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NSA Leaks Get The Guardian's Hard Drives Destroyed

In an effort to avoid future publishing of Snowden's documents, computers get destroyed

Aug 20, 2013 05:42 GMT  ·  By
In the hopes of avoiding any future leaks, the GCHQ ordered the destroying of The Guardian's hard drives
   In the hopes of avoiding any future leaks, the GCHQ ordered the destroying of The Guardian's hard drives

Leaking classified information about the NSA mass surveillance programs has had an impact on Edward Snowden’s life, but also on that of the journalists who have aided the publishing of these stories.

After Glenn Greenwald’s partner was detained in London, another story comes to light. It seems that the hard drives of The Guardian’s London office have been destroyed by the GCHQ, the British counterpart of the NSA and an organization that is known to have worked closely with the American intelligence agency.

According to an article published by the aforementioned newspaper, intelligence officials from the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) demanded the paper to hand over all classified documents they had in their possession or have their hard drives destroyed.

Soon after, numerous computers were destroyed in the building’s basements under the watchful eye of several government officials. It is obvious that their answer to the GCHQ request was negative.

However, despite their efforts, The Guardian promises to continue publishing articles based on the documents provided by Edward Snowden, just not from London.

Glenn Greenwald, who is a member of the newspaper’s staff, said he would continue to publish such information for a long time, more so now that the authorities have personally targeted him by detaining his partner.

Greenwald went as far as threatening that the UK would be sorry for what it has done since he would now focus on the country’s connection to the NSA surveillance.

Edward Snowden has reportedly passed on to Greenwald about 20,000 documents from the NSA servers, documents that are going to provide countless articles to the journalist and even more issues to debate onto in the months to come.

This was unveiled by Greenwald himself when the issue of Snowden’s Russian asylum conditions were brought to light, namely that the NSA whistleblower was not to leak any more documents.

However, it seems that he has already shared all the documents he was willing to and he has no further plans of providing any other file to the media since those left in his possession could profoundly damage the United States.