New York Times to Work With The Guardian on NSA Spying Stories

It seems that with each passing day more information on the endless scope of the NSA's domestic spying and the NSA's violations of legal constraints unfold.  And sadly, Barack Obama can't seem to get ahead of the unfolding revelations and continues to come across as lame and belatedly trying to do damage control.  Now, as BuzzFeed reports, the New York Times is teaming up with The Guardian to do a series of stories that will likely drop some additional bomb shells on the full extent of the police state spying that has been utilized against American citizens.  Here are details from BuzzFeed:

The New York Times is in the Snowden game.   The paper — which NSA leaker Edward Snowden deliberately avoided over his fear that it would cooperate with the United States government — is now working with the Guardian on a series of stories based on documents that detail National Security Agency cooperation with its British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters, known as GCHQ.

“In a climate of intense pressure from the UK government, The Guardian decided to bring in a US partner to work on the GCHQ documents provided by Edward Snowden,” Guardian spokeswoman Jennifer Lindenauer said in an email. “We are continuing to work in partnership with the NYT and others to report these stories.”

The London-based newspaper has been under intense British government pressure this summer, its editor, Alan Rusbridger, revealed earlier this week.

The decision to publish the revelations concerning the British intelligence service jointly with the Times may give the Guardian leverage in its battle with the British government, which is trying to prevent the stories’ publication. It may also relate to the stronger protections for free speech and press freedom under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; Britain has no such protections, and its Official Secrets Act is aimed at keeping government secrets secret. Sources at both papers declined to discuss the motives beyond the spokeswoman’s reference to the “climate” of pressure.

The Guardian’s Rusbridger has used the Times’s megaphone before, to spectacular effect: When the British paper’s coverage of the phone hacking scandal at News Corp. appeared to hit a dead end, a collaboration with the the Times revived it, and helped lead to criminal charges against top News Corp. executives.

Snowden said he did not go to the Times because the paper bowed to Bush Administration demands to delay a story on warrantless wiretapping in the interest of national security; he was afraid, he said, the paper would do the same with his revelations.

Now, Times reporter Scott Shane is at work on a series of stories expected to be published next month jointly with the Guardian, a source familiar with the plans said.

Now the Times or an agent for the paper, too, appears to have carried digital files from the United Kingdom across international lines into the United States. Discussions of how to partner on the documents were carried out in person between top Guardian editors and Times executive editor Jill Abramson, all of whom declined to comment on the movement of documents. But it appears likely that someone at one of the two papers physically carried a drive with Snowden’s GCHQ leaks from London to New York or Washington — exactly what Miranda was stopped at Heathrow for doing.

I suspect these stories will prove very embarrassing not only to the British government but also to  American politicians and bureaucrats.

White House Tap Dances Around UK Intimidation of The Guardian

Personally, I find it some what hard to believe that the British government would have sought to threaten the UK newspaper The Guardian and demand all data in the paper's possession relating to the leaks by Edward Snowden without the knowledge of or a request from the U.S. Government/White House.  After all, the materials involved cam from America's spy system, not the UK's.  Yet the White House is trying to feign surprise and claim that nothing like that could happen here in America.  I for one don't believe it and Barack Obama is continuing to sully his reputation and integrity (or what integrity any politician has nowadays).  Raw Story looks at the White House's tap dancing routine.  Here are excerpts:

The White House distanced itself from Britain’s handling of the leaked NSA documents when representatives said it would be difficult to imagine the US authorities following the example of Whitehall in demanding the destruction of media hard drives.

As a former lord chancellor said the Metropolitan police had no legal right to detain the partner of a Guardian journalist at Heathrow airport under anti-terror laws, the White House suggested it would be inappropriate for US authorities to enter a media organisation’s offices to oversee the destruction of hard drives.

The White House – which on Monday distanced Washington from the detention of David Miranda – intervened for the second time in 24 hours after the Guardian revealed that senior Whitehall figures had demanded the destruction or surrender of hard drives containing some of the secret files leaked by the US whistle blower Edward Snowden.

Asked at his daily briefing on Tuesday whether President Obama’s administration would enter a US media company and destroy media hard drives – even to protect national security – the White House spokesman, Josh Earnest, said: “That’s very difficult to imagine a scenario in which that would be appropriate.”

The intervention by the White House came after the British government embarked on an aggressive offensive to justify the treatment at Heathrow of the partner of the Guardian journalist Greenwald.  Theresa May, the home secretary, confirmed that she was given advance notice of Miranda’s detention as she praised the police action on the grounds that he possessed sensitive documents that could help terrorists and “lead to a loss of lives”.

But May received a setback when Lord Falconer of Thoroton, the former Labour lord chancellor who was involved in introducing the anti-terror legislation used to detain Miranda, said the police had no right to detain him under the Terrorism Act 2000. Miranda was held for nine hours at Heathrow on Sunday under schedule 7 of the act, which allows police to detain people at ports and airports even if they are not acting suspiciously.

Falconer added: “What schedule 7 allows an examining officer to do is to question somebody in order to determine whether he is somebody who is preparing, instigating or commissioning terrorism. Plainly Mr Miranda is not such a person.”

Former shadow home secretary David Davis said No 10′s confirmation that David Cameron was given notice of the detention of Miranda meant that ministers had, in effect, approved of his treatment. 

It is no coincidence that both America and the UK alone of western democracies have police state-like domestic surveillance and spying operations that are on a level equal to Russia and China.  Apparently, the U.S. Constitution's protections for the citizenry mean nothing to Obama and others in Washington.  The ruse of fighting terrorist and national security needs have been used before to usher in dictatorship.  One need only look at 1930's Germany.

The Guardian: UK Government Tried Intimidation

In a precursor of what we may yet see in America, the editor of the UK newspaper The Guardian - which frequently has better coverage on issues in the USA and crimes by U.S. military personnel than one finds in the America press - has described intimidation efforts by the British government to secure the information leaked to that paper by Edward Snowden.   What makes the story so strange is the leaked information was AMERICAN information, not that of the UK.  One cannot help but wonder whether the Brits were acting in concert with the Obama administration.  It's all very troubling.  Here are highlights from Politico:

The British government intimidated The Guardian newspaper and destroyed material Edward Snowden provided on surveillance programs, editor Alan Rusbridger said Monday.

Writing in a column on The Guardian’s website, Rusbridger said that in June he was contacted by “a very senior” U.K. government official demanding the return or destruction of the material from Snowden. A month ago the tone toughened, Rusbridger wrote, when a government official told Rusbridger “You’ve had your fun. Now we want the stuff back.”

“There followed further meetings with shadowy Whitehall figures. The demand was the same: hand the Snowden material back or destroy it,” Rusbridger said. “I explained that we could not research and report on this subject if we complied with this request. The man from Whitehall looked mystified. ‘You’ve had your debate. There’s no need to write any more.’

Rusbridger said he was told if he did not destroy the material, the U.K. would move to close down The Guardian’s reporting through the courts. Despite telling government officials most of their reporting on Snowden was being done outside of the U.K., Rusbridger said British officials carried on with attempting to stop the reporting.

Rusbridger said The Guardian will continue reporting on the Snowden documents, just not in London.

Rusbridger wrote the column after David Miranda, the partner of Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist who broke the Snowden story, was detained for nine hours in London’s Heathrow Airport under Schedule 7 of Britain’s terror laws. Rusbridger said the detention of Miranda and the seizure of his electronic materials was just the next event in a long line of intimidation by the U.K. government.

“The detention of Miranda has rightly caused international dismay because it feeds into a perception that the US and UK governments — while claiming to welcome the debate around state surveillance started by Snowden — are also intent on stemming the tide of leaks and on pursuing the whistleblower with a vengeance,” Rusbridger said.

A free press is what protects us from government tyranny and also keeps the government honest - if there is such a thing - and exposes war crimes such as those exposed by Bradley Manning' release of information.   One of the first things dictatorships do is silence the free press (Hitler and the Nazi regime did so as have the ayatollahs in Tehran).  What is happening in the UK and America is disturbing.