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UK government now leaking documents about itself

210 points by MarcScott 13y ago

acqq 13y ago
Independent's article is really strange: It contains the name of the internal portal from which it claims Snowden downloaded files, it contains the time of Snowden's download and the apparent number of downloaded files. Then it describes the foreign probably military-controlled port which GCHQ uses. Otherwise repeats old information. Why would anybody want to disclose that new info when the goal of Snowden's leaks was to point to the cases of unconstitutional US acts or broad attacks on liberties? It definitely doesn't fit. The new information only "incriminates" Snowden more, otherwise doesn't contribute anything. In who's interest is that then?
- chalst 13y ago
  I recall that the NSA admitted that they hadn't any audit trail from which they could figure out what downloads Snowden had made. But apparently GCHQ has better information...
  - acqq 13y ago
    False argument. It's not "either we know everything or we know nothing." For example, they can have incomplete logs.
epo 13y ago
This is a propaganda war, take nothing at face value. Is the Government lying (or ill-informed)? The Independent? The Guardian? Snowden? Is there another source of leaks?
haakon 13y ago
It figures - this "leak" seemed completely uncharacteristic of Snowden's other leaks.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
mcphilip 13y ago
Edit: my reading skills suck today. Feel free to ignore/downvote this. The independent article [1] referred to has an interesting claim: >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. >As well as destroying a computer containing one copy of the Snowden files, the paper’s editor, Alan Rusbridger, agreed to restrict the newspaper’s reporting of the documents. From this submission's guardian article: Greenwald: "Speaking for myself, let me make one thing clear: I'm not aware of, nor subject to, any agreement that imposes any limitations of any kind on the reporting that I am doing on these documents" It might be helpful if the Guardian explicitly clears this up. What a strange situation... [1]http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/exclusive-uks-secret-mideast-internet-surveillance-base-is-revealed-in-edward-snowden-leaks-8781082.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/exclusive-uks-...
- grey-area 13y ago
  The Guardian editors did an interview a while ago with Charlie Rose explaining the process[1], and I don't think it's so much an agreement as that they run stories past the government first, for comment, and for the government to give them specific objections to revealing information - so far they've not heard anything concrete, just 'don't publish this' - though this was before the laptop debacle. The Guardian and WaPo redact the documents before publication (sometimes heavily). The Independent is restating that in a slightly misleading way to imply that The Guardian has some sort of firm agreement with the government on vague terms like 'national security'. So I don't think the Guardian needs to clear anything up, they've been quite clear, and even if there were an agreement, I think the Guardian would argue that nothing they have or will publish does endanger 'national security' - it would come down to arguments over the meaning of that term. Does it meant the comfort and ease of our politicians and security services to keep their activities secret, or does it mean actual danger to citizens of the UK? [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7pdzzZB7Xgo https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7pdz... From the Independent story: The Independent is not revealing the precise location of the station but information on its activities was contained in the leaked documents obtained from the NSA by Edward Snowden. This looks really bad for the Independent, as the article makes it sound like this is based on a leak from Snowden, and yet Snowden has specifically denied this, and if you go back and reread the article in that light, it becomes clear that they have simply reproduced a leak at the behest of GCHQ, carefully worded in order to preempt future scoops while giving little away, and yet get in front of the news with their best possible spin. I love the ending as well where they give up pretending to be independent: Intelligence sources have denied the aim is a blanket gathering of all communications, insisting the operation is targeted at security, terror and organised crime. We know they already collect it all, and the only limits are technical ones (for GCHQ at least, and it's starting to look like the NSA are similar). We already know they target individuals who are nothing to do with terror and organised crime (Laura Poitras, Appelbaum, Miranda etc).
devx 13y ago
You know, when I read that story I immediately thought "oh boy, now they're going to say Snowden leaks 'hurt them' because they uncovered military operations", or something along those lines. So if it's coming straight from the UK government, I could see why they'd want to blame Snowden for that, and make him lose favor with the public. If this is why they did it, I could even see US "advising" them on following the same model to destroy his image, just like they did with Manning and Assange (and where somewhat successful in that, I'd say).
brey 13y ago
While I'm with the tin-foil hat brigade on this whole debacle, I'm not quite sure that 'it wasn't from Snowden' necessarily means 'so it must be misinformation from the Government'. especially as it would be so easily disproven that Snowden had anything to do with it.
- 7952 13y ago
  Its perfectly possible that they have known about these monitoring stations for years, but lacked confirmation, or a narrative.
  - malandrew 13y ago
    I think it would be awesome if they played along on this one and then followed up a few days later explaining that the tin-foil hat crowd was right and that the information was in fact leaked by the government in an attempt to discredit Snowden and Greenwald. If I ran a news business and was approached to disinform the public, to me that is a huge story. I would milk it and play along and gather as much irrefutable evidence of willful acts to mislead the public and then drop that story later on. If you simply say that you won't play along, you lose the opportunity to discover how deep that rabbit hole goes.
MarcScott 13y ago
I wonder whether the Independent would reveal their source, or at least confirm or deny that it came from the UK government.
chiph 13y ago
There could be a second Snowden.
- alan_cx 13y ago
  If only.... That would be one hell of a twist. Just to really push it, what if he has an unknown identical twin???
  - jacquesm 13y ago
    That would make passing through customs interesting.
- earnubs 13y ago
  Or many, but they prefer to do things the old fashioned way.
- AimHere 13y ago
  A hypothetical second Snowden wouldn't really know what files the first Snowden is leaking though.
nicholassmith 13y ago
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.
- grey-area 13y ago
  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.
  - panacea 13y ago
    To be fair, the Indie has been completely missing from the conversation so far. Understandable that they want in. Despicable, if they're using 'undisclosed sources' who are the UK spy services though.
hyperventilator 13y ago
The claim that the UK gov leaked this appears to be complete conjecture. It may be correct, but there are no facts, even circumstantial, to back this claim.
- alan_cx 13y ago
  Until the the UK gov confirms political leaking, its is all we have. So, either we have a bit of a chat and see what we can work out, or we say nothing because its conjecture and so forth. Are you suggesting that we cant have that conversation? Or are you suggesting that we all think we are talking god's fact and are deluding ourselves? Yes, we know it is conjecture. Remind me, when was the last time a government freely admitted to leaking information for political reasons?
  - hyperventilator 13y ago
    I never said any of that. The title states it as fact, there are no facts.
    - alan_cx 13y ago
      I know. I had to go with the implication of what you said because the bare bones of it were too obvious to have been worth posting.
      - hyperventilator 13y ago
        I know your excited but please don't put words in my mouth.
jacquesm 13y ago
One day there will be a movie about all this.
- acqq 13y ago
  "The Return of All the President's Men."
  - chiph 13y ago
    "All the President's Men: The Quickening"
pivnicek 13y ago
Does anyone know what kind of encryption was used on those drives that were taken from Miranda at Heathrow? Is it feasible to break that in this little time? That seems to be the angle here, that that info was on those drives. At least that's my wild stab in the dark.
- jacquesm 13y ago
  There is some confusion on this front. Apparently Miranda gave them either the keys to the encrypted devices, the passwords to his online accounts or both. It should be possible to clear this up but I can't find a direct quote of either Miranda or Greenwald on the matter.
  - justincormack 13y ago
    It seems unlikely he had the keys to the files, he says he did not know what was there and it would make no sense to give the keys until he arrived.
  - grey-area 13y ago
    https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/370512998017683457 https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/370512998017683457
    - jacquesm 13y ago
      Thanks!
- grey-area 13y ago
  GCHQ and the NSA are the origin of the files, they have no need to break encryption in order to know anything released in this article.
- uptown 13y ago
  Snowden was quoted as saying the capabilities of the agencies he was dealing with were “capable of a trillion guesses per second” in decrypting communications. source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/magazine/laura-poitras-snowden.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/magazine/laura-poitras-sno...
jgrahamc 13y ago
Richard Aldirch's book on GCHQ lists three locations in the Middle East used by GCHQ/NSA: 1. Masirah Island near Oman 2. Muharraq, Bahrain 3. Mutlah Ridge, Kuwait Given its location and the layout of cables in that region I'd guess #1. I'm not quite sure why The Independent published this article though. Surely, it's not news that GCHQ operates bases around the world? Are they going to reveal the location of Diego Garcia next?
alan_cx 13y ago
Well, here is my theory. Could well be missing something, or a hell of a lot, but here goes.... First thing is that my impression has been that the Independent has so far been pretty much parroting the Guardian articles. Now, I read this article as a "good spying" article. Its there for the government and GCHQ to show that spying is good, or had a good side. From a British security POV, if we believe the terror threat, this article actually shows spying as useful or worth while, and to Brits, good. Arabs wont like it, but to those who matter to the UK and US, I assume they know, and comply. Well, don't want to be bombed back to the stone age or be invaded, right? Next, why the Independent, and not the Murdoch Times, Telegraph (Known in the UK as the Torygraph), or one of the tabloids? Well, the story needs the weight of a proper newspaper, so that's the tabloids out. That leaves the broadsheets. Pro conservative papers are too obvious, so that leaves the Independent. Looks to me like a divide and rule thing. So far, the Independent and Guardian have been in step. Now we have the Guardian pushing "bad spying" and the Independent is the "good spying" advocate. The two step has been split. I say the Independent has been used and somewhere along the line, we will see what they got for it.
- rahoulb 13y ago
  Also interesting that the Telegraph's reporting on the same story (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/10261175/Britain-has-secret-listening-station-in-Middle-East.html 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.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - alan_cx 13y ago
    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.
- dTal 13y ago
beaker52 13y ago
An unsavoury attempt at demonising Edward Snowden and those associated with him (Glenn Greenwald) based on false information, with a view to achieving public rationalisation of the actions of the government in the destruction of Guardian data and the detention of David Miranda, hence rationalising the reduction of civil liberties, increased surveillance and enforcement of "law" in the name of protecting the public from terrorism. [Edit: Removed some emotive exaggeration]
- hahainternet 13y ago
  This, is nonsense hyperbole.
  - beaker52 13y ago
    Thank you :)
    - hahainternet 13y ago
      You are aware that this is a 13 year old law, and that the government did not destroy The Guardian's data right?
einhverfr 13y ago
Fascinating. The Independent doesn't seem to say they got the documents from Snowden. They appear instead to be accepting UK intelligence agencies claiming that Snowden had certain information. Maybe these were documents that the NSA has identified as likely compromised? Or maybe they were found on someone else (Miranda?) but it seems like this is an interesting development. I am not even sure the Independent is being dishonest about it. However, something pretty odd is going on and the UK government is starting to look pretty incompetent.
- espeed 13y ago
  Yesterday Schneier was trying to make sense out of the British authorities' play to detain Miranda... "Schneier: The Real, Terrifying Reason Why British Authorities Detained David Miranda" (http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/08/the-real-terrifying-reason-why-british-authorities-detained-david-miranda/278952/ http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/08/the...)
  - einhverfr 13y ago
    Where I differ from Schneier here is that I think it is quite plausible that the NSA doesn't know what Snowden actually took. One can more easily audit what he had access to and what he could have taken than one can audit what he did and given his long period of service, what he could have taken is likely to be very large. You have to remember that even mandatory access control systems aren't really designed to keep sysadmins out, and logging has its limits both in the sorts of information you can extrapolate from a log entry and what you can log. My point is that it is quite possible that the NSA has a list of documents that Snowden could have taken and has no idea which of those he did.
belorn 13y ago
Its called a false flag operation, commonly used to implicate a nation rather than an individual. The Snowden camp is rather well defended at this point. He has received asylum in a country where US forces can't simply collect him from. The leaks are given out carefully, with lessons learned from the events surrounding Wikileaks. The news are given out in pace with readers ability to absorb them. So what can a government do? Stopping airplanes with national leaders in them only caused more uproar. Trying to strong-arm journalist just created more news articles. Trying to physical destroy copies only resulted in a somewhat burned laptop, and maybe made someone to release an "insurance file". I guess they tried next with a false flag operation, hoping that it could go unnoticed. I wonder the think tanks will think of next.
- deveac 13y ago
  >Trying to physical destroy copies only resulted in a somewhat burned laptop, and maybe made someone to release an "insurance file". If you buy the plausible argument that this was a UK govt leak designed to discredit Snowden while stating that the stolen information and the handling of it is a national security threat, then the grandiose and very public destruction of the hard drives actually makes sense. It was the gov't calling attention to its "attempt to destroy the information to limit harmful disclosure." The public grandstanding of that act would be a sensical precursor to a controlled leak of the sort the Independent published.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
gargoiler00 13y ago
I remember when hacker news used to be about hacking, programming, startups etc. What the hell has this political article got to do with any of the above?
- forgottenpass 13y ago
  Tech doesn't exist in a vacuum disconnected from the world, it's constantly interacting with society as the two evolve with and by eachother. It has the power to fundamentally alter the world, the most grandiose among programmers and entrepreneurs will even voice that as a goal. Large scale monitoring of computerized communication infrastructure. The cat and mouse implementation of crypto technologies in response. The ethos of the people on the forefront of computer privacy. The fact that the leaker was a sysadmin. All these dots connect to form a larger story that is just as much about tech in society as it is politics. This article in specific and Snowden's leaks in general may be more on the social side, but is still a component of the larger story that is fundamental to tech.
- jacquesm 13y ago
  This is a defining moment in history, one which will shape the digital environment in which we all operate for decades to come. By the time the last echoes have fades HTTP and SMTP will likely no longer exist, every last bit of every communication will be encrypted and the general public will be about as paranoid as the most tinfoil hat type of 2 years ago. All it takes for that to be the case is a few more things to happen: - someone leaks a substantial body of cleartext records on citizens - ditto on some foreign head of state / politician / judge - ditto on an American politician The term 'plaintext' will be as antiquated as 'morse'. Still occasionally in use but not for anything that matters. Intelligence agencies will be reduced to traffic analysis and likely not even that with a vast chunk of the internet simply going dark, either as a mesh network or in some other decentralized fashion where there are no more supernodes such as Mae-East, Mae-West and Front 151. The other alternative is not so much fun so I won't outline that here. There is a good reason why 'may you live in interesting times' is considered a curse. The fall-out from this will affect every hacker, every start-up and likely every company operating at the moment with even a peripheral interface with the digital world, which is probably all of them.
Fuxy 13y ago
Let the chess games begin. UK on the attack now desperately trying to find an angle to sell to the public.
jacquesm 13y ago
Maybe the independent should drop the 'in' from it's name.

210 points by MarcScott 13y ago

acqq 13y ago

Independent's article is really strange: It contains the name of the internal portal from which it claims Snowden downloaded files, it contains the time of Snowden's download and the apparent number of downloaded files. Then it describes the foreign probably military-controlled port which GCHQ uses. Otherwise repeats old information. Why would anybody want to disclose that new info when the goal of Snowden's leaks was to point to the cases of unconstitutional US acts or broad attacks on liberties? It definitely doesn't fit. The new information only "incriminates" Snowden more, otherwise doesn't contribute anything. In who's interest is that then?

chalst 13y ago
I recall that the NSA admitted that they hadn't any audit trail from which they could figure out what downloads Snowden had made. But apparently GCHQ has better information...
- acqq 13y ago
  False argument. It's not "either we know everything or we know nothing." For example, they can have incomplete logs.

epo 13y ago

This is a propaganda war, take nothing at face value. Is the Government lying (or ill-informed)? The Independent? The Guardian? Snowden? Is there another source of leaks?

haakon 13y ago

It figures - this "leak" seemed completely uncharacteristic of Snowden's other leaks.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

mcphilip 13y ago

Edit: my reading skills suck today. Feel free to ignore/downvote this. The independent article [1] referred to has an interesting claim: >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. >As well as destroying a computer containing one copy of the Snowden files, the paper’s editor, Alan Rusbridger, agreed to restrict the newspaper’s reporting of the documents. From this submission's guardian article: Greenwald: "Speaking for myself, let me make one thing clear: I'm not aware of, nor subject to, any agreement that imposes any limitations of any kind on the reporting that I am doing on these documents" It might be helpful if the Guardian explicitly clears this up. What a strange situation... [1]http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/exclusive-uks-secret-mideast-internet-surveillance-base-is-revealed-in-edward-snowden-leaks-8781082.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/exclusive-uks-...

grey-area 13y ago
The Guardian editors did an interview a while ago with Charlie Rose explaining the process[1], and I don't think it's so much an agreement as that they run stories past the government first, for comment, and for the government to give them specific objections to revealing information - so far they've not heard anything concrete, just 'don't publish this' - though this was before the laptop debacle. The Guardian and WaPo redact the documents before publication (sometimes heavily). The Independent is restating that in a slightly misleading way to imply that The Guardian has some sort of firm agreement with the government on vague terms like 'national security'. So I don't think the Guardian needs to clear anything up, they've been quite clear, and even if there were an agreement, I think the Guardian would argue that nothing they have or will publish does endanger 'national security' - it would come down to arguments over the meaning of that term. Does it meant the comfort and ease of our politicians and security services to keep their activities secret, or does it mean actual danger to citizens of the UK? [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7pdzzZB7Xgo https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7pdz... From the Independent story: The Independent is not revealing the precise location of the station but information on its activities was contained in the leaked documents obtained from the NSA by Edward Snowden. This looks really bad for the Independent, as the article makes it sound like this is based on a leak from Snowden, and yet Snowden has specifically denied this, and if you go back and reread the article in that light, it becomes clear that they have simply reproduced a leak at the behest of GCHQ, carefully worded in order to preempt future scoops while giving little away, and yet get in front of the news with their best possible spin. I love the ending as well where they give up pretending to be independent: Intelligence sources have denied the aim is a blanket gathering of all communications, insisting the operation is targeted at security, terror and organised crime. We know they already collect it all, and the only limits are technical ones (for GCHQ at least, and it's starting to look like the NSA are similar). We already know they target individuals who are nothing to do with terror and organised crime (Laura Poitras, Appelbaum, Miranda etc).

devx 13y ago

You know, when I read that story I immediately thought "oh boy, now they're going to say Snowden leaks 'hurt them' because they uncovered military operations", or something along those lines. So if it's coming straight from the UK government, I could see why they'd want to blame Snowden for that, and make him lose favor with the public. If this is why they did it, I could even see US "advising" them on following the same model to destroy his image, just like they did with Manning and Assange (and where somewhat successful in that, I'd say).

brey 13y ago

While I'm with the tin-foil hat brigade on this whole debacle, I'm not quite sure that 'it wasn't from Snowden' necessarily means 'so it must be misinformation from the Government'. especially as it would be so easily disproven that Snowden had anything to do with it.

7952 13y ago
Its perfectly possible that they have known about these monitoring stations for years, but lacked confirmation, or a narrative.
- malandrew 13y ago
  I think it would be awesome if they played along on this one and then followed up a few days later explaining that the tin-foil hat crowd was right and that the information was in fact leaked by the government in an attempt to discredit Snowden and Greenwald. If I ran a news business and was approached to disinform the public, to me that is a huge story. I would milk it and play along and gather as much irrefutable evidence of willful acts to mislead the public and then drop that story later on. If you simply say that you won't play along, you lose the opportunity to discover how deep that rabbit hole goes.

MarcScott 13y ago

I wonder whether the Independent would reveal their source, or at least confirm or deny that it came from the UK government.

chiph 13y ago

There could be a second Snowden.

alan_cx 13y ago
If only.... That would be one hell of a twist. Just to really push it, what if he has an unknown identical twin???
- jacquesm 13y ago
  That would make passing through customs interesting.
earnubs 13y ago
Or many, but they prefer to do things the old fashioned way.
AimHere 13y ago
A hypothetical second Snowden wouldn't really know what files the first Snowden is leaking though.

nicholassmith 13y ago

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.

grey-area 13y ago
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.
- panacea 13y ago
  To be fair, the Indie has been completely missing from the conversation so far. Understandable that they want in. Despicable, if they're using 'undisclosed sources' who are the UK spy services though.

hyperventilator 13y ago

The claim that the UK gov leaked this appears to be complete conjecture. It may be correct, but there are no facts, even circumstantial, to back this claim.

alan_cx 13y ago
Until the the UK gov confirms political leaking, its is all we have. So, either we have a bit of a chat and see what we can work out, or we say nothing because its conjecture and so forth. Are you suggesting that we cant have that conversation? Or are you suggesting that we all think we are talking god's fact and are deluding ourselves? Yes, we know it is conjecture. Remind me, when was the last time a government freely admitted to leaking information for political reasons?
- hyperventilator 13y ago
  I never said any of that. The title states it as fact, there are no facts.
  - alan_cx 13y ago
    I know. I had to go with the implication of what you said because the bare bones of it were too obvious to have been worth posting.
    - hyperventilator 13y ago
      I know your excited but please don't put words in my mouth.

jacquesm 13y ago

One day there will be a movie about all this.

acqq 13y ago
"The Return of All the President's Men."
- chiph 13y ago
  "All the President's Men: The Quickening"

pivnicek 13y ago

Does anyone know what kind of encryption was used on those drives that were taken from Miranda at Heathrow? Is it feasible to break that in this little time? That seems to be the angle here, that that info was on those drives. At least that's my wild stab in the dark.

jacquesm 13y ago
There is some confusion on this front. Apparently Miranda gave them either the keys to the encrypted devices, the passwords to his online accounts or both. It should be possible to clear this up but I can't find a direct quote of either Miranda or Greenwald on the matter.
- justincormack 13y ago
  It seems unlikely he had the keys to the files, he says he did not know what was there and it would make no sense to give the keys until he arrived.
- grey-area 13y ago
  https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/370512998017683457 https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/370512998017683457
  - jacquesm 13y ago
    Thanks!
grey-area 13y ago
GCHQ and the NSA are the origin of the files, they have no need to break encryption in order to know anything released in this article.
uptown 13y ago
Snowden was quoted as saying the capabilities of the agencies he was dealing with were “capable of a trillion guesses per second” in decrypting communications. source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/magazine/laura-poitras-snowden.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/magazine/laura-poitras-sno...

jgrahamc 13y ago

Richard Aldirch's book on GCHQ lists three locations in the Middle East used by GCHQ/NSA: 1. Masirah Island near Oman 2. Muharraq, Bahrain 3. Mutlah Ridge, Kuwait Given its location and the layout of cables in that region I'd guess #1. I'm not quite sure why The Independent published this article though. Surely, it's not news that GCHQ operates bases around the world? Are they going to reveal the location of Diego Garcia next?

alan_cx 13y ago

Well, here is my theory. Could well be missing something, or a hell of a lot, but here goes.... First thing is that my impression has been that the Independent has so far been pretty much parroting the Guardian articles. Now, I read this article as a "good spying" article. Its there for the government and GCHQ to show that spying is good, or had a good side. From a British security POV, if we believe the terror threat, this article actually shows spying as useful or worth while, and to Brits, good. Arabs wont like it, but to those who matter to the UK and US, I assume they know, and comply. Well, don't want to be bombed back to the stone age or be invaded, right? Next, why the Independent, and not the Murdoch Times, Telegraph (Known in the UK as the Torygraph), or one of the tabloids? Well, the story needs the weight of a proper newspaper, so that's the tabloids out. That leaves the broadsheets. Pro conservative papers are too obvious, so that leaves the Independent. Looks to me like a divide and rule thing. So far, the Independent and Guardian have been in step. Now we have the Guardian pushing "bad spying" and the Independent is the "good spying" advocate. The two step has been split. I say the Independent has been used and somewhere along the line, we will see what they got for it.

rahoulb 13y ago
Also interesting that the Telegraph's reporting on the same story (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/10261175/Britain-has-secret-listening-station-in-Middle-East.html 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.
- deleted 13y ago
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- alan_cx 13y ago
  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.
dTal 13y ago

beaker52 13y ago

An unsavoury attempt at demonising Edward Snowden and those associated with him (Glenn Greenwald) based on false information, with a view to achieving public rationalisation of the actions of the government in the destruction of Guardian data and the detention of David Miranda, hence rationalising the reduction of civil liberties, increased surveillance and enforcement of "law" in the name of protecting the public from terrorism. [Edit: Removed some emotive exaggeration]

hahainternet 13y ago
This, is nonsense hyperbole.
- beaker52 13y ago
  Thank you :)
  - hahainternet 13y ago
    You are aware that this is a 13 year old law, and that the government did not destroy The Guardian's data right?

einhverfr 13y ago

Fascinating. The Independent doesn't seem to say they got the documents from Snowden. They appear instead to be accepting UK intelligence agencies claiming that Snowden had certain information. Maybe these were documents that the NSA has identified as likely compromised? Or maybe they were found on someone else (Miranda?) but it seems like this is an interesting development. I am not even sure the Independent is being dishonest about it. However, something pretty odd is going on and the UK government is starting to look pretty incompetent.

espeed 13y ago
Yesterday Schneier was trying to make sense out of the British authorities' play to detain Miranda... "Schneier: The Real, Terrifying Reason Why British Authorities Detained David Miranda" (http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/08/the-real-terrifying-reason-why-british-authorities-detained-david-miranda/278952/ http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/08/the...)
- einhverfr 13y ago
  Where I differ from Schneier here is that I think it is quite plausible that the NSA doesn't know what Snowden actually took. One can more easily audit what he had access to and what he could have taken than one can audit what he did and given his long period of service, what he could have taken is likely to be very large. You have to remember that even mandatory access control systems aren't really designed to keep sysadmins out, and logging has its limits both in the sorts of information you can extrapolate from a log entry and what you can log. My point is that it is quite possible that the NSA has a list of documents that Snowden could have taken and has no idea which of those he did.

belorn 13y ago

Its called a false flag operation, commonly used to implicate a nation rather than an individual. The Snowden camp is rather well defended at this point. He has received asylum in a country where US forces can't simply collect him from. The leaks are given out carefully, with lessons learned from the events surrounding Wikileaks. The news are given out in pace with readers ability to absorb them. So what can a government do? Stopping airplanes with national leaders in them only caused more uproar. Trying to strong-arm journalist just created more news articles. Trying to physical destroy copies only resulted in a somewhat burned laptop, and maybe made someone to release an "insurance file". I guess they tried next with a false flag operation, hoping that it could go unnoticed. I wonder the think tanks will think of next.

deveac 13y ago
>Trying to physical destroy copies only resulted in a somewhat burned laptop, and maybe made someone to release an "insurance file". If you buy the plausible argument that this was a UK govt leak designed to discredit Snowden while stating that the stolen information and the handling of it is a national security threat, then the grandiose and very public destruction of the hard drives actually makes sense. It was the gov't calling attention to its "attempt to destroy the information to limit harmful disclosure." The public grandstanding of that act would be a sensical precursor to a controlled leak of the sort the Independent published.

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gargoiler00 13y ago

I remember when hacker news used to be about hacking, programming, startups etc. What the hell has this political article got to do with any of the above?

forgottenpass 13y ago
Tech doesn't exist in a vacuum disconnected from the world, it's constantly interacting with society as the two evolve with and by eachother. It has the power to fundamentally alter the world, the most grandiose among programmers and entrepreneurs will even voice that as a goal. Large scale monitoring of computerized communication infrastructure. The cat and mouse implementation of crypto technologies in response. The ethos of the people on the forefront of computer privacy. The fact that the leaker was a sysadmin. All these dots connect to form a larger story that is just as much about tech in society as it is politics. This article in specific and Snowden's leaks in general may be more on the social side, but is still a component of the larger story that is fundamental to tech.
jacquesm 13y ago
This is a defining moment in history, one which will shape the digital environment in which we all operate for decades to come. By the time the last echoes have fades HTTP and SMTP will likely no longer exist, every last bit of every communication will be encrypted and the general public will be about as paranoid as the most tinfoil hat type of 2 years ago. All it takes for that to be the case is a few more things to happen: - someone leaks a substantial body of cleartext records on citizens - ditto on some foreign head of state / politician / judge - ditto on an American politician The term 'plaintext' will be as antiquated as 'morse'. Still occasionally in use but not for anything that matters. Intelligence agencies will be reduced to traffic analysis and likely not even that with a vast chunk of the internet simply going dark, either as a mesh network or in some other decentralized fashion where there are no more supernodes such as Mae-East, Mae-West and Front 151. The other alternative is not so much fun so I won't outline that here. There is a good reason why 'may you live in interesting times' is considered a curse. The fall-out from this will affect every hacker, every start-up and likely every company operating at the moment with even a peripheral interface with the digital world, which is probably all of them.

Fuxy 13y ago

Let the chess games begin. UK on the attack now desperately trying to find an angle to sell to the public.

jacquesm 13y ago

Maybe the independent should drop the 'in' from it's name.