{"id":11526,"date":"2015-08-27T07:38:43","date_gmt":"2015-08-27T12:38:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=11526"},"modified":"2015-08-27T07:38:43","modified_gmt":"2015-08-27T12:38:43","slug":"the-way-gchq-obliterated-the-guardians-laptops-may-have-revealed-more-than-it-intended","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=11526","title":{"rendered":"The Way GCHQ Obliterated The Guardian\u2019s Laptops May Have Revealed More Than It Intended"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Way GCHQ Obliterated The Guardian\u2019s Laptops May Have Revealed More Than It Intended<\/a><\/h3>\n

In July 2013, GCHQ, Britain\u2019s equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency,forced<\/a>\u00a0journalists at the London headquarters of\u00a0The Guardian<\/em>\u00a0to completely obliterate the memory of the computers on which they kept copies of top-secret documents provided to them by former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden.<\/p>\n

However, in its attempt to destroy information, GCHQ also revealed intriguing details about what it did and why.<\/p>\n

Two technologists, Mustafa Al-Bassam and Richard Tynan,\u00a0visited<\/a>\u00a0Guardian<\/em>headquarters last year to examine the remnants of the devices. Al-Bassam is an ex-hacker who two years ago\u00a0pleaded guilty<\/a>\u00a0to joining attacks on\u00a0Sony, Nintendo, and other companies, and now studies\u00a0computer science at King\u2019s College; Tynan is a technologist at Privacy International with a PhD in computer science. The pair concluded, first, that GCHQ wanted\u00a0The Guardian\u00a0<\/em>to completely destroy every possible bit of information the news outlet might retain; and second, that GCHQ\u2019s instructions may have inadvertently revealed all the locations in your computer where information may be covertly stored.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Editors of\u00a0The Guardian<\/em>\u00a0chose to destroy the files and the devices they lived on after the British government threatened to sue them and halt further reporting on the issue, including stories on how GCHQ utilized data collected by the NSA on communications from many major Internet companies.<\/p>\n

Footage<\/a>\u00a0of\u00a0Guardian<\/em>\u00a0editors physically destroying their MacBooks and USB drives, taken by\u00a0Guardian<\/em>\u00a0executive Sheila Fitzsimons, wasn\u2019t released until months later, in January 2014. The GCHQ agents who supervised the destruction of the devices also insisted on recording it all on their own iPhones.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

The Way GCHQ Obliterated The Guardian\u2019s Laptops May Have Revealed More Than It Intended In July 2013, GCHQ, Britain\u2019s equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency,forced\u00a0journalists at the London headquarters of\u00a0The Guardian\u00a0to completely obliterate the memory of the computers on which they kept copies of top-secret documents provided to them by former NSA contractor and […]<\/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":[93,2334,249,1511,3771,577,652,712,765,5567],"class_list":["post-11526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-britain","tag-computers","tag-edward-snowden","tag-gchq","tag-guardian","tag-nsa","tag-privacy","tag-security","tag-surveillance","tag-the-intercept"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11526","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=11526"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11527,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11526\/revisions\/11527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}