14 DAY TRIAL // The Guardian’s editor Alan Rusbridger admitted that following the publishing of the Snowden leaks, there has been an increased pressure coming from the British authorities.
During a testimony in front of a group of members of the parliament, Alan Rusbridger discussed a lot of topics, trying to clear out things for the committee that was trying to figure out what the Guardian’s role in the scandal was.
As he testified, he was asked a lot of tough questions from the lawmakers, often under an aggressive tone, which helped stress his statement about the pressure the newspaper had received because of the published leaks.
Rusbridger said that the government has tried on a series of intimidation tactics, including prior restraint, visits to the offices and the enforced destruction of computer disk.
Furthermore, he added to the list the fact that lawmakers had asked the police to prosecute The Guardian for disclosing the materials. This, he said, was something that was inconceivable in other countries, including the US, as it should be in the United Kingdom, especially as the country painted itself as one that had a free press.
Much to his surprise, Rusbridger was asked at one point if he loved his country, because some lawmakers considered the Guardian’s reporting on the NSA files a criminal activity.
At the hearing, he also touched many other points. For instance, he stated that the information that had been published so far was of public interest since it brought to the forefront of attention issues that were of fundamental national importance, including the future of privacy in a digital age.
Another interesting thing that Rusbridger said was that the reports that his newspaper and many others had published managed to push the oversight committees to actually look into what the intelligence agencies were doing. Case in point, the United States decided to look into the NSA’s operations following reports that they had been tapping Angela Merkel’s phone, which was deemed as unacceptable.