The Snowden Files: The Paragraph began to delete itself. [View all]

[Savannahmann]

Luke Harding has written a book about Snowden, he was invited to do so by the Guardian Editors. He went into the secret room, and read many of the documents provided by Edward Snowden before they were destroyed by GCHQ, the British Secret Intelligence Service. I haven't read the book yet, but this article in the Guardian about the book was interesting.

By September the book was going well – 30,000 words done. A Christmas deadline loomed. I was writing a chapter on the NSA's close, and largely hidden, relationship with Silicon Valley. I wrote that Snowden's revelations had damaged US tech companies and their bottom line. Something odd happened. The paragraph I had just written began to self-delete. The cursor moved rapidly from the left, gobbling text. I watched my words vanish. When I tried to close my OpenOffice file the keyboard began flashing and bleeping.

Over the next few weeks these incidents of remote deletion happened several times. There was no fixed pattern but it tended to occur when I wrote disparagingly of the NSA. All authors expect criticism. But criticism before publication by an anonymous, divine third party is something novel. I began to leave notes for my secret reader. I tried to be polite, but irritation crept in. Once I wrote: "Good morning. I don't mind you reading my manuscript – you're doing so already – but I'd be grateful if you don't delete it. Thank you." There was no reply.

This is after people surreptitiously tried to eavesdrop on his meeting with Greenwald, and after an American named "Chris" befriended him and invited him to go out sightseeing in Rio.

Read the whole article, it would be dismissed as a bad spy novel if it wasn't for one thing. We know the NSA/CIA/GCHQ/is there an end to this parade of acronyms/FBI is gathering information on everyone.

Oh I have bought the book. I'm finishing another one now, and soon will be reading it. I have a feeling that it's not going to be like Fred Cook's book, but still it might be interesting.