The Way GCHQ Obliterated The Guardian’s Laptops May Have Revealed More Than It Intended

[marmar]

(The Intercept) In July 2013, GCHQ, Britain’s equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency, forced journalists at the London headquarters of The Guardian to completely obliterate the memory of the computers on which they kept copies of top-secret documents provided to them by former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden.

However, in its attempt to destroy information, GCHQ also revealed intriguing details about what it did and why.

Two technologists, Mustafa Al-Bassam and Richard Tynan, visited Guardian headquarters last year to examine the remnants of the devices. Al-Bassam is an ex-hacker who two years ago pleaded guilty to joining attacks on Sony, Nintendo, and other companies, and now studies computer science at King’s College; Tynan is a technologist at Privacy International with a PhD in computer science. The pair concluded, first, that GCHQ wanted The Guardian to completely destroy every possible bit of information the news outlet might retain; and second, that GCHQ’s instructions may have inadvertently revealed all the locations in your computer where information may be covertly stored.

Editors of The Guardian chose to destroy the files and the devices they lived on after the British government threatened to sue them and halt further reporting on the issue, including stories on how GCHQ utilized data collected by the NSA on communications from many major Internet companies.

Footage of Guardian editors physically destroying their MacBooks and USB drives, taken by Guardian executive Sheila Fitzsimons, wasn’t released until months later, in January 2014. The GCHQ agents who supervised the destruction of the devices also insisted on recording it all on their own iPhones. ................(more)

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/08/26/way-gchq-obliterated-guardians-laptops-revealed-intended/

[DirkGently]

1. Interesting. n/t

[DetlefK]

2. Well, there is a way to secure your data from any possible hacking, but it's pretty elaborate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci

They can't hack brains. (Yet.)

[Hydra]

9. Actually, they probably can

They are talking about dream/thought scanning, which means the people at the top have had it for 20 years now.

Imagine- you don't have any privacy anymore, even in your brain!

[DetlefK]

11. The technology is not as advanced as you think.

We can barely reconstruct what the person is looking at in real-time. Downloading memories from a brain is utterly outlandish for now.

There is a simple proof that this brain-reading technology doesn't exist yet: Money.
Computers and brains have different computational architectures.
It would take a special kind of driver (the thing that connects your hardware to your software) to connect a brain and a computer.
And if ANYBODY had that kind of technology, that would be a trillion-dollar invention because it would instantly allow cyborg-implants.

Two things:
- So far, it's only possible to read out very simple thoughts from a brain. Up, down, left, right, yes, no...
- IBM has recently developed a microchip that works like a neural network hardware-wise. (Up until now it was just emulated in Virtual Machines.) This microchip could possibly act as a translator between a brain and a computer.

[Hydra]

14. Fascinating info

But I do believe the people with the almost infinite funding have a lot, if not all of the kinks ironed out.

*Twists his brain around a bit* Ya, I can see how the brain's chemical 3d architecture wouldn't mesh with our current electron or optical binary, but that's neat that we are bridging the gap.

[DetlefK]

15. As I said: Follow the non-existent money.

If DARPA were to develop mind-reading, do you think they would keep this secret because they want to read the mind of a captured spy one day?

Or would they go sci-fi with cyborg-implants and mind-controlled weaponry?

A mind-controlled shoulder-mounted cannon?
A mind-controlled drone?
Or a box gathering dust in a black-site-prison to eventually maybe read the memories of a high-profile prisoner one day?

[Hydra]

16. Actually, were it me

I would set it up as a computer to brain interface- sell it as a direct to internet device that passively scans brains, or like a Wii type thing.

You could have complete scans forwarded to that data center in my state for storage and indexing- virtual hive mind!

[bemildred]

3. All those chips and devices with non-volatile memory and upgrade ports.

Tsk. I remember the first time I upgraded the BIOS on a new motherboard, I said at the time: "Hmm, this has other possibilities."

But firmware is so much cheaper than hardware, and putting fixes out on the net for users to access is so much cheaper than any other way of fixing bad product, so it's everywhere.

It's almost as feckless as putting all our money on the internet.

[Octafish]

4. Free people don't need freedom.

From The Guardian:

According to “Joint Services Publication 440,” a 2001 British government document released by WikiLeaks, the U.K. Ministry of Defense mandates total destruction of top-secret information in order to protect it from “FISs (foreign intelligence services), extremist groups, investigative journalists, and criminals.”

To Authoritarians, what's the diff?

[Blue_Tires]

6. You're surprised to see a directive for employees

to destroy privileged information? This happens in pretty much every public/private industry...

In my case, the law is pretty specific on what would happen to me if I didn't destroy records...

[Octafish]

7. Good for you. I side with Freedom of the Press.

As I actually believe in democracy, I don't have to consider journalists the "Enemy" -- especially when they print stuff that embarrasses my government.

[Blue_Tires]

8. So everything should be fair game for the press, no matter what?

[Hydra]

10. Sure- if the gov't isn't doing anything wrong...

...It has nothing to hide, right?

[Adrahil]

13. Not necessarily....

There is absolutely information that should be protected, even when the government is doing nothing illegal. The Snowden leaks did expose some illegal activity, but it also exposed a LOT of perfectly legal foreign intelligence gathering operations. That information SHOULD be protected. In the U.S., we have the first amendment, which protcts the right of journalists to publish information they get from a source, even if legal and classified. That doesn't mean it's right.

[bemildred]

12. Pretty much, that's their job, and we need to let them do it.

Can't have privileged politicians and bureaucrats that are immune from scrutiny, we can see where that leads, and it's pretty ugly.

[Blue_Tires]

5. So Glenn is reheating his own two-year-old story

and meanwhile Brazil is coming apart at the seams and in the midst of their biggest political scandal in a half-century...

Typical...