Guardian partners with New York Times over Snowden GCHQ files

[friendly_iconoclast]

Source: Guardian (UK)


Guardian partners with New York Times over Snowden GCHQ files

Some of Edward Snowden cache shared with US paper after 'climate of intense pressure' from UK government

Lisa O'Carroll
theguardian.com, Friday 23 August 2013 18.17 BST

The Guardian has struck a partnership with the New York Times which will give the US paper access to some of the sensitive cache of documents leaked by the National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The arrangement was made when the Guardian was faced with demands from the UK government to hand over the GCHQ files it had in its possession...

...Journalists in America are protected by the first amendment which guarantees free speech and in practice prevents the state seeking pre-publication injunctions or "prior restraint".

It is intended that the collaboration with the New York Times will allow the Guardian to continue exposing mass surveillance by putting the Snowden documents on GCHQ beyond government reach. Snowden is aware of the arrangement.


Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/23/guardian-news-york-times-partnership

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Looks to me like the Times has broken with the Obama administration.

[hlthe2b]

1. I view this as a very positive development. n/t

[friendly_iconoclast]

2. It's a pretty severe break- this will *not* sit well with the White House.

[mike_c]

3. +1

Me too.

[deurbano]

6. So do I!

[99th_Monkey]

4. This is awesome. Now we'll see if the US REALLY still has a 1st Amendment or not.

At least when it comes to the press and prior restraint.

[friendly_iconoclast]

7. We'll see if this is the same NY Times that stood up to the Nixon administration...

...over the Pentagon Papers

[markpkessinger]

5. K&R! n/t

[DeSwiss]

8. K&R

[Luminous Animal]

9. I wonder who the NY Times mule was?

http://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/new-york-times-guardian-snowden

The Times’s involvement in the story also brings into sharp relief a second question: Whether carrying classified documents across national borders can be an act of journalism. CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin recently compared David Miranda, Greenwald’s partner, to a “drug mule” for having sought to bring a thumb drive with classified documents from Brazil into the United Kingdom; British officials detained Miranda and confiscated data he was carrying.

Now the Times or an agent for the paper, too, appears to have carried digital files from the United Kingdom across international lines into the United States. Discussions of how to partner on the documents were carried out in person between top Guardian editors and Times executive editor Jill Abramson, all of whom declined to comment on the movement of documents. But it appears likely that someone at one of the two papers physically carried a drive with Snowden’s GCHQ leaks from London to New York or Washington