Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Wednesday, December 04, 2013

Guardian Threatened With Terrorism Charges for Reporting NSA Story

British police are investigating the staff of The Guardian newspaper to determine whether acts of journalism can be prosecuted as acts of terrorism.

Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick said, “It appears possible once we look at the material that some people may have committed offenses. ... We need to establish whether they have or they haven’t.”

As Reuters reports, this comes after members of Parliament accused Guardian Editor Alan Rusbridger of helping terrorists. The Guardian, with the assistance of former employee Glenn Greenwald, broke the story of mass surveillance by the American NSA and its British counterpart, the GCHQ.

    Reuters:

    Countering criticism by lawmakers, Rusbridger said more emphasis was being given to the Guardian’s decision to publish the leaks than to the fact they had been so easily obtained in the first place.

    “We were told that 850,000 people ... had access to the information that a 29-year-old in Hawaii who wasn’t even employed by the American government had access,” he said.

    Read more

The British government has previously raided The Guardian’s offices and held Greenwald’s partner, David Miranda, for prolonged questioning under the pretext of counterterrorism. Threatening charges of terrorism smacks of media intimidation—there are more leaks yet to come, and the authorities would probably like to turn off the faucet. In the United States, the Justice Department is reportedly struggling with the problem that it can’t prosecute Julian Assange and not The New York Times and other media outlets, which also released classified information. Apparently in Britain, they’ve taken a different tack.

Original Article
Source: truthdig.com
Author: Peter Z. Scheer 

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