14 DAY TRIAL // The Guardian has decided to share its sensitive cache of documents leaked by Edward Snowden regarding the NSA with the US paper New York Times.
The decision was reached after the Guardian has been faced with demand from the United Kingdom government to hand over documents regarding the GCHQ and which led to the symbolic destruction of the newspaper’s hard drives.
“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. We are working in partnership with the NYT and others to continue reporting these stories,” The Guardian said in a statement.
One of the main reasons the British newspaper came to this decision was the fact that journalists in America are protected by the first amendment which guarantees free speech, preventing the state seeking pre-publication injunctions, as well as “prior restraint.”
Thus, the two newspapers hope that, through their collaboration, they will continue to expose mass surveillance by putting the Snowden documents out of the reach of the UK government and the British intelligence agency.
A similar case is the 2010 publication of the WikiLeaks information regarding the actions of the US military and diplomatic cables, when The Guardian worked with the New York Times and German publication Der Spiegel.
Earlier this week, the UK government made a final pass against the Guardian in their demand for them to hand over the NSA leaked documents they had in their possession from Edward Snowden.
The only alternative, they said, was to destroy their hard drives, although, in the digital era, all files were also held somewhere else. However, the pressure put by the UK authorities has caused a lot of controversy and numerous snide remarks made towards the British authorities from various countries and entities in the world.