{"id":10380,"date":"2015-07-25T06:55:34","date_gmt":"2015-07-25T11:55:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=10380"},"modified":"2015-07-25T06:55:34","modified_gmt":"2015-07-25T11:55:34","slug":"uk-police-confirm-ongoing-criminal-probe-of-snowden-leak-journalists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=10380","title":{"rendered":"UK Police Confirm Ongoing Criminal Probe of Snowden Leak Journalists"},"content":{"rendered":"

UK Police Confirm Ongoing Criminal Probe of Snowden Leak Journalists<\/a><\/h3>\n

A secretive British police investigation focusing on journalists working with Edward Snowden\u2019s leaked documents remains ongoing two years after\u00a0it was quietly launched,\u00a0The Intercept<\/i>\u00a0can reveal.<\/p>\n

London\u2019s Metropolitan Police Service has admitted it is still carrying out the probe, which is being led by its counterterrorism department, after\u00a0previously refusing<\/a>\u00a0to confirm or deny its existence on the grounds that doing so could be \u201cdetrimental to national security.\u201d<\/p>\n

The disclosure was made by police in\u00a0a letter<\/a>\u00a0sent to this reporter Tuesday, concluding a seven-month freedom of information battle that saw the London force repeatedly attempt to withhold basic details about the status of the case. It reversed its position this week only after an intervention from the Information Commissioner\u2019s Office, the public body that enforces the U.K.\u2019s freedom of information laws.<\/p>\n

Following Snowden\u2019s disclosures from the National Security Agency in 2013, the Metropolitan Police and a lawyer for the British government\u00a0separately<\/a>stated<\/a>\u00a0that a criminal investigation had been opened into the leaks. One of the London force\u2019s most senior officers\u00a0acknowledged<\/a>\u00a0during a parliamentary hearing that the investigation was looking at whether reporters at\u00a0The<\/em>\u00a0Guardian\u00a0<\/em>had committed criminal offenses for their role in revealing secret surveillance operations exposed in the Snowden documents.<\/p>\n

In January,\u00a0The Intercept<\/i>\u00a0sought details about the status of the investigation through requests made under the Freedom of Information Act. But the Metropolitan Police, the largest and most powerful of the 45 regional police forces across the United Kingdom, stonewalled the requests. It\u00a0cited fears<\/a>\u00a0about \u201cincreased threat of terrorist activity\u201d and claimed that it could not reveal details about the investigation because they could \u201cassist any group or persons who wish to cause harm to the people of the nation.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UK Police Confirm Ongoing Criminal Probe of Snowden Leak Journalists A secretive British police investigation focusing on journalists working with Edward Snowden\u2019s leaked documents remains ongoing two years after\u00a0it was quietly launched,\u00a0The Intercept\u00a0can reveal. London\u2019s Metropolitan Police Service has admitted it is still carrying out the probe, which is being led by its counterterrorism department, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7529,249,1659,2239,462,3007,7527,5567,820,7528],"class_list":["post-10380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-british-police","tag-edward-snowden","tag-freedom-of-information","tag-freedom-of-the-press","tag-journalism","tag-snowden","tag-snowden-leak","tag-the-intercept","tag-uk","tag-uk-police"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10380"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10381,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10380\/revisions\/10381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}