed as part of a secret investigation of former Walker aides.
. . . (Judge) Curley wrote records collected as part of a criminal investigation are routinely included in court files and that court records are to be available to the public except in unusual circumstances.

Rindfleisch, who served as Walker's deputy chief of staff when Walker was Milwaukee County executive, is one of six people convicted as the result of a John Doe investigation led by Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm. John Doe proceedings are often conducted in secret and give prosecutors the power to compel people to produce documents and testify.
The records in question include emails from Rindfleisch's personal computer and private email account, affidavits supporting John Doe search warrants, and a transcript of a secret hearing on search warrants issued the day before Walker was elected governor in 2010.
Likely included in the emails are messages exchanged with Walker or his top political aides as he ran his 2010 campaign for governor.

Although Rindfleisch sat just 25 feet from Walker’s office, was one of his top staffers and was illegally raising funds for Davis while on county time, the governor himself was not charged and the investigation was closed in early 2013. It resulted in the convictions of five former aides and associates and one contributor to Walker’s gubernatorial campaign.
According to prosecutors, there were at least 3,486 emails between Rindfleisch and members of Walker’s 2010 gubernatorial campaign. Most were sent and received during normal business hours while Rindfleisch was at her $59,560-a-year county job.
~ Wisconsin State Journal

Some of the emails uncovered in the investigation are just downright nasty:

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From Time.com
Six former Walker aides and allies have been convicted of wrongdoing following an investigation into improper campaign activities by official staff when Walker was Milwaukee County executive mounting a campaign for the governor’s mansion. The release last week of tens of thousands of pages of documents from that first investigation was branded as “old news” by Walker, who noted repeatedly that a Democratic prosecutor had closed the investigation last year without any accusation that he had done anything improper. ”People want to go through 27,000 pages plus of details, and our approach is ‘case is closed,’” Walker said. “A Democrat district attorney looked at it, and he’s done. It’s done.”

To put it mildly, this is a BFD. For once, we have proof that Scott Walker encouraged government workers to campaign for him while on government time, which is illegal in Wisconsin. Scott Walker has been dishonest about the allegations of corruption surrounding him from the outset, and we finally have indisputable proof that Walker encouraged illegal campaigning.
~ The Prairie Badger



In one message, Walker aide Cindy Archer wrote to deputy chief of staff Kelly Rindfleisch that she used a private email account to communicate with Walker and his chief of staff, Tom Nardelli.
“Consider yourself now in the ‘inner circle’ :) I use this private account quite a bit to communicate with SKW and Nardelli,” Archer wrote, referring to Walker’s initials. “You should be sure you check it throughout the day.”
~ Wisconsin State Journal

From Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal
Tapping out a message on his campaign Blackberry on the afternoon of May 4, 2010, Walker urged county aides, campaign staffers and other trusted volunteers to go to an online Journal Sentinel business story and respond to critics of his plan to privatize the airport in the comments section below the story.
"Someone should comment on the fact that the only way for the county to benefit from that success is to contract out operations," Walker wrote in an email. "Having a well performing airport increases the value that the county could receive."
A half-hour later, Brian Pierick — the boyfriend of Walker aide Timothy D. Russell — posted a comment on the story under the alias "WI_Calvin," calling rising airport traffic "another example of Scott Walker's outstanding leadership."
. . . Pierick and Russell were both later convicted of other activities in the secret probe.
Walker's airport directive came a little more than a week before he ousted county aide Darlene Wink after the Journal Sentinel reported she had been spending much of her government work hours posting anonymous political comments promoting Walker on the JS Online website.

Walker Evades Questions on Fox News, Via aattp.org
Question: if county workers were doing nothing wrong, why should they be using a private e-mail account?

WALKER: Well, but that’s exactly to my point. you had a Democratic district attorney spend almost three years looking at every single one of those communications, interviewing people, talking to people and closed the case.

WALLACE: Did you have your own private e-mail account?

WALKER: It’s one of those where I point out district attorney has reviewed every single one of these issues.

WALLACE: But sir, you’re not answering my question.

WALKER: No, because I’m not going to get into 27,000 different pieces of information.





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Friday, August 30, 2013

Miranda was carrying Passwords when Stopped in UK

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Previous Related Posts:
Was David Miranda a Mule or a Journalist?
Guardian Editor Alan Rusbridger Spins Away
Smashing Hard Drives: the Miranda - Snowden - Guardian Saga Continues
Glenn Greenwald Threatens to spill UK Secrets
UK Detains Greenwald's Partner, Twitter Wars Erupt

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'Which person,' she [Professor McGonagall] said, her voice shaking, 'which abysmally foolish person wrote down this week's passwords and left them lying around?'
There was utter silence, broken by the smallest of terrified squeaks.
Neville Longbottom, trembling from head to fluffy-skippered toes, raised his hand slowly in the air.
~ from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, chapter "Flight of the Fat Lady"

From "Extraordinary Court Statement via @davidbarrett and @joshuafoust
  • Statement from senior Cabinet Office civil servant to #miranda case says material was 58000 ‘highly classified UK intelligence documents’
  • Police who seized documents from #miranda found among them a piece of paper with the decryption password, the statement says
  • This password allowed them to decrypt one file on his seized hard drive, adds Oliver Robbins, Cabinet Office security adviser #miranda
  • The Govt believes Edward Snowden, the NSA ‘whistleblower’, “indiscriminately appropriated material in bulk” #miranda
  • The material contains personal information that would allow British intelligence staff to be identified, inc some overseas, it adds #miranda
  • The Govt has had to assume Snowden data is now in the hands of foreign governments, since his travel abroad (to HK and Russia) #miranda
  • Statement specifically says UK but they haven’t finish decrypting yet
  • It is “impossible” for Glenn Greenwald or any other journalist to determine which info could damage UK national security: Robbins statement
  • “The claimant & his associates have demonstrated very poor judgment in their security arrangements with respect to the material…”#miranda
  • “…rendering the appropriation of the material, or at least access to it by other, non-State actors, a real possibility” #miranda
  • “The fact that…the claimant was carrying on his person a handwritten piece of paper containing the password for one of the encrypted files recovered from him is a sign of very poor information security practice,” says Govt statement #miranda
  • Statement implies GCHQ as well as Scotland Yard are working on the electronic media seized from #miranda

From Telegraph UK
David Miranda accused of carrying secrets that threatened spies' lives. This looks bad for Glenn

. . . The Government's accessed just a small portion of an astonishing 58,000 pages of intelligence documents and, according to a witness statement by Oliver Robbins, deputy national security adviser to the Cabinet, it includes: "personal information of UK intelligence officers, any compromise of which would result in a risk to their lives and those of their family members." Robbins argued that if this data had got into the public sphere then it would have made spies and their loved ones vulnerable to attack or recruitment by hostile forces.

. . . Miranda's lawyer said in reply that, "Mr Miranda does not accept the assertions they have made." Presumably, this means that he does not accept the assertion that the data he was carrying threatened UK national security and even the lives of its operatives. Yet this somewhat contradicts something Miranda told The Guardian two weeks ago. Back then, he said, "I don't look at documents. I don't even know if it was documents that I was carrying." So if he didn't look at the documents, how can he know that they didn't include the kind of information that the UK Government alleges?












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Friday, August 23, 2013

Was Miranda a "Mule" or a Journalist?

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Previous Related Posts:
Guardian Editor Alan Rusbridger Spins Away
Smashing Hard Drives: the Miranda - Snowden - Guardian Saga Continues
Glenn Greenwald Threatens to spill UK Secrets
UK Detains Greenwald's Partner, Twitter Wars Erupt

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I was just taking materials back to Glenn.
~ David Miranda, spouse of journalist Glenn Greenwald, on CNN after being stopped and held for nine hours at Heathrow Airport while possibly carrying material from fugitive Edward Snowden





What is the Guardian's Position over David Miranda's Legal Action?
Alan Rusbridger, Editor, Guardian UK: The Guardian is supporting that action and we are supporting it in terms of financing it because David Miranda was acting on behalf of Glenn Greenwald at the time he was detained. So we support that action and I think it's a good thing to challenge that law and see why Terror and Journalism are being elided in this disturbing way.
David Miranda wasn't really "on assignment." He is Glenn Greenwald's partner. Glenn Greenwald's a very busy man and he assists Glenn in his journalistic work, and he was acting as a messenger or intermediary in a way that's difficult for Glenn at the moment because he's got a lot of work to be doing in Brazil, and I think he's also a bit nervous about traveling at the moment.
Was it wrong for the Guardian to pay a non-journalist to act as a courier this way, especially if he didn't know what he was carrying?
Rusbridger: Glenn Greenwald trusts David - he obviously does as his partner, and it was Glenn's decision and David's -- he's a grown-up adult. He wanted somebody he could trust and ... it was important that Glenn had somebody he could trust.
~ Complete Interview Transcript with Alan Rusbridger of Guardian Here

It sounds a lot like he’s being used by Greenwald and doesn’t fully understand the seriousness of what he’s wrapped up in. Now, like any other adult Miranda has agency and did not have the make the trip. And it’s possible he’s downplaying his role to sound innocent.
~ Joshua Foust

In short, the Brazilian was acting as a sort of ‘mule’, though Guardian reports have ignored or under-played this. The Tory MP David Davis, who has bravely campaigned against state surveillance, pointed out yesterday that whatever material was taken from Mr Miranda probably exists elsewhere.
But can you blame the British police for wishing to seize it?
By the way, Mr Miranda acted idiotically in coming via London on his way to Rio de Janeiro, as it is the one place in the world other than America where police were likely to take an interest in him.
~ Stephen Glover on The Daily Mail

Greenwald himself has previously told journalists that his partner assists him in his work. That present ‘work’ consists of engineering the leak of massive amounts of classified intelligence from a source – Edward Snowden – currently granted asylum in Moscow. Greenwald’s partner was travelling through London from a meeting using plane-tickets paid for by the Guardian and – it now transpires – appears to have been carrying files from Snowden. So all those ‘this could happen to any of us’ pieces are only really relevant if you happen to use your partner as a mule for industrial-scale sabotage against states you’re planning to travel to.
~ Douglas Murray on The Spectator

CNN Transcript: Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees, Aired August 20, 2013 - 20:00 ET
JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: I sure do. Let's be clear about what Mr. Miranda's role was here. I don't want to be unkind but he was a mule. He was given something, he didn't know what it was, from one person to pass to another at the other end of an airport. Our prisons are full of drug mules.
Glenn's view is, as long as one of the two people on either end of that transaction was a journalist, he can take anything he wants. He could take the nuclear launch codes, he could take the names of our undercover agents --

COOPER: His flight was paid for by "The Guardian," though, so wasn't it in effect he acting in a journalistic capacity?

TOOBIN: No. I don't think that matters a bit who pays for your ticket. I mean, he's on a plane with stuff that is highly classified. You know -- anything he wants, it turns out it wasn't the names of our undercover agents, it was the extremely classified presumably NSA material. That is not the law.

COOPER: But does it -- I mean, he is being detained under a British -- UK Terrorism Act which is -- only supposed to be used to detect and find people who are connected to terrorist. There is no indication that David Miranda -- they knew who he was, they knew he's not connected to some terrorist group.

TOOBIN: Great Britain has its own laws that are similar to ours but then are somewhat different. Their terrorism law takes it one step farther. They say, it's not just the material -- this person is a terrorist, but can be used by terrorist. And frankly, if terrorist know how we surveil their cell phone calls, how we surveil their texts, that could be used for terrorism.
. . . Mr. Miranda was lucky that they used the terrorism law because he wasn't even delayed. He wasn't even stopped overnight. I mean, you know, I'm sure it was inconvenient to be stopped for nine hours at the airport, but, you know, when it -- but you know, when it happens to you on JetBlue they don't even offer you a lawyer.

So, I mean, I just don't think he was sent to the gulag. He was -- he was delayed for a while and they took what appears to be stolen classified information. I think Mr. Miranda actually did pretty well, considering what he was carrying.

. . . The word journalism is not magical immunity sauce that you can put on anything --
 COOPER: Immunity sauce --
 (LAUGHTER)
 TOOBIN: That you can put on anything and make -- eliminate any sort of liability. You know what? If he had the nuclear launch codes on there, he could -- you know, they can take that. If he had the names of undercover operatives, they can take that.

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Miranda states (if you believe him, and I don’t) that he had no idea what he was carrying. Greenwald states that he was transporting Snowden’s stolen, top secret CIA intelligence data on encrypted thumb drives. So basically, you have Greenwald using his spouse as a mule to actively assist Edward Snowden, and you have Miranda apparently lying at the airport when he answers that damned basic security question… “Has anyone given you anything to carry on board?”
Did you lie to airport security, then, David?
~ Louise Mensch on The Telegraph



Ask yourselves if Glenn Greenwald, and Laura Poitras, are actively assisting Edward Snowden in his treacherous dissemination of classified, incredibly sensitive US and UK intelligence? From where I’m sitting, it looks like an attempt to fight charges in advance – by claiming that they are journalists and everything they do is covered by the First Amendment. Hence the New York Times putting Poitras on the cover of its magazine supplement this week and Greenwald’s repeated lies about the role of his husband and the events and aftermath of the detention to British journalists, unchallenged anywhere in the UK press, until I started tweeting about it & wrote my last blog on the topic.
They hope that claiming a journalistic role will protect them when they are stealing, storing and disseminating classified intel about not just NSA snooping but America’s intelligence programmes against China, Russia and so forth. They are, in doing so, risking countless lives. So are the Guardian newspaper.
Louise Mensch on Unfashionista




































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Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Guardian Editor Alan Rusbridger Spins Away

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Previous Related Posts:
Smashing Hard Drives: the Miranda - Snowden - Guardian Saga Continues
Glenn Greenwald Threatens to spill UK Secrets
UK Detains Greenwald's Partner, Twitter Wars Erupt

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Note: In my previous post called Smashing Hard Drives  Editor Alan Rusbridger of the Guardian UK was quoted in his own paper saying that an unnamed "shadowy government group" came storming in and destroyed computers in the basement of the building. However, in an interview today with BBC Radio 4, he said Guardian "destroyed the material ourselves." In fact he said it to BBC, then says it twice in an interview posted on the Guardian website. Which version is true, yesterday's or today's? Are they victims of Government overreach or is this just Spin to get sympathy for Snowden?How much credibility can Guardian have going forward when they post hyperbole with incredible details one day, then roll it back the next day? And the reasons for holding onto this story for a month are rather lame - see Huff Post story below. Also Rusbridger also uses an incredibly tone-deaf phrase when he says that Snowden is "waving a red flag" at the world given the history of both China and Russia. #Derp
~ SnarkAmendment

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Guardian Editor Alan Rushbridger Interviewed by BBC Radio
Rusbridger told BBC Radio 4's The World at One on Tuesday that he agreed to the "slightly pointless" task of destroying the devices – which was overseen by two GCHQ officials at the Guardian's headquarters in London – because the newspaper is in possession of digital copies outside Britain.

. . . "It was a rather bizarre situation in which I explained to them that there were other copies and, as with WikiLeaks, we weren't working in London alone so destroying a copy in London seemed to me a slightly pointless task that didn't take account of the way that digital information works these days," said Rusbridger.

"Given that there were other copies and we could work out of America, which has better laws to protect journalists, I saw no reason not to destroy this material ourselves rather than hand it back to the government."

Rusbridger added that the alternative to destroying the computer hard drives would be "essentially surrendering control of that material" to the courts while fighting a lengthy legal case with only a small prospect of winning.

"It seemed to me fruitless to go through that exercise of fighting that case, which would have meant that we could not write about the Snowden material when there were other copies. So it's simply a matter of transferring our reporting to America," he told The World at One's Martha Kearney.

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From Huffington Post
Rusbridger told The Huffington Post that he could not originally discuss the property destruction, which took place July 20 before two security experts from British spy agency GCHQ, for “operational reasons."

“Having been through this and not written about it on the day for operational reasons, I was sort of waiting for a moment when the government’s attitude to journalism –- when there was an issue that made this relevant,” Rusbridger said.

That moment came after Sunday's nine-hour airport detainment of David Miranda, partner of Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist at the center of the NSA surveillance story.

“The fact that David Miranda had been detained under this slightly obscure schedule of the terrorism act seemed a useful moment to write about the background to the government’s attitude to this in general,” Rusbridger said.


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Guardian Video about Smashed Computers, Miranda, and Snowden






From the Video ~ (My Transcript)

Rusbridger: The disturbing thing about the way they treated David Miranda was the use of this "Terror Act." And there's a little noticed section, schedule 7, which effectively suspends all the normal checks and balances which you would have if you were arrested in Heathrow car park. So in mainland Britain if you're carrying journalistic material you have checks and balances, you can go before a judge, you can argue about the public interest and public importance of that work. By doing it in this kind of stateless bit of Britain, a port or an airport transit lounge and calling it terror, they suspend all the normal rules. And I think that is why people have got disturbed by what happened on Sunday.
We've just seen Edward Snowden holed up in Moscow transit lounge, and I think there's a confusion in law as to where you are when you're in a transit lounge or whether ... whose laws are applied to you.
The British Government about 12-13 years ago actually created this "lawless bit of Britain" where anybody can be questioned for up to nine hours without access to a solicitor, and where all your belongings can be confiscated. And there's nothing you can do about it.
(Note: Guardian reported yesterday that David Miranda was offered a solicitor but refused.)

What is the Guardian's Position over David Miranda's Legal Action?
Rusbridger: The Guardian is supporting that action and we are supporting it in terms of financing it because David Miranda was acting on behalf of Glenn Greenwald at the time he was detained. So we support that action and I think it's a good thing to challenge that law and see why Terror and Journalism are being elided in this disturbing way.
David Miranda wasn't really "on assignment." He is Glenn Greenwald's partner. Glenn Greenwald's a very busy man and he assists Glenn in his journalistic work, and he was acting as a messenger or intermediary in a way that's difficult for Glenn at the moment because he's got a lot of work to be doing in Brazil, and I think he's also a bit nervous about traveling at the moment.

Was it wrong for the Guardian to pay a non-journalist to act as a courier this way, especially if he didn't know what he was carrying?
Rusbridger: Glenn Greenwald trusts David - he obviously does as his partner, and it was Glenn's decision and David's -- he's a grown-up adult. He wanted somebody he could trust and ... it was important that Glenn had somebody he could trust.

Why did you take the decision to destroy the files you had in your possession?
Rusbridger: We were faced effectively with an ultimatum from the British Government that if we didn't hand back the material or destroy it they would move to law. That would mean prior restraint, a concept that is anathema in America and in other parts of the world, in which the state can effectively prevent a news publisher from publishing. And I didn't want to get into that position. And I also explained to the UK officials that we were dealing with that there were other copies already in America and Brazil so they wouldn't be achieving anything.
But once it was obvious that they would be going to law, I would rather destroy the copy than hand it back to them, or allow courts to freeze our reporting.



Would handing over the material be seen as a betrayal of Edward Snowden?
Rusbridger: Well, I didn't think we had Snowden's consent to hand the material back, and I didn't want to help the UK authorities know what he had given us.
So, to me, I wasn't going to hand it back to the government and I was happy to destroy it because it was not going to inhibit our reporting. We would simply do it from America and not from London.

In what way did the Government put pressure on you?
Rusbridger: I think the Government were geniuinly torn and to begin with they were not heavy handed. They were reasonable conversations. It was a reasonable dialogue. All I can is that at some point something changed and that switched into a threat of legal action. I don't know what changed or why they changed. I imagine there were different conversations going on within the security apparatus, within Whitehall, within Downing Street, and at some point a message came to me that 'we'd had our fun' and that the time had now come to return the documents.

How do you think this whole episode will affect the way Journalists go about their work?
Rusbridger: I think anybody, any journalist, reading the Snowden revelations ought to realize that with the mass collection of millions and millions of emails, details of phone calls, texts, the business of reporting securely and having confidential sources is becoming difficult. And I think our further revelations will underline that. I mean, obviously this is a much bigger subject than just journalism. And it affects every citizen. But journalists, I think, should be aware of the difficulties they're going to face in the future because everybody in 2013 leaves a really big digital trail which is very easily accessed.
I hope what this will do is lead people back to read the stories that so upset them about the British state. There's been a lot of reporting about what GCHQ and the NSA are up to. And I think what Snowden is trying to draw attention to is the degree in which we are on a road to total surveillance. We're not there yet, but in these documents there is the state ambition to scoop up everything and store it all and to master the internet.
This is a language that's being used internally and Snowden essentially risked his freedom to wave a big red flag and say look, this is the infrastructure they're building.
And I think in America and in Europe (England?), countries (sp) which have recent history of what that counter-surveillance means, this is being taken very very seriously, and has started a big debate. And I think that the danger in the UK is -- we're a kind of blessed country, we haven't had that kind of recent history. The danger is we'd be a little bit complacent about what's being revealed.
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