The War on Journalism/Whistle Blowing is raging on both sides of the Atlantic. The PTB in both the US and UK are criminalizing investigative reporting and whistle blowing by conflating them with espionage and terrorism.
British news staff may face terrorism charges over Snowden leaks
Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, summoned to give evidence at a parliamentary inquiry, was accused by lawmakers of helping terrorists by making top secret information public and sharing it with other news organizations.
Lawmakers put it to Rusbridger that he had committed an offence under Section 58A of the Terrorism Act which says it is a crime to publish or communicate any information about members of the armed forces or intelligence services.
Rusbridger testified that the Guardian has kept strict watch on not publishing or transmitting names and has only written about 26 of the 58,000 documents (less than 1%) received from Edward Snowden, all of which they have stored securely.
Rusbridger pointed out how the UK was questioning the Guardian far more for writing about NSA/GCHQ spying on citizens than examining why top secret documents were so easily accessed by a contract employee in the first place.
Carl Bernstein, one of the reporters who broke the Watergate scandal in the Washington Post, wrote an open letter to Alan Rusbridger commending him for acting responsibly with the Snowden documents and noting how the governments in both the UK and US are misguided in going after journalists for reporting the important revelation that our governments are using private telecommunication firms and technology to snoop on us.
Rather than hauling in journalists for questioning and trying to intimidate them, the Commons would do well to encourage and join that debate over how the vast electronic intelligence-gathering capabilities of the modern security-state can be employed in a manner that gives up little or nothing to real terrorists and real enemies and skilfully uses all our technological capabilities to protect us, while at the same time taking every possible measure to insure that these capabilities are not abused in a way that would abrogate the rights and privacy of law-abiding citizens.
There have always been tensions between such objectives in our democracies, especially in regard to the role of the press. But as we learned in the United States during our experience with the Pentagon Papers and Watergate, it is essential that no prior governmental restraints or intimidation be imposed on a truly free press; otherwise, in such darkness, we encourage the risk of our democracies falling prey to despotism and demagoguery and even criminality by our elected leaders and government officials.
After the US trained and gave assistance to Al Qaeda related "rebels" who have been terrorizing Syria with beheadings, cannibalism, and ethnic cleansing, it's really, really, really hypocritical and appalling for the US/UK to prosecute journalists/whistle blowers on espionage/terrorism charges for reporting about the US/UK governments breaking privacy laws against their own citizens, which is a threat to our freedom and an all out attack against our civil liberties and the democratic core of our governments from within.