You may recall how, last summer, there was a ridiculous situation in which David Cameron ordered a government official to go down to the Guardian’s offices in London and force them to physically destroy a computer that had stored some encrypted documents from the batch of documents that Ed Snowden had given to reporters. The whole thing was ridiculous on multiple levels, as the Guardian’s editor Alan Rusbridger clearly told the government officials that there were other copies outside of the UK, and that the Guardian would continue reporting on those documents from its offices in NY. Apparently unaware of how stupid they looked, the government officials continued the charade, and the Guardian physically destroyed the drives and memory cards.

The Guardian has now released a short video that intersperses some commentary and news clips about the event with some actual footage of Guardian employees taking power tools to the components in question. As Rusbridger noted at the time, this was a particularly “pointless piece of symbolism that understood nothing about the digital age.” And, really, that line could apply to an awful lot about the NSA/GCHQ affair lately. Yes, they understand a lot about how to spy on everyone via digital tools, but they’ve shown little to no recognition of the problems this creates for the economy, for technology, for innovation, for privacy, for security and for public sentiment.

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