British editors at The Guardian newspaper have granted The New
York Times access to some of the classified National Security Agency documents,
in an attempt to resist pressure from United Kingdom authorities who have
demanded the data be destroyed.
The partnership was sealed when the UK’s GCHQ intelligence
agency threatened The Guardian with legal action if they did not agree to
destroy the leaked material provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
GCHQ attempted to intimidate The Guardian weeks ago, an announcement earlier
this week revealed, while the agreement with The New York Times was made public
Friday.
“In a climate of
intense pressure from the UK government, The Guardian decided to bring in a US
partner to work on the GCHQ documents provided by Edward Snowden. We are working
in partnership with The New York Times and others to continue reporting these
stories,” The Guardian said in a statement.
Snowden is aware of the arrangement, which is similar to the
2010 partnership between The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel to
publish WikiLeaks’ disclosure of US military reports and diplomatic cables.
Along with The Washington Post, The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald
was the first journalist to publish Snowden’s leaks in June of this year. The
internal documents have revealed a vast surveillance apparatus enacted over the
past decade by the NSA in the US and GCHQ in the UK. The programs, according to
a GCHQ document, secretly aimed to “Master the Internet.”
Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger said earlier this week that UK
authorities have managed to create a “lawless bit of Britain” under the nation’s
terror act, which he said suspended all checks and balances.
Greenwald wrote on Friday that the government’s crackdown on
the news media, an action some pundits have said equates journalism with
terrorism, may now include false leaks meant to mislead the public. Earlier this
week authorities also detained Greenwald’s partner, David Miranda, as he
attempted to transfer flights in a UK airport.
The Independent, another British publication, revealed on
Friday the existence of a UK-backed internet-monitoring station in the Middle
East, although that information was not included in the thousands of files
Snowden passed along, the NSA whitsleblower claimed.
The problem, Greenwald wrote, is that UK lawmakers have
claimed since June that the leaks pose a threat to national security while long
being unable to prove that assertion. In an attempt to prove that claim, they
may have intentionally leaked a damaging document.
“Right as there
is a major scandal over the UK’s abusive and lawless exploitation of its
Terrorism Act – with public opinion against the use of the Terrorism law to
detain David Miranda – and right as the UK government is trying to tell a court
that there are serious dangers to the public safety from these documents, there
suddenly appears exactly the type of disclosure the UK government wants,”
Greenwald wrote.
