Boris Johnson defends Guardian over NSA revelations

[dipsydoodle]

Boris Johnson has issued a staunch defence of the Guardian's "salient and interesting" revelations about the activities of US and UK intelligence agencies based on secret documents leaked by Edward Snowden.

The mayor of London told an audience at the World Islamic Economic Forum that it was important that governments and their spies were held to account by a "beady-eyed" media.

"I think the public deserves to know. The world is better for government being kept under the beady-eyed scrutiny of the media and for salient and interesting facts about public espionage being brought into the public domain."

Johnson's intervention puts him at odds with David Cameron, who has said the leaks have made the UK less safe. This week the prime minister issued a veil threat to take "tougher measures" against the Guardian and other newspapers.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/oct/30/boris-johnson-defends-guardian-nsa

[LeftishBrit]

1. Every now and then even Boris the Prat says something reasonable.

[non sociopath skin]

2. With friends like that ....

The Skin

[Anarcho-Socialist]

3. If Cameron had criticised the NSA/GCHQ and spoken in favour of the Guardian

I'm sure Boris would have by now spoken in favour of the surveillance state and attacked the Guardian in the utmost terms.

I don't believe that Boris has a principled stance on anything and that everything is about opportunism and manoeuvring.

[LeftishBrit]

4. I agree that Boris is not a principled individual...

but I think it takes a slightly different form: he almost literally has two faces - a fairly progressive one for the swing-voters of London, and a right-wing one for the 'bastards' looking for someone to replace Cameron.

I think that if he makes a serious attempt to become Prime Minister, this will become so obvious that he will not succeed.

As I wrote in an earlier post about Boris: 'At least the Vicar of Bray only had to pander to the different monarchs successively, not simultaneously.'