Members of Parliament Demand Explanation For Detention of David Miranda 321
megla writes "Yesterday Slashdot covered reports that David Miranda, the partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald was detained. Now, various MPs and other public figures have expressed their unease over the detention and demanded justification for the incident from the police. Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald has threatened to be more aggressive with his reporting regarding the UK secret services and to release more documents about their activities, Brazil has stated that it expects no repeat of the incident, and one of the MPs involved in passing the anti-terrorism legislation used for the detention has said: 'those of us who were part of passing this legislation certainly would not have expected it to be used in a case of this kind.'"
Reuters lies (Score:2, Informative)
Greenwald has not threatened to be more aggressive with his reporting regarding the UK secret services and to release more documents about their activities. Reuters made that up out of whole cloth, go read his actual words.
Re:Would not have expected? (Score:5, Informative)
Are they idiots? No. Do they think we're idiots? You'd have to be an idiot if you didn't realize every politician on the planet thinks we are all idiots.
And they're mostly right.
Re:System may be working? (Score:5, Informative)
An abuse of the law has been brought to light and now those responsible need to be held to account for it with appropriate sanctions, i.e. not just a slap on the knuckles for something as serious as this appears to be.
Appropriate sanctions being jail time for the kidnapping of this man. The most you're actually going to see is a censure, and we'll be lucky if we get that.
Re:System may be working? (Score:5, Informative)
Miranda was stopped at the airport, presumably under the terms of Terrorism Act 2000 [legislation.gov.uk] Schedule 7: "Ports and Border Controls"(on page 108)
"Power to stop, question and detain
2.—(1) An examining ocer may question a person to whom this paragraph applies for the purpose of determining whether he appears to be a person falling within section 40(1)(b).
(2) This paragraph applies to a person if—
(a) he is at a port or in the border area, and
(b) the examining ocer believes that the person’s presence at the port or in the area is connected with his entering or leaving Great Britain or Northern Ireland.
(3) This paragraph also applies to a person on a ship or aircraft which has arrived in Great Britain or Northern Ireland.
(4) An examining ocer may exercise his powers under this paragraph whether or not he has grounds for suspecting that a person falls within section 40(1)(b)."(emphasis mine)
The law actually says, explicitly, that the powers of border detention can be exercised without meeting any standard of suspicion, 'reasonable' or otherwise. If that wasn't designed to be abused, I'm not sure what would qualify, it overtly allows up to 9 hours detention on any grounds whatsoever, or none. ('section 40(1)(b)' defines a 'terrorist')
Re:Reuters lies (Score:5, Informative)
If the UK and US governments believe that tactics like this are going to deter or intimidate us in any way from continuing to report aggressively on what these documents reveal, they are beyond deluded. If anything, it will have only the opposite effect: to embolden us even further. [theguardian.com]
Sounds like a pretty accurate interpretation of his statement to me.
Re:Reuters lies (Score:2, Informative)
Greenwald has not threatened to be more aggressive with his reporting regarding the UK secret services and to release more documents about their activities. Reuters made that up out of whole cloth, go read his actual words.
Apparently ACs can lie as well. Greenwald not only said he will be more aggressive, but more or less directly threatened the UK.
Snowden leak journalist: Britain will 'regret' detaining partner at airport [nbcnews.com]
"I will be more aggressive in my reporting from now,” he told reporters in Portuguese at Rio de Janeiro’s airport where he met his boyfriend David Miranda who had flown from London to Brazil.
"I have many more documents to report on, including ones about the UK, where I'll now focus more," he said. "It'll backfire. I think they'll come to regret it."
White House: US was given 'heads up' before David (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/2013/aug/19/glenn-greenwald-partner-detained-live-reaction [theguardian.com]
Read the Followups (Score:2, Informative)
"Mr. Miranda was in Berlin to deliver documents related to Mr. Greenwald’s investigation into government surveillance to Ms. Poitras, Mr. Greenwald said. Ms. Poitras, in turn, gave Mr. Miranda different documents to pass to Mr. Greenwald. Those documents, which were stored on encrypted thumb drives, were confiscated by airport security, Mr. Greenwald said. All of the documents came from the trove of materials provided to the two journalists by Mr. Snowden."
In the helpful clarification from Wonkette [wonkette.com], "he was actively participating in transporting secret documents that were stolen, and which it is illegal for him to possess." On a trip paid for by The Guardian.
So, maybe not quite as innocent a bystander as he initally makes it seem. But that was probably the point, and now British politicians are getting hammered for the abuse of power he baited them into. Well played!