Was The Guardian Forced To Smash A Hard Drive By British Intelligence?

[KittyWampus]

True or False

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	No/False
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[GeorgeGist]

1. No

It was British Stupidity.

[1awake]

2. Depending on your definition of what "by" means.... n/t

[Cali_Democrat]

3. No

The Guardian itself admits they did it in a "symbolic act".

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/20/nsa-snowden-files-drives-destroyed-london

[Wilms]

4. The Atlantic: Why the British Government Forced The Guardian to Destroy Its Hard Drives

One Saturday in July, British intelligence officers watched as two Guardian employees used grinders to destroy hard drives and memory chips that held documents from the U.S. and U.K. spying programs revealed by Edward Snowden. It was their only choice, the Guardian later wrote, other than to surrender the equipment to officials.

snip

This year, the U.K. ranked 29th on the freedom index compiled by watchdog group Reporters Without Borders, slightly higher than the U.S. but lower than places like Uruguay and Slovakia, as well as much of the rest of Europe.

Along with extremely strict libel and defamation laws, Britain also aims to prevent the publishing of government information through its Official Secrets Act, which in the past the British attorney general has threatened to use against the country's newspapers when they wanted to print embarrassing memos about the U.K.-U.S. relationship during the Iraq war. More recently, authorities have brought up the act in their attempts to get the Guardian to hand over the Snowden information and to put pressure on a whistleblower who exposed abuses within the Scotland Yard.

snip

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/08/why-the-british-government-forced-em-the-guardian-em-to-destroy-its-hard-drives/278919/

[HooptieWagon]

5. Are you suggesting it was performance art?

[Aerows]

6. Smashed? No

Whacked really hard and rendered unusable? Yes.

[Wilms]

7. Actually, they grinded it.

As the Brits would say, "Smashing".

[Aerows]

9. Oh, okay

then yes. Outcome was still the same whether they smashed it, smushed it, tossed it into a vat of burning oil or took a blow torch to it.

[Wilms]

8. What's the point of this poll?

To see how many people have been hood-winked? Or to see how many people you can hoodwink?

[Aerows]

10. I've yet to figure that out. n/t

[boston bean]

14. It was a mac book pro, a mac book pro,which for some reason wasn't manufactured with a hard drive.

Guess we'll have to wait to see why apple produced a notebook with no hard drive.

[Aerows]

15. They make plenty of laptops with no hard drive

A mini-port MLC or SLC SSD drive is pretty standard equipment. It's nothing more than a flash drive with a mini-port interface. They are a hard drive in the sense that they are mass storage, but they don't have moving parts and aren't exactly identical to a 2.5" SSD drive.

Technology is different, functionality is essentially the same, though.

[boston bean]

19. They said a hard drive was detroyed, wouldn't it be incumbent on the OP

to prove it was a notebook without a hard drive?

[Aerows]

23. No

Because it looks like a card, but it's still mass storage.

ETA: I think we are straying from the point here. You asked me if there was such a thing as a Macbook pro that was made without a hard drive. Yes, there is, but it depends on what you consider a hard drive. You could say it was a flash drive, but it is directly seated in an M-Sata port and functions like a hard drive and is a mass storage device.

You can't just yank one from anything, though, and get data off of it due to BIOS variances and limitations of the standard.

I'm not sure what you really want to know, so I'm throwing in the kitchen sink of information I have for you.

[boston bean]

24. Mac books have hard drives.

[Aerows]

26. MOST do

Not ALL. Please see the Intel 310 m-sata drive that I linked for you, including Tom's Hardware discussing it being installed in a MacBook Pro. Yes it's a hard drive. No, it isn't the normal, conventional hard drive that everyone thinks of when they think of a hard drive.

It's mass storage.

[Benton D Struckcheon]

28. Have a Macbook Air with this

Same thing. Superfast, quiet as all get out. Personally I'll never buy another computer with a spinning hard disk. Anyway, what he said: same thing functionally, if not technologically.

[Aerows]

29. (she - me :) )

But yes, same functionality, different technological format.

And AMEN. Superior in all ways to a spinning disk in power consumption and speed.

[Benton D Struckcheon]

35. Aargh!!!

Shoulda guessed that by the icon.

[Aerows]

40. It's okay :D

Now you know!

[boston bean]

32. I'm not going to get into semantics, mac book pros have hard drives.

Nor does anything you are saying prove that a hard drive was not destroyed.

[Aerows]

34. I think a hard drive was destroyed

But I'll clarify with this statement:

Your definition of what a hard drive is may be different from mine. Let's put it this way.

"A mass data storage device was destroyed". That's my view.

(and it really isn't semantics, it's calling tech by it's proper name)

Not that either of those ideas are here nor there in a political conversation. Bottom line, they seized his laptop and destroyed his mass storage device, hard drive, Half-Life 2 gaming repository, whatever you choose to call it. Effect is still the same.

[boston bean]

36. Yeah, and there is no proof a hard drive within a mac book pro wasn't destroyed,

and the guardian said a hard drive was destroyed. So, where's that leave us. In my mindd, a hard drive was destroyed. Let's move on, nothing else makes a difference, imho.

[Aerows]

38. When it boils down to it, I agree

I don't know where this idea of "it's not a hard drive" came in, because for all practical purposes, the effect is the same. They took his laptop, and destroyed the mass storage device in it. End of story. I don't care if there were carrier pigeons inside transmitting the data.

[bemildred]

25. Solid State Drives are still referred to as "hard drives", it is an anachronism.

But less confusing for users, except when it isn't, like now.

[Aerows]

27. Good way of putting it

It's not a "drive". It's a solid state mass storage device with an m-sata interface. No one that isn't aware of hardware changes would recognize it as a "hard drive". Not even if they used an SSD.

[bemildred]

30. I like them, they ought to last "forever", unlike disc drives.

And small, cooler, and efficient.

[Aerows]

31. I love them, too

and quick as lightning over the interface .

[bemildred]

33. I run Ubuntu on one now, no more routine "upgrades".

Mainly for travel and WiFi use. It cooks.

[Warren Stupidity]

43. well actually no, they have a reliability that is somewhat lower than traditional hard disks.

The problem is with the number of times a particular segment of flash memory can be written before it fails. But this is improving and the speed trade-off makes the choice almost a no-brainer, the other problem is cost: hard disks are much cheaper, particularly for larger sizes. 1TB SSD disks are very expensive.

[bemildred]

45. Looked pretty good to me for non-commercial use.

I don't remember the details, it's been a couple years, but thousands of writes. As long as they have relocation for bad sectors, you can go on a long time that way, disc drives do ...

But yeah, not for servers or busy situations. Yet anyway. And a bit slow to write. But I do write once, read many, mostly, like a lot of people.

Edit: and you want to turn off swap space ...

[msanthrope]

11. To see who is paying attention.

NSA files: why the Guardian in London destroyed hard drives of leaked files

A threat of legal action by the government that could have stopped reporting on the files leaked by Edward Snowden led to a symbolic act at the Guardian's offices in London

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/20/nsa-snowden-files-drives-destroyed-london

[Bluenorthwest]

16. So your contention is that 'Cake or death' offers and actual choice of viable options?

Just trying to follow.

[msanthrope]

17. I love Eddie Izzard! But I did read what the Guardian said about it's "symbolic act."

NSA files: why the Guardian in London destroyed hard drives of leaked files

A threat of legal action by the government that could have stopped reporting on the files leaked by Edward Snowden led to a symbolic act at the Guardian's offices in London

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/20/nsa-snowden-files-drives-destroyed-london

[Cali_Democrat]

22. Apparently the Guardian iteself saying they did it in a symbolic act isn't enough

People will believe whatever they want to believe.

We are now in a post-fact society.

[Aerows]

44. You recced this poll

Why?

[msanthrope]

47. Why not? Why did you respond it? nt

[Bluenorthwest]

12. Your posts are high entertainment of late, kudos to you and your team for the excellent

vignettes and blackouts!

[boston bean]

13. Yes, as far as I know most notebooks have "a" hardrive. nt

[Aerows]

18. Then you aren't up to date

Scores of netbooks are manufactured with one of these:


http://www.amazon.com/Generic-KingSpec-Mini-PCIE-msata-128GB/dp/B00BVYHDNG

That's a 128 GB one.

[boston bean]

20. We are talking about a notebook, not a netbook. As far as I know

Macbook pro's are made with a hard drive.

[Aerows]

21. Notebook, netbook

they are all small highly portable laptops. m-sata is well recognized and is an industry standard. It's nothing outrageous in the slightest, just a different technology that serves the same purpose.

"One mSATA product is Intel’s 310 series SSD, and you will also find the same physical drive format in Apple’s MacBook Pro "

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/msata-ssd-flash,2948.html



http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-ssd-310-msata-mini-solid-state-drive,2854.html

[boston bean]

37. now semantics don't matter. There are differences between netbooks and note books,

but really, is it that important that you and I has this out here?

[Aerows]

39. Carrier pigeons could have been transmitting the data inside the laptop

The net effect is the same. His data was destroyed when they destroyed whatever physical entity it happened to reside on, and that isn't right.

Occasionally I get overly technical, but I think we are in agreement. I was trying to help clarify things, and it appears I made it muddier LOL.

[Aerows]

41. Wait a second

Did this whole thread boil down to "it didn't look like a mass storage device to me (like a laptop hard drive) so one wasn't destroyed?"

If that's your best argument, I recommend you visit a tech site or two and quit playing games.

[Warren Stupidity]

42. The Derp is strong with the Authoritarian Booster League today.

They've gone from half hearted defense of the indefensible to just plain old derp, but with renewed enthusiasm.

[Aerows]

46. Dumbest crap I've seen since ... yesterday

Still doesn't make it less ridiculous.