Note very carefully: "contained in the leaked documents obtained from the NSA by Edward Snowden".
Now, that doesn't say the documents came from Snowden, only that it was contained in them. They're both likely telling the truth when Snowden says 'it wasn't from me!' and the Indy says they've not been duped. We know that the UK government has just gotten hold of these documents, but we don't know whether there's anyone sympathetic to the cause mixed in there.
There's a lot of facets to this and care is needed from both sides of the fence, but there's no love loss between The Guardian and The Independent. Maybe The Indie has been told one thing off the record that might have a nugget of truth that's been paired down by Chinese whispers, we just don't know. The Guardian is probably sanitising what they publish after what happened with Wikileaks (no one ever took blame, the password was published by them after assurances it was temporary), and would prefer another firefighting exercise.
Upshot is, The Indie revealed another piece of the puzzle in the reach of the surveillance culture that's being built.
Upshot is, The Indie revealed another piece of the puzzle in the reach of the surveillance culture that's being built.
I suspect this is a direct leak from GCHQ, trying to get ahead of future stories, and also trying to undermine Snowden's stance as a responsible whistleblower. No-one else is in possession of this information, and the article reads like a puff piece for GCHQ, particularly the ending.
This is incredibly misleading from the Independent - if it was from government sources that should have been clearly stated. If not they should name their source, it's not The Guardian (info destroyed one month ago), Snowden (denied, seems unlikely), Greenwald (Brazil), or Poitras, so where did it come from if not the government? It's really embarrassing for them if they have been duped, and even worse if they are complicit and reproducing press-releases from GCHQ without attribution, and with the implication that they have seen secret documents.
If they have seen secret documents and the UK government provided them, this undermines the argument against whistleblowers like Snowden, if not, who is the source? Without a source being specified, their story is not credible.
Yes it does read like dirty tricks alright, particularly this which might as well be a statement from Theresa May who stands over the abuse of the terrorism law:
>"the Metropolitan Police announced it was launching a terrorism investigation..
Scotland Yard said material examined so far from the computer of Mr Miranda was “highly sensitive”, the disclosure of which “could put lives at risk”. "
I see that as an attempt at discrediting Miranda/Greenwald/The Guardian.
> The Government also demanded that the paper not publish details of how UK telecoms firms, including BT and Vodafone, were secretly collaborating with GCHQ... But it only published information on the scheme...
after the allegations appeared in the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.
More of the same
> The Independent understands that The Guardian agreed to the Government’s request not to publish any material contained in the Snowden documents that could damage national security...
But there are fears in Government that Mr Greenwald – who still has access to the files – could attempt to release damaging information.
I think the GCHQ involvement and the BT, Vodafone are the only new information. So it smells pretty bad, especially combined with the misdirection about being in Snowden's files.
The Independent also said that Snowden had downloaded pretty much all of an internal GCHQ wiki. There has to be lots of source-and-methods info in there, and Snowden himself has so far chosen to leak none of it.
Given that, the weasel-worded "among the documents" framing, which specifically avoids saying that that's where they got the documents, really does stick out.
What I don't get it what obligation Snowden has to the GCHQ. Being responsible with the NSA information makes sense since the NSA was his employer and at one time may have represented the welfare of his fellow citizens, but all the information from the other of the 5 Eyes I imagine he, Glenn and Laura could be much more liberal with the reporting. I'm sure there are downsides to such a tactic, but it seems that at the very least it would make all the rest of the 5 Eyes look bad enough that those other nations in the future would be a lot more conservative with respect to how much they cooperate with the NSA. At the end of the day, only the US and the UK have been actual terror targets. I really don't get what the politicians of the other 3 of the 5 Eyes are getting out of the deal that makes involvement worth their while.
I also noticed that, and I bet the words were choose carefully. Still, placing an image of Snowden with Greenwald in their article is quite a bit misleading.
>We know that the UK government has just gotten hold of these documents, but we don't know whether there's anyone sympathetic to the cause mixed in there.
It's likely the leaker is unsympathetic to the cause. Leaking operational details that could spark that 'OMG, if someone finds that out, our guys could get killed' panic would be one way of gaining public support for more of the heavy-handed government censorship that the UK government is inflicting on this case.
It's obvious that the Indie is embarrassed about the very nature of it's source here, and it claims to not be 'duped'. So this could be an actual government propaganda piece of some sort, it could come from the spooks who pulled Miranda's hard drives, or they might be spying on fellow journalists, or the source is just so unreliable that the journalism here is laughable. The last of these sounds fairly unlikely given the lack of any kind of denial of the alleged facts.
Now, that doesn't say the documents came from Snowden, only that it was contained in them. They're both likely telling the truth when Snowden says 'it wasn't from me!' and the Indy says they've not been duped. We know that the UK government has just gotten hold of these documents, but we don't know whether there's anyone sympathetic to the cause mixed in there.
There's a lot of facets to this and care is needed from both sides of the fence, but there's no love loss between The Guardian and The Independent. Maybe The Indie has been told one thing off the record that might have a nugget of truth that's been paired down by Chinese whispers, we just don't know. The Guardian is probably sanitising what they publish after what happened with Wikileaks (no one ever took blame, the password was published by them after assurances it was temporary), and would prefer another firefighting exercise.
Upshot is, The Indie revealed another piece of the puzzle in the reach of the surveillance culture that's being built.