Guardian Ignores MI5 Warnings, Vows To 'Publish More Snowden Leaks' 301
dryriver writes in with news that a new round of Snowden leaks may be on the way. "Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger says he plans to publish more revelations from Edward Snowden despite MI5 warning that such disclosures cause enormous damage. Mr Rusbridger insisted the paper was right to publish files leaked by the US intelligence analyst and had helped to prompt a necessary and overdue debate. Mr Rusbridger said more stories would be published in the future as the leaked documents were 'slowly and responsibly' worked through. His comments come after criticism from the new head of MI5, Andrew Parker. Making public the 'reach and limits' of intelligence-gathering techniques gave terrorists the advantage, he said. He warned that terrorists now had tens of thousands of means of communication 'through e-mail, IP telephony, in-game communication, social networking, chat rooms, anonymising services and a myriad of mobile apps'. Mr Parker said it was vital for MI5 to retain the capability to access such information if it was to protect the country. "
Re:Dope (Score:2, Interesting)
Snowden isn't releasing any more data - he did it once when he handed everything over to the reporter.
Re:Liars, liars, pants on fire (Score:5, Interesting)
"I have here in my hand a list of 205—a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department."
Joe McCarthy, February 9, 1950
Some things don't change.
MI5 got it wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
Security through secrecy = no security.
Also, the Snowden leaks mostly show that it's more honest citizens than terrorists who should be concerned about ubiquitous surveillance. Cue 1984 references...
In a sense, Bin Laden got what he wanted: he didn't want to hurt western societies directly, he wanted to get western societies to collapse into dictatorships by giving the initial push (9/11) that would allow mostly-democratic governments to slowly turn nasty with a good reason.
Having followed all the leaks (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Huge Difference (Score:5, Interesting)
Or economic damage done. If these things were dealt with rationally. Look at countries with a real terrorist problem or that used to have one. They are all still there, including Northern Ireland, Spain, Germany, etc. And they are still there even with the authorities in some of them acting terminally stupid and adding 10000% damage on top of what the terrorists did.
The threat of terrorism is not relevant. The threat of people being scared into irrationality by claims of "terrorism" from governments is severe. The threat of "countermeasures" to terrorism by governments is severe. Establishment of police- and surveillance-states is a few orders of magnitude more problematic that terrorism could ever be. And that is what is clearly going on. One would think people in the west have learned something from the things that happened last century. Apparently not.
Re:Liars, liars, pants on fire (Score:2, Interesting)
You better believe Guardian editors threatened (Score:4, Interesting)
If you work there, you'd better not have a secret cocaine habit or stripper girlfriend on the side. If there's the slightest bit of dirt on you, they're going to out you. I've got a lot of respect for that paper going on under what has to be some frightening pressure.
Re:Liars, liars, pants on fire (Score:2, Interesting)
Well, he's trolling. Very successfully, I might add. He knows how to draw a crowd. The remaining question is if he is being paid for for it.