If the government was threatening to shut down the paper, why not call its bluff and force the threat out into the daylight? As Snowden said when he heard the about the threat, “the only right answer is, go ahead, shut us down!” Voluntarily complying in secret is to enable the government to conceal its true character from the world: a state that thuggishly stops journalists from reporting on one of the most significant stories in the public interest.
