"The White House responded with surprise to the report of the destruction. Asked at his daily briefing on Tuesday whether President Obama's administration would enter a US media company and destroy media hard drives – even to protect national security – the White House spokesman, Josh Earnest, said: "That's very difficult – to imagine a scenario in which that would be appropriate."

It's not as if the USA has ever coerced an innocent person into giving up their livelihood without benefit of due process (http://lavabit.com).

1600 Penn doesn't need to physically destroy hard drives when a 46-cent stamp and and NSL has the same outcome.

Beyond that, I'm not sure why they commented on this at all, considering they have zero credibility on the matter. It just makes them look worse...if that is really possible.

It is hard to know where this is leading.

The NSA leaks seem to express a national security state that is immune to all but the most terrible publicity. Yet it seems like the escalation of power and arrogance means that said national security state is generating exactly that level of terrible publicity, demonstrating a cynically cavalier attitude so extreme it is actually keeping the situation in the lime light.

And of course we know that which nation engages in what exact tactic is somewhat beside the point. The Americans would say "we wouldn't force the destruction of hard drives" with what is now the standard, the standard, kind of disingenuous secret caveat; "no, WE would steal the data in the middle of the night" or "we would have the courts first declare the reporters to be non-reporters and then throw them Guantanamo" or whatever.

Well they boondoggle'd this one, however the conspiracy theorist in me believes that this is a pointed distraction aimed at directing attention away from the Whitehouse/NSA. GCHQ is the sacrificial lamb, to put it bluntly.

Replace all instances of "GCHQ" with "NSA" and it should quickly sink in how serious this matter is. Imagine if NSA officers had stormed the Washington Post's office in a similar fashion, threatening and ignorantly ordering the destruction of a variety of named and un-named hard-drives.

How could GCHQ have known which hard-drives were which? Baffling.

I think this is likely damage control. However, it also shows that Americans are lucky to have our founding documents.

While they aren't always effective in stopping government overreach, and we are living in a dangerous time for the ideals expressed within them, at least our government will always have to pay them lip-service.

I'm curious what game console/games he lost -- I suspect he could get a signed/etc. version from the developers for the asking.

Okay, this is borderline sick. Just combine "Theresa May, the home secretary, confirmed that she was given advance notice of Miranda's detention as she praised the police action [...]" with "Lord Falconer of Thoroton, the former Labour lord chancellor who was involved in introducing the anti-terror legislation used to detain Miranda, said the police had no right to detain him under the Terrorism Act 2000."

Let me paraphrase that a bit.

The police: "Hey guys, we're going to abuse the anti-terror laws and intimidate a highly visible journalist and his family. This might be illegal."

The police oversight body: "Who cares?"

The UK home office have effectively announced that they are not doing their job. Even when expressly told in advance that the police will break the law in a very visible way, they choose to ignore it.

That must be either gross negligence or crass incompetence.

[Quick edit: italics]

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Well, if UK was depending on NSA intelligence, I am not surprised they would be even more worried than the NSA itself.