Guardian Hard Drive – http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2398521/Malcolm-Rifkind-NO-DOUBT-reports-using-Snowden-information-played-terrorists-hands.html
Apparently Fat Dave asked Jeremy Heywood for help over some ‘sensitive information’ on 2 hard drives at The Guardian the other day. That ole ‘terrorism’ chestnut was wheeled out by the DM to justify this vandalism. Actually the story was about how tptb were hoovering up comms traffic via an installation in the ‘Middle East’ and examining it for incriminating info on various individuals who might be ‘of interest’. It is supposed that the info was then to be used to justify sending certain individuals to ‘re-education units’ such as Guantanamo Bay, Fort Detrick Military Base and the like. Come along, time to bring on that fake UFO Alien Agenda you are waiting to deploy on the ‘unsuspecting’ public. Oh just get it over with will you? We’re so totally scared really we are.
‘The Guardian’s editor Alan Rusbridger revealed that ‘two security experts’ from GCHQ had overseen the destruction of two hard drives in the basement of the Guardian‘s offices in London.’ http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-08/22/council-of-europe-letter-theresa-may
UPDATE – Friday 31 January 2014
‘The bizarre episode in the basement of the Guardian‘s London HQ was the climax of Downing Street’s fraught interactions with the Guardian in the wake of Snowden’s leak – the biggest in the history of western intelligence. The details are revealed in a new book – The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man – by the Guardian correspondent Luke Harding. The book, published next week, describes how the Guardian took the decision to destroy its own Macbooks after the government explicitly threatened the paper with an injunction.
In two tense meetings last June and July the cabinet secretary, Jeremy Heywood, explicitly warned the Guardian’s editor, Alan Rusbridger, to return the Snowden documents.
Heywood, sent personally by David Cameron, told the editor to stop publishing articles based on leaked material from American’s National Security Agency and GCHQ. At one point Heywood said: “We can do this nicely or we can go to law”. He added: “A lot of people in government think you should be closed down.”
Downing Street insiders admit they struggled to come to terms with Snowden’s mega-leak, and the fact that the 29-year-old American was able to upload top secret British material while working at an NSA facility in faraway Hawaii. Snowden wasn’t even a full-time NSA employee, but a private contractor, one of 850,000 Americans with access to top secret UK information. “We just sat up and thought: ‘Oh my God!'” one Downing Street insider said.’
‘Some five weeks after Snowden first leaked classified NSA and GCHQ material, the British government still had no clue of the scale of the security breach. It was working on the assumption that a small amount of material had been lost.
A small team of trusted senior reporters examined Snowden’s files in a secure fourth-floor room in the Guardian’s King’s Cross office. The material was kept on four laptops. None had ever been connected to the internet or any other network. There were numerous other security measures, including round-the-clock guards, multiple passwords, and a ban on electronics.
The government’s response to the leak was initially slow – then increasingly strident. Rusbridger told government officials that destruction of the Snowden files would not stop the flow of intelligence-related stories since the documents existed in several jurisdictions. He explained that Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian US columnist who met Snowden in Hong Kong, had leaked material in Rio de Janeiro. There were further copies in America, he said.
Days later Oliver Robbins, the prime minister’s deputy national security adviser, renewed the threat of legal action. “If you won’t return it [the Snowden material] we will have to talk to ‘other people’ this evening.” Asked if Downing Street really intended to close down the Guardian if it did not comply, Robbins confirmed: “I’m saying this.” He told the deputy editor, Paul Johnson, the government wanted the material in order to conduct “forensics”. This would establish how Snowden had carried out his leak, strengthening the legal case against the Guardian’s source. It would also reveal which reporters had examined which files.
With the threat of punitive legal action ever present, the only way of protecting the Guardian’s team – and of carrying on reporting from another jurisdiction – was for the paper to destroy its own computers. GCHQ officials wanted to inspect the material before destruction, carry out the operation themselves and take the remnants away. The Guardian refused.
After the destruction on Saturday 20 July, reporting switched entirely to the US. Despite these tensions, the paper continued to consult with the government before publishing national security stories. There were more than 100 interactions with No 10, the White House and US and UK intelligence agencies.’
ukgovernmentwatch 
LIke a journalist would not make a copy and send it to multiple locations, and threaten to release if you are in any way mistreated, i smell a rat.
Andy
UK Column seem to agree with you.