Members of Parliament Demand Explanation For Detention of David Miranda

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.'"

Re:Can't wait ...

[Hatta]

Laura Poitras, who also received the Snowden leaks, has had this exact experience. Her 2006 film, "My Country, My Country", about Iraqis living under American occupation earned her a spot on the terrorist watch list. Since 2006, she's been detained at the border around 40 times [democracynow.org].

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Re:System may be working?

[bagofbeans]

It's actually a little more subtle than that:

Terrorism Act 2000 Schedule 7
2(1)An examining officer 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).

5A person who is questioned under paragraph 2 or 3 must
(a)give the examining officer any information in his possession which the officer requests;
(b)give the examining officer on request either a valid passport which includes a photograph or another document which establishes his identity;
(c)declare whether he has with him documents of a kind specified by the examining officer;
(d)give the examining officer on request any document which he has with him and which is of a kind specified by the officer.

Also, under the "Examining Officers under the Terrorism Act 2000 Code of Practice" Code-of-Practice-for-Examin1.pdf:

The examining officer should advise the detained person that, under paragraph 5 of Schedule 7 to the Act he/she has a duty to give the officer all the information in his/her possession which the officer requests in connection with his determining whether the person appears to be, or have been, concerned in the commission preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism. The detained person should also be reminded that not complying with this duty is a criminal offence under paragraph 18(1) of Schedule 7 to the Act.

This means that one has to submit to full search of electronic stuff (decrypting where necessary), but questioning about stuff clearly irrelevant to terrorism need not be answered.

If Miranda was largely questioned about irrelevant stuff to use up the 9 hours, than that's something to take up with ECHR as abuse.

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Re:System may be working?

[QuasiSteve]

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')

Although it may very well have been designed to be abused, there's also a slightly more benign (insofar as evils being on a grade) explanation; covering asses.

Let's say all the suspicion is "didn't smell right" - not a particularly reasonable suspicion. Now say it turns out the person they detained had nefarious plans. They wouldn't want to start out any case by saying they didn't have reasonable suspicion with a law saying that they must have one. At best it damages their case, at worst it undermines it entirely. Politicians drawing up the laws similarly don't want to be responsible for having to let people go just because "didn't smell right" was not acceptable.
It leads to abuse, and that could easily have been foreseen, but that in itself may not have been the driving force.

Re:Can't wait ...

[Hatta]

Thanks for noticing. This may be more due to slashdot's demographics changing than a shift in public sentiment, but who knows. Personally I get more gratification from rebutting authoritarians than racking up mod points. I've noticed fewer of those, fwiw.

Re:I can't answer that until I speak to my lawyer

[oxdas]

Under the law, he is not entitled to an attorney. Furthermore, if he refuses to answer a question, under this law, it is a crime. The law is currently being challenged in the EU courts.

Re:Would not have expected?

[tragedy]

Before a law becomes a law, it was known as a bill

I am interested to know how many of you guys actually spend time to review the myriad of bills that are awaiting to be passed in the parliament/congress, and/or state-level legislatures/senates ?

Isn't it a little bit too late complaining about "malicious" laws while none of us paid any attention to them when they were still bills ?

Well, in the case of the USAPATRIOT act, it was introduced on Tuesday, passed the House on Wednesday, then passed the Senate on Thursday, then signed by the President on Friday. It is 363 pages long. Numerous congressmen have admitted to not having read it before voting for it (and let's face it, they probably never read through the whole thing after passing it either). As for the rest of us... frankly I'm not sure how quickly the congressional record was actually available back in 2001. Anyone know? Would it have been immediately available to the public as soon as it was introduced? Put online somewhere maybe? Or would it be done at the end of the day? Perhaps the end of the week after it had already been signed into law? This is something I really want to know. In any case, even if it were available to the public instantly and a it was read through by an amazing speed reading legal scholar, their letter of objection to their congressman probably wouldn't have gotten there in time.