As much as the UK government would probably love being confused for the US government, at least the visit to the Guardian and detainment of Miranda were both done by the UK.
And given how the UK government loves nothing more than to be the lapdog of the US, I have no doubts it was done entirely voluntarily.
Eagerly even, as an opportunity to show off just how extra exceedingly loyal minions they are.
Frankly, I have little doubt that the UK government participates so eagerly that just occasionally some of their US counterparts must be a little bit embarrassed on their behalf over seeing their total lack of self respect in trying to impress.
When I last checked, in the US, it's actually not illegal for someone without a clearance to possess classified material. This is why newspapers can print unredacted classified documents and not immediately go to jail.
It is, however illegal for someone with a clearance to mishandle classified material. "Mishandling" includes "Permitting access to classified material to non-cleared personnel.". If you mishandle classified material you may be reprimanded, have your clearance revoked, be fined, or go to jail for a very long time.
It's also illegal to traffic it across international borders, which is why what foreign spies do is prosecutable. Which is the exact thing they were doing.
Good point, but the Greenwald-Snowden case is a little different. We all know the identities of the informants. The issue with the harassment of Miranda has nothing to do with espionage, it's just heavy handed.
In the case of the Chinese hackers, they were spying on reporters to discover their sources.
What they appeared to be looking for were the names of people who might have provided information to Mr. Barboza.
AFAIK we don't have evidence of similar US spying for the purpose of blackmail, harassment, etc. because my concern is whether the NSA might use its sources for those ends.
The destruction of the Guardian's laptops was about ensuring they didn't get stolen by someone else - if you read the story at the time, the spooks actually wanted the Guardian to hand the laptops over but Guardian refused and destruction was a mutually agreed way out.
Miranda's detainment, confiscation of the memory sticks etc was to be expected - as far as the UK Government is concerned he's carry stolen state secrets.
What I don't really understand is why he flew through London carrying them, I believe Madrid has more routes to South American - I wonder if he was routed so he would be picked up for massive publicity.
They weren't actually. Google lied about that. It came out later that the real reason for the Chinese hacking gmail was to see which accounts had "lawful intercept" on them so they would know if their own spies had their cover blown. If the US knew about their spies, it was assumed that they would see the US sniffing the spies gmail accounts.
Huh? There's nothing in the Post's information that would preclude both from having happened, so it's would be a stretch to call it a lie even from that article. But in fact, the original blog post[1] talks about multiple goals of the main attack, including listing the targeted attack that the GP is probably referencing as independent from the attack that "resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google". I think it's you that's confusing incidents.
> Third, as part of this investigation but independent of the attack on Google, we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users' computers.
edit: ah, and the GP wasn't even talking about the gmail accounts.
The point being made isn't that they would send sensitive data using gmail, it's that if they were compromised the NSA would most likely be reading the emails, and hacking Google would theoretically let the Chinese know if cover was blown if they could see evidence of the NSA listening in.
Of course, that means the joke's on them, because the NSA was listening to everyone...
how would you know whether NSA was listening in (for example by tapping google's links between datacenters) or not even if you successfully hack into Google's infrastructure? Not finding evidence of eavesdropping doesn't exclude that eavesdropping happened, so if that was the only purpose to hack Google, it doesn't seem worth the effort.
On the other hand if you want to read people's mail, then hacking into the provider is certainly an option.
Further, the break-in to Greenwald's residence and theft of his machine.
As well as the visit to the Guardian and destrution of machines....
The evidence is crystal.