So the government can’t threaten to shut down a paper because it’s leaking details of government abuses.

The British government, which has much more authority over the press, demands the return of the Snowden materials. Then it goes to The Guardian’s offices to make sure the hard drives containing the information are destroyed.

This new aggressive surveillance state is bad enough, but you’d think that the people who have gone to great lengths to monitor email would have an understanding of the Interwebz and that you can’t stop the signal.