14 DAY TRIAL // The New York Times has confirmed that the British authorities have attempted to convince the paper to hand over secret documents leaked by Edward Snowden.
It’s not the first time that a publication mentions the authorities have demanded they hand over the NSA leaked documents, but it’s just as troublesome.
It seems that the newspaper’s editor Jill Abramson was approached by the UK embassy in Washington after the New York Times and the Guardian announced they were working together on publishing information regarding the GCHQ based on Snowden’s files.
“They were hopeful that we would relinquish any material that we might be reporting on, relating to Edward Snowden. Needless to say I considered what they told me, and said no,” Abramson told the Guardian.
Previously, the Guardian employees were forced to destroy their hard drives as they refused to hand over the data to the British authorities. This incident eventually triggered the partnership between the newspaper and the New York Times.
The logic between the collaboration is that the NYT would have more freedom to publish whatever it wanted as the US laws provide a more extensive protection of journalists.
However, that didn’t stop the Obama administration to ask on several occasions for the New York Times to consider withholding certain information from its stories. And while the publication considered the request, it generally seeks to “weigh on the side of informing the public.”
“There's a war on terror being waged in the name of the public, and the public has a right to have information about it. That's critical. The Guardian as well as the New York Times are providing a very valuable service, allowing people to decide for themselves whether the intelligence agencies are being too intrusive in their data collection,” Abramson said.