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Britain targets Guardian paper over intelligence leaks related to Edward Snowden
- timbro 13y agoReintroduction of fascism: My money's on the brits.
- DanBC 13y agoThere's lots of really lousy things happening in the UK. It doesn't seem to matter which party is in government - some of the stuff New Labour was doing was breath-takingly awful. Having said that: This YouTube clip of Will Ferrel is just disturbing. How many of the audience get the irony? How many are oblivious to it? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQzkMoEGDGE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQzkMoEGDGE
- knapp 13y agoThat Ferrel clip is no more or less disturbing than any featuring Al Murray doing The Pub Landlord. How many of his audience get that it's all an ironic joke?
- DanBC 13y agoTrue. Alf Garnet is another example of very uncomfortable viewing.
- quesera 13y agoContext is everything. To American audiences, that's obviously satire. Standard fare for the actor and the host. It's definitely, deliberately, over the top and uncomfortable in a Sascha Baron-Cohen kind of way, but we know when we are making fun of ourselves. The combination of exceptionalism with schadenfreude is always ugly, and gross exaggerations of both, well, satire. Outside of the US, where the players aren't as well known...maybe it's not clear satire. Where folks are quick to judge (often rightfully) American bluster...yeah, it makes him and the studio audience sound like colossal jerks, and people might add it to their mental list of examples proving that Americans suck. But what does that have to do with the UK? :)
- wavefunction 13y agoLet me put your poor benighted heart to rest and let you know that 100% of the crowd is in on the joke. Anytime someone gets up and starts shouting "USA!" in American media, it's a joke. Never in my decades on this planet have I ever seen any American chant "USA" in any venue that mattered (sporting events do not matter.)
- thisiswrong 13y agoVery disturbing indeed. I guess George Orwell was right all along. YouTube clip mirror for non US viewers: http://teamcoco.com/video/will-ferrell-hates-russian-gymnast-girls http://teamcoco.com/video/will-ferrell-hates-russian-gymnast...
- nodata 13y agoWhat is this, divide and conquer? Grow up.
- Brakenshire 13y agoBritain is probably the most unsuitable country for fascism in the world. Far too shambling, and not nearly dramatic enough. Fascism is theatre.
- GunlogAlm 13y ago"[Britain] also has no enshrined constitutional right to free speech" Well, we do, technically. We have no written constitution; our "constitution" is statute, legal rulings, and treaties. The Human Rights Act 1998 guarantees freedom of speech.
- conductor 13y agoThen why do you arrest people for tweets? http://reason.com/blog/2013/05/24/two-men-arrested-for-tweets-after-murder http://reason.com/blog/2013/05/24/two-men-arrested-for-tweet... http://www.cbsnews.com/news/teen-arrested-for-malicious-tweets-about-british-olympic-diver-tom-daley-and-his-late-father/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/teen-arrested-for-malicious-twee... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/15/twitter-facebook-arrested-uk_n_2134858.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/15/twitter-facebook-ar...
- DanBC 13y agoWhy do you arrest people for YouTube videos? http://www.dailydot.com/news/cameron-dambrosio-boston-bomb-threat-youtube-rap/ http://www.dailydot.com/news/cameron-dambrosio-boston-bomb-t... Or gaming comments? http://www.popehat.com/2013/07/11/the-first-amendment-protects-satire-and-rhetoric-lol-jk/ http://www.popehat.com/2013/07/11/the-first-amendment-protec...
- jrockway 13y agoThe US has carved so many "oh.. but..."s into the First Amendment that I laugh a little bit when Americans get on their high horse and tell everyone how free we are. Then again, it's nice to at least have it listed in the Constitution.
- refurb 13y agoYou're comparing people making political statements to people making threats of violence? Big difference, I think.
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- salient 13y agoI can't believe they actually went through with it. I thought they were just bluffing to scare them. David Cameron must believe he has absolute power to do anything he wants, including destroying any freedom the UK press may have, along with charging journalists for terrorism, and that nobody can do anything to stop him. You'd think mature democracies in the 21st century would've learned something from the previous century, and wouldn't go back to the previous shameless abuses of power by the leadership, that would normally happen only in countries we'd call "dictatorships" or "communists" or "fascists". It's like the Internet has made them power mad once again, wiping out any memories of previous abuses and why they happened. I think it was Bruce Schenier who said the Internet is "magnifying" everyone's power, not just the power of the individuals. It's just that it took a while for the governments to catch-up to understanding how they can (ab)use this power. We need that "secure by default" Internet right about now, to put governments on equal footing with their citizens once again (so they can't abuse the power to know everything about everyone anymore). We need to have real privacy again on the Internet, and real anonymity, too, for those that think they need it. If privacy really is dead from now on, then this century is going to not be a very pleasant one for normal citizens.
- jlgaddis 13y agoPrintable/single page version: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/britain-targets-guardian-newspaper-over-intelligence-leaks-related-to-edward-snowden/2013/11/29/1ec3d9c0-581e-11e3-bdbf-097ab2a3dc2b_print.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/britain-targets-g...
- tehwalrus 13y agoThe Graun really has done nothing but expose law breaking by GCHQ here (Data protection act, knowingly accepting illegally obtained data from the US). It's astonishing that the Police are investigating them instead of the spooks.
- mercurial 13y agoIs is so astonishing to find out that the various security services and the government are in bed with each other? On the other hand, you'd expect some MPs to raise a stink about it.
- tehwalrus 13y agoThe Police and the Security Services are separate organisations, and the former are supposed to be able to investigate anyone, even themselves. I'd hoped they'd be more anxious to appear to be doing the right thing here, but it seems Cameron's comments have emboldened them.
- vidarh 13y agoThe UK police investigates anything the government wants to signal it's dislike about. It's the UK governments goto version of putting you on notice they don't like you. If there'd been serious chances of anything coming out of it, they'd have acted by now - they, and everyone else, knows the damage has already been done, in that going after The Guardian now won't stop coverage, and would in fact be pretty much the only thing they could do which would get Guardian plenty of support (out of self interest) from other media organizations that have so far given the NSA/GCHQ revelations very little attention.
- AlisdairO 13y agoAs a citizen of the UK, the government's reaction to the Snowden revelations chills my soul. I imagined they would at least be embarrassed to be shown to be presiding over the construction of a turn-key despotic state. I don't have massively high expectations of Cameron, but the fact that Clegg's Lib Dems haven't broken up the government over this has completely destroyed my respect for them - and any chance of me voting for them in future.
- hahainternet 13y agoWhat exactly should they have broken the government up over? How would that have helped in any way?
- nodata 13y agoIt would have given the other party power.
- dreamfactory 13y agoHow, given that they can't form a majority?
- atmosx 13y agoEvery political party represents a specific ideology. If your actions go against the ideology you represent you should at least have the decency to resign. If that's the case, then it means that all you're after is power at whatever cost. Which means that a voter with 2 braincells shouldn't vote for that party again, because it has lost the only currency that matters: trust.
- gaius 13y agoIronically, the Guardian is the paper most in favour of government regulation of the press, in the wake of the phone hacking scandal. http://reason.com/blog/2013/08/20/despite-its-battle-with-the-surveillance http://reason.com/blog/2013/08/20/despite-its-battle-with-th...
- seiji 13y agoPeople say "phone hacking," but weren't they just using default from-the-factory four digit PINs on voicemails that the owners never thought to change?
- darkr 13y agoIn majority of cases yes, but there were also several instances of basic social engineering to obtain pin resets. That was about the only thing remotely approaching 'a hack'. Mulcaire was no Mitnick, that's for sure.
- gaius 13y agoAgreed, but the affair is called that in the media.
- dreamfactory 13y agoThey were also hacking email accounts on people's computers I believe.
- vidarh 13y agoHyperbole. Notice how lackluster their "targeting" of the Guardian has been: The editor has been asked to appear before parliament. He'll be asked some questions. Which may also give him another opportunity complain about the harddrive destruction incident. Parliament regularly summons people, but the worst they will do to these people is ask them awkward questions and make stupid statements. The destruction of harddrives was downright farcical and distasteful, but of relatively low importance: The Guardian were not forced to. They were given hints that it might be bad not to destroy the drives. Even after pointing out that of course they had copies, and being given plenty of time to make further copies should they need to. So they decided to go along with it. There were no thugs forcing their ways into their offices, nor any court orders forcing them to comply. They let some humourless GCHQ people into their offices voluntarily, and destroyed some harddrives everyone involved knew had been copied, and so everyone involved knew they were going through motions because the government officials had no powers to do more, but presumably had orders. Cameron and ministers have complained loudly, but despite that they've so been totally impotent when it comes to actually do anoything more than inconveniencing Miranda at Heathrow for a few hours and arranging a voluntary ceremonial harddrive destruction that just made them look stupid. I'm not saying it's not bad. I find it shocking and disgusting to see how politicians have responded to this. Cameron time and time again makes it clear that he has no respect for the public. But if anything, it has also demonstrated that the UK government appears to only be able to respond to the publication of classified material in a way that is more perplexing and comical, in a way worthy of a Monthy Python sketch, than scary and intimidating. I almost wish I had secret documents I could publish, so I too could get to experience first hand having GCHQ come to watch me pointlessly smash a harddrive (smashing a harddrive properly without powertools is hard work - I recently had to dispose of a bunch of drives at work...)
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- atmosx 13y agoI guess keeping a guy on the airport for no apparent reason for 7 hours, just to make his life miserable in any way, is something that should be expected by a modern democracy who is applying filter to protect it's population from child pornography. So, let's not be hyperbolic here. Well, if we were hyperbolic in the first place, maybe the GQHC (or whatever it is called) and the NSA wouldn't have bugged the entire planet. Who knows? SERIOUSLY?
- pasbesoin 13y agoThe Guardian will need resources. I suggest considering taking a subscription -- electronic, if you are not in the UK and/or like trees. TANSTAAFL