Partner of Guardian's Snowden Reporter Detained Under Terrorism Act 426
hydrofix writes "The partner of the Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, who has written a series of stories revealing mass surveillance programs by the National Security Agency (NSA), was held for almost nine hours on Sunday by UK authorities as he passed through the Heathrow airport on his way home to Rio de Janeiro. David Miranda was stopped by officers and informed that he would be questioned under the Terrorism Act 2000. The 28-year-old was held for nine hours, the maximum the law allows before officers must release or formally arrest the individual. According to official figures, most examinations last under an hour, and only one in 2,000 people detained are kept for more than six hours. Miranda was released without charge, but officials confiscated electronics including his mobile phone, laptop, camera, memory sticks, DVDs and games consoles. 'This is a profound attack on press freedoms [...] to detain my partner for a full nine hours while denying him a lawyer, and then seize large amounts of his possessions, is clearly intended to send a message of intimidation to those of us who have been reporting on the NSA and GCHQ,' Greenwald commented."
Re:Update the constitution (Score:5, Informative)
Since this is the UK, it's the Magna Carta that needs to be revised.
Re:Waiting.. (Score:5, Informative)
For all the Miranda rights jokes.. c'mon, get them out the way..
In the UK, you don't have Miranda rights.
It's up to you to decide if that's a joke or not.
"Partner" (Score:5, Informative)
Call him boyfriend or spouse or something. Partner makes it sound like he might have been involved in the journalistic work (and detaining him would still be wrong).
Instead, they're targetting the journalist's relationships. It's absolutely despicable.
Re:"Partner" (Score:5, Informative)
Ultimately self-defeating (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Update the constitution (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Update the constitution (Score:2, Informative)
Presumably, he was detained for leaking information against the NSA, a U.S. agency. That is what the U.S. has to do with this.
Re:Update the constitution (Score:5, Informative)
However, given that the UK likely violated the European Convention on Human Rights, GP is not entirely wrong. There's definitely an issue of how legal this all was, given that:
1. There was no suspicion that Mr Miranda committed a crime, which brings up Article 5.
2. The only reason to seize Mr Miranda's electronic devices was to search them, again with no reason to believe that they were used for a crime, violating Article 8.
3. The reason they picked Mr Miranda was because of his association with Glenn Greenwald, violating Article 11.
4. And what Glenn Greenwald did was covered under Article 10.
So yeah, Land of the Free, unless you embarrass important people or organizations in the US or UK or NATO.
Re:Update the constitution (Score:5, Informative)
At least in the US, there is no limit to civil forfeiture. If authorities think that your possessions were used in a crime, they can take them even if you are never charged with a crime at all. This includes personal effects, possessions, and real property.
Re:"Partner" (Score:5, Informative)
Partner makes it sound like he might have been involved in the journalistic work (and detaining him would still be wrong).
He is involved - he was returning from a trip to Berlin to work with Laura Poitras the documentary film-maker whom Snowden also reached out to. The trip was paid for by Greenwald's newspaper, the Guardian.
Amerika the Terror State (Score:5, Informative)
Papers, please.
Brought to you by the same people who entertained you with "Destroyed the Village to Save It" and "Fighting for Peace".
Re: Update the constitution (Score:5, Informative)
No it wasn't. Orwell wrote 1984 after beeing delusional on how the communists behaved during the Spanish civil war, where he inititially fought for the communists.
Partly correct,
In his essay Why I Write, Orwell clearly explains that all the "serious work" he had written since the Spanish Civil War in 1936 was "written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism". [1] Therefore, one can look at Nineteen Eighty-Four as a cautionary tale against totalitarianism and in particular the betrayal of a revolution by those claiming to defend or support it. However, as many reviewers and critics have stated, it should not be read as an attack on socialism as a whole, but on totalitarianism and potential totalitarianism.
Also partly incorrect
His work for the overseas service of the BBC, which at the time was under the control of the Ministry of Information, also played a significant role as the basis for his Ministry of Truth (as he later admitted to Malcolm Muggeridge). The Ministry of Information building, Senate House (University of London), was the Ministry of Truth's architectural inspiration. The world of Nineteen Eighty-Four also reflects various aspects of the social and political life of both the United Kingdom and the United States of America. Orwell is reported to have said that the book described what he viewed as the situation in the United Kingdom in 1948, when the British economy was poor, the British Empire was dissolving at the same time as newspapers were reporting its triumphs, and wartime allies such as the USSR were rapidly becoming peacetime foes ('Eurasia is the enemy. Eurasia has always been the enemy'). In many ways, Oceania is indeed a future metamorphosis of the British Empire (although Orwell is careful to state that, geographically, it also includes the United States, and that the currency is the dollar). It is, as its name suggests, an essentially naval power. Much of its militarism is focused on veneration for sailors and seafarers, serving on board "floating fortresses" which Orwell evidently conceived of as the next stage in the growth of ever-bigger warships, after the Dreadnoughts of WWI and the aircraft carriers of WWII; and much of the fighting conducted by Oceania's troops takes place in defense of India (the "Jewel in the Crown" of the British Empire). The party newspaper is the times, identified in Orwell's time (and to some degree even at present) as the voice of the British ruling class — rather than, as could have been expected, a publication which started life as the paper of a revolutionary party (like Pravda in the Soviet Union). Note the lack of capital letters in the name. This is a feature of newspeak, the official party language. O'Brien, who represents the oppressive Party, is in many ways depicted as a member of the old British ruling class (in one case, Winston Smith thinks of him as a person who in the past would have been holding a snuffbox, i.e. an old-fashioned English gentleman).
source for both quotes http://www.netcharles.com/orwell/articles/1984-background-info.htm [netcharles.com]
Re: Update the constitution (Score:5, Informative)
Orwell wrote 1984 after beeing delusional on how the communists behaved during the Spanish civil war, where he inititially fought for the communists.
Orwell never fought for the actual Communists (i.e. the Russian aligned Communist Party), he fought for the POUM (which was a Trotskyist group). The exigencies of Russian foreign policy (Stalin wanted an anti-fascist alliance with Britain and France) caused the Communists to be the conservatives on the Republican side. For example, everywhere the Communists (as opposed to various Trotskyist and Anarchist groupings) gained control, factories which had spontaneously been "collectivised" by their work force were returned to the hands of the prior private owners.
The musn't upset bourgeois Britain and France line (the vanity of which reached it's denouement at the Munich conference) being pursued, at Stalin's behest, by the Communists in Spain was natural perceived by more radical leftists as a gross betrayal. Orwell saw it as such. Orwell too perceived the danger of the requirements of State taking precedence over the liberation of workers. I'm not sure how you think he was being "delusional?!" Disillusioned perhaps, but then he obviously didn't hold the Communists in high enough regard to fight with them in the first place.
I recommend reading his Homage to Catalonia, not only because it clarifies the meaning of works such as Animal Farm and 1984, but because it's a damn good read.
Re:Update the constitution (Score:4, Informative)
Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000 (âoeCAFRAâ). This requires the government to procure an ex parte warrant from a U.S. District Court upon probable cause before seizing property. Within 60 days after the government seizes property, it must send written notice of the seizure to parties interested in the property (i.e., the owner). The interested parties then have 35 days to file a claim for the property. If a timely claim is filed, government has 90 days to either indict the claimant or bring a lawsuit in federal court seeking a judgment of civil forfeiture of the property. If the government does neither, it must return the seized property forthwith.
Re:Update the constitution (Score:2, Informative)
For more information about US forfeiture law abuse see this amazing article from The New Yorker last week [newyorker.com].