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I actually disagree with those who say this was a pure intimidation tactic, or that it was the GCHQ honestly trying to prevent the material from being published
by redthrowaway 13y ago
I actually disagree with those who say this was a pure intimidation tactic, or that it was the GCHQ honestly trying to prevent the material from being published. Rather, I think Hanlon's Razor is relevant here:
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
The GCHQ is a large, cumbersome, government bureaucracy. I have no faith that they are any more or less competent than any other large, cumbersome, government bureaucracy.
This is exactly the kind of decision made by a committee of ass-covering middle managers: it has the superficial quality of being an attempt to achieve the stated goal (recover or destroy the documents), and it absolves them of personal responsibility for failure (those pesky journalists are operating outside our jurisdiction).
Nobody gets fired for buying IBM, and nobody loses their job over a ham-fisted attempt to meet the technical requirements passed down from on high.
- betterunix 13y agoMaybe so, but then why take so long to get around to this? GCHQ knew that the Guardian had these files all summer long. If this were a cover-your-ass move would they not have done this back in May or June? It could be that GCHQ is so bureaucratic that they need three months to figure out what to do with an information leak. On the other hand, the UK government did just intimidate Greenwald's partner for no apparent reason. This sounds more like retaliation at this point; the only bureaucratic inefficiency to it is the amount of time it took for the government to decide to retaliate.
- redthrowaway 13y agoThe British spy agencies have always had a well-earned reputation for surprising incompetence.[1] It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if it took them three months to make a decision and it ended up being an idiotic one. [1] An entertaining read: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/BUGGER http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/BUGGER A more serious retrospective from someone who was there: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/donotmigrate/3561321/John-le-Carre-the-spies-who-lost-it.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/donotmigrate/3561321/John...
- lttlrck 13y agoThank you. The second link is a wonderful read.
- redthrowaway 13y agoIt's strange, I've never been able to get into le Carre's novels, but I do quite enjoy his writing in that piece.