Reports are coming out that British officials raided the Guardian offices and destroyed harddrives related to the Snowden documents. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... This is a shocking turn of events. It also may mark the beginning of the end of the United Kingdom. In September of 2014, Scotland will hold a referendum on independence. https://en.wikipedia.org/... Having traveled in Scotland some years ago, I can sympathize with the dream of Scottish independence. Recent polling has shown independence down by a considerable amount. Prior to this point, it would have been safe to predict the failure of the referendum.
Actions taken against The Guardian and David Miranda have shown the UK to be a full participant in the surveillance state. The Scots might be the last people on Earth that will have the opportunity to vote themselves out of the surveillance state. The SNP would have to be stupid not to take this and run with it. I do not think the SNP is stupid. This stunt with The Guardian may well have cost the UK Scotland.
Then there is the effect on the IT industry. I suspect many businesses don't care if the government is spying on, most, of their data. Losing your data is an entirely different story. The idea that the government might send agents to your data center with orders the physically smash media is terrifying. A business might not move their data to try to one up the NSA in the spying game. Preventing physical loss of data is an entirely different ballgame. After this, every large company has to be thinking about where their servers are located.
The raid on The Guardian is simply one in a series of frighteningly incompetent actions on the part of the national security apparatus. Every time they have tried to pull some form of stunt the situation has escalated further out of control. We have now reached the point where intelligence agency actions are threatening a union that has lasted over three hundred years. Not even Napoleon, or of Colley can be believed Bonnie Prince Charlie, came close to accomplishing that. The national security apparatus has become the single greatest threat to national security that the English speaking world has ever faced.