Britain’s Independent newspaper defends state spying apparatus
● The publication August 23 by Britain’s Independent newspaper of an article by its defence correspondent Kim Sengupta reveals the reliance of the UK government on the complicity of the media in concealing its secretive and illegal activity.
● The article [...] was written to accompany an “exclusive” in the same edition headlined, “UK’s secret Mid-East internet surveillance base is revealed in Edward Snowden leaks”.
● The article’s pedigree and purpose are dubious. It states that the newspaper had been informed that Britain’s spying network, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), “runs a secret internet-monitoring station in the Middle East to intercept and process vast quantities of emails, telephone calls and web traffic on behalf of Western intelligence agencies.” The article emphasised: “The Independent is not revealing the precise location of the station, but information on its activities was contained in the leaked documents obtained from the NSA by Edward Snowden.”
● Later the same day, Glenn Greenwald published an article in the Guardian questioning the origins of the Independent’s disclosure, specifically their claim that it came from “documents obtained from the NSA by Edward Snowden.”