For civil libertarians in the United States and England, it is increasingly difficult to distinguish the practices of our own governments and the countries that we routinely denounce as authoritarian. An example of this confusion can be found in the outrageous arrest of the partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian writer who brought the Snowden disclosures to light and a leading voice for civil liberties in the world. David Miranda, who lives with Greenwald, was taken into custody when passing through London’s Heathrow airport on his way home to Rio de Janeiro. He was held for nine hours and had his computer, cell phone and other equipment seized. Such stops can occur at the request of the National Security Agency and other agencies and are carried out under the abusive Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000. The case could also highlight possible surveillance of journalists in England and the United States.
The law allows police at airports, ports and border areas to stop, search, question and detain individuals for up to nine hours. Miranda, 28, was held obviously because he is the partner of Greenwald. Where 97% of people held under the law are held for less than an hour, they held Miranda for the full nine hours and confiscated his mobile phone, laptop, camera, memory sticks, DVDs and games consoles.
Miranda was reportedly in Berlin to deliver Snowden related documents and to pass other documents from Laura Poitras, a documentary filmmaker, back to Greenwald. The use of a loved one for such a function is obviously dangerous and most journalists avoid such involvement since the partner would not necessarily be protected as journalists. The documents were stored on encrypted thumb drives. Greenwald says that the police informed him of an intent to arrest Miranda.
Notably, one defense might have been that Miranda was acting in a journalistic activity as a courier for Greenwald but Greenwald is quoted as saying that Miranda is not a journalist. The use of a loved one for such a job would create a dangerous ambiguity. However, it is also clear that the government is targeting a journalist and trying to obtain records of a journalist. Given the history of the Obama Administration in putting reporters under surveillance, there is a reasonable basis to suspect that wiretaps or other forms of surveillance have targeted Greenwald. How did they know to search the partner of Greenwald? I am surprised to see a non-journalist tasked with such a job if these accounts are true. However, these questions still remain as to whether the U.S. government is working with England to target journalistic records.
England has fewer protections for journalists, particularly under its controversial Crown laws. However, even the United States uses enhanced powers at borders and airports. The Supreme Court has adopted different rules governing such stops. The Metropolitan Police released a statement that “[h]olding and properly using intelligence gained from such stops is a key part of fighting crime, pursuing offenders and protecting the public.” The crime in this case would involve disclosures made by someone viewed as a whistleblower to a journalist. Many view Greenwald as protecting the public in performing his journalistic role. Even if Miranda was not viewed as a journalist as Greenwald appears to confirm, he would be viewed as a courier for a known journalist. Such couriers however are usually employees or contractors associated with the media. That difference may have encouraged this action by intelligence officials.
Most people are assuming the English were carrying out the demands of the NSA. Part of the motivation may be the search of the computer records and devices though the length of time has been denounced as harassment. Some members of Congress have called for Greenwald’s arrest. He is responsible for embarrassing a growing number of politicians, including President Obama and leading Democrats, who continue to be caught in false or misleading statements to the public. Unable to convince the public to simply embrace warrantless surveillance and demonize Snowden, the government appears to have adopted a scorched earth policy.
To add to the abuse, Miranda was denied a lawyer as authorities rifled through his computer files and belongings. Greenwald got the message: “[It] is clearly intended to send a message of intimidation to those of us who have been reporting on the NSA and GCHQ. The actions of the UK pose a serious threat to journalists everywhere.” It certainly does, in my view, constitute an attack on the free press and raises the image of virtual hostage taking by the government.
The only thing missing is a few Guy Fawkes masks, “Finger” police, and the smiling face of Minister Peter Creedy to make the scene complete. “Schedule 7” even sounds like something that only Alan Moore could come up with.
What is most striking about Schedule 7 is how it is virtually without any standard or check on authority:
Interpretation
1(1)In this Schedule “examining officer” means any of the following—
(a)a constable,
(b)an immigration officer, and
(c)a customs officer who is designated for the purpose of this Schedule by the Secretary of State and the Commissioners of Customs and Excise.
(2)In this Schedule—
“the border area” has the meaning given by paragraph 4,
“captain” means master of a ship or commander of an aircraft,
“port” includes an airport and a hoverport,
“ship” includes a hovercraft, and
“vehicle” includes a train.
(3)A place shall be treated as a port for the purposes of this Schedule in relation to a person if an examining officer believes that the person—
(a)has gone there for the purpose of embarking on a ship or aircraft, or
(b)has arrived there on disembarking from a ship or aircraft.Power to stop, question and detain
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).
(2)This paragraph applies to a person if—
(a)he is at a port or in the border area, and
(b)the examining officer 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 [or his travelling by air within Great Britain or within Northern Ireland].
(3)This paragraph also applies to a person on a ship or aircraft which has arrived at any place in Great Britain or Northern Ireland (whether from within or outside Great Britain or Northern Ireland).
(4)An examining officer may exercise his powers under this paragraph whether or not he has grounds for suspecting that a person falls within section 40(1)(b).
My favorite part is the last line: “An examining officer may exercise his powers under this paragraph whether or not he has grounds for suspecting that a person falls within section 40(1)(b).”
The actions taken against Miranda were intended to send a message to Greenwald and other journalists that their families will not be protected from repercussions in such controversies. Indeed, the crude tactics conveyed a menacing message that the government is not concerned with public outcry or any notion of checks on its actions. You will note that no one in Congress has demanded to know if American officials were involved in this abusive action. Scotland Yard refused to answer any questions beyond confirmed that Miranda was held in custody. The message to citizens seems clear: Challenge the government at your own peril . . . and that of your loved ones.
Source: Guardian
Elaine,
Yep … I’m thinking about the articles by Maass
From the link Jill provided:
“The World at One also interviewed David Lowe, a former Special Branch counter-terrorism officer who now teaches at Liverpool John Moores University. Lowe said the use of the Terrorism Act against David Miranda was proportionate. Edward Snowden had access to secret documents relating to the NSA and the UK’s GCHQ, Lowe argued, but the authorities did not know what material he had.
Here schedule 7 has been used because there’s a short window of opportunity for police officers, immigration officers or customs officers to use this to actually stop and check what was in the laptop and in the electronic sources that have been talked about.
When it was put to him that 70,000 people were stopped under schedule 7 last year, but that only 24 people were arrested, Lowe said the “relatively small” number of arrests actually showed that the police were behaving reasonably.”
________________
So when did an arrest rate of approximately 1 in 2917 detentions become “reasonable” vis a vis the detentions themselves?
Does Brittainnia have two t’s and two n’s. There is a song out for many centuries called Hail Brittainia, Britainnia rules the waves.
Its the spulling that has me muddled. They also rule the airports.
I hate to tell you guys this but AmeriKa has a statute on the books which allows customs or immigration igPays to search and seize within 25 miles of our borders without warrant. The Supreme Court said that they can act on suspicion of ethnicity. I will post the statute and that case on another comment.
Ladies,
As the man in the suit used to say, “Submitted for your approval.” If it is a diversion or a decoy, the payoff had better be spectacular from the Shadow Government’s standpoint. They’ve created bad press, failed to intimidate Greenwald, and sowed more distrust and dislike in the international community. If viewed from a cost/benefit standpoint, the tactic as distraction has very limited utility. Plus, keep in mind these are authoritarians we’re talking about. Sometimes a banana is just a banana. A failed attempt at intimidation makes as much sense as anything because 1) the end game of that is known (silence Greenwald, intimidate the press) and 2) any other endgame either doesn’t pass C/B analysis although it could be obscure or based on publicly unknown knowledge but it is hard to imagine what information would lead to a scenario where such a crude tactic would reap reward either long or short term. Intimidation is only a ‘good’ tactic when it works. Otherwise, it’s a failed threat or a bluff.
We in AmeriKa and Britania need to read our governments their Miranda Rights.
Live blog on the guardian:
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/2013/aug/19/glenn-greenwald-partner-detained-live-reaction
Q&A: Senator Ron Wyden on NSA Surveillance and Government Transparency
‘If we don’t recognize that this is a truly unique moment in America’s constitutional history, our generation’s going to regret it forever.’
By Janet Reitman
August 15, 2013
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/q-a-senator-ron-wyden-on-nsa-surveillance-and-government-transparency-20130815
Excerpt:
Terms like “bulk data collection” and “PRISM” may have only recently entered the national conversation, but Sen. Ron Wyden has been talking about them for years – or at least, trying to. The Oregon Democrat, who has come out as one of Congress’ most vocal opponents of NSA surveillance, has been worried for nearly a decade that the government is violating Americans’ privacy rights, and, as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he’s also been aware of the details. But given the stringent rules governing what elected officials with high level security clearances can and can’t say, he’s been unable to speak about these programs, let alone critique them. “For all practical purposes, there’s almost a double standard with the rules,” Wyden, a tall, jeans-clad 64-year-old, tells me in his Senate office overlooking Capitol Hill. “Leaders in the intelligence community can go out to public forums and say, ‘We don’t hold data on US citizens,’ but I can’t pop up the next day and say, ‘Holy Toledo! That’s just not right!'”
A member of Congress since 1981, Wyden hasn’t always been this outspoken about privacy. In fact, like many of his colleagues, Wyden voted to authorize the Patriot Act after 9/11. He explains, “I was reassured that it had an expiration date that would force Congress to come back and consider these new surveillance authorities more carefully once the immediate crisis had passed.” (By 2006, he was voting against reauthorizing the act.) Instead, surveillance became entrenched, as did a whole host of what Wyden calls “secret law” that governed these programs. In 2003, as Congress was voting to shut down the Pentagon’s Total Information Awareness data-mining program (whose less-than-subtle logo was an eye casting an all-seeing gaze on the universe), the NSA’s infamous warrantless wiretapping program was up and running – something that Congress, like the American public, wouldn’t learn about until the end of 2005, when The New York Times broke the story. Wyden says he first learned that the government was collecting Americans’ phone records in 2007. As he was unable to share what he knew, even with his own staff, he was left issuing a series of ominous, if vague, warnings. “When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act,” he said, during one speech on the Senate floor in May 2011, “they will be stunned and they will be angry.”
This is 100% pure unadulterated state sponsored terrorism.
Blouise,
Exactly! Are you thinking decoy?
Elaine M.
1, August 19, 2013 at 10:34 am
Swarthmore mom,
Maybe it was a test?
==============================================
Or a diversion.
This story if getting traction. I see that the govt. is overreaching time and again with their response. It is scary. Clearly they are worried. They don’t seem to have compunctions about what they will do to people. I see an awful lot of propaganda coming out but they still haven’t directed people to the “correct” conclusions. I believe we are coming to a pivotal moment such as what Paul writes about. The govt. will play its hand big time, if this can’t be controlled through propaganda and lack of information in our “press”. We have got to stick together because the govt. has so much power to do harm against citizens.
As to not wanting to think about this, I am just asking any person, perhaps a person who gave an ovation to Koh, anyone with enough self-insight to speak up about what was going on inside you when you couldn’t take in accurate information about Obama until more recently. I ask this because if someone can be honest about that, and also speak to how you came to be able to see things that are actually happening, it would help others. I know I’m asking a lot. Just do it under a different name, but please do it.
“Miranda, 28, was held obviously because he is the partner of Greenwald.”
And how exactly did they know this? Were people tracking Miranda’s worldwide movements and told the British thugs to do it when he entered the country? Is there a worldwide system for flagging people who believe in free speech and accountability? Or was Miranda and others like him labelled as “terrorists” without any reason other than to harass and intimidate?
Which idiot? Casey? Hastings? Holder? Obama?
So the idiot will overstep himself and the law in anger and we’ll be able to put him away for life. Cool.
I think the primary reason people are not upset, particularly those under forty, is that there hasn’t been any expectation of privacy for years. In fact, they have embraced technology that requires the passing of private information, i.e. all their banking and purchasing transactions. Also, the widespread sharing of emails and employer policies regarding computer use has made the idea of privacy a joke.
Swarthmore mom,
Maybe it was a test?
Glenn Greenwald on partner’s detention: You’ll ‘regret’ it
By CNN Staff
August 19, 2013
http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/19/world/europe/greenwald-partner-detained/
Excerpt:
(CNN) — Glenn Greenwald, the reporter who broke the news about secret U.S. surveillance programs said the authorities who took his partner into custody at London’s Heathrow Airport “are going to regret what they did.”
“I am going to write my stories a lot more aggressively now,” the Guardian reporter told Brazil’s Globo TV on Monday in Rio de Janeiro.
“I am going to publish many more documents now. I am going to publish a lot about England, too, I have a lot of documents about the espionage system in England. Now my focus is going to be that as well.”…
“If the UK and U.S. 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,” said Greenwald.
“If anything, it will have only the opposite effect: to embolden us even further.”
Blouise, I am surprised that Greenwald did not use someone other than his partner in this role…. a little too obvious and too easily followed.
David Miranda detention: MP asks police for explanation
8/19/13
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-23750289
Excerpt:
Pressure is mounting on police to justify the detention of a journalist’s partner under terror laws.
Senior politicians and an independent reviewer have said police must explain why David Miranda was detained for nine hours at Heathrow Airport.
Mr Miranda’s partner is a journalist who published documents leaked by US whistleblower Edward Snowden.
Police have not said why Mr Miranda was held, but he said he was kept in a room and quizzed by “six agents”.
Keith Vaz, chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, and shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said police must explain why terrorism powers were used.
Brazil has complained that his detention was “without justification”.
The Home Office said it was for the police to decide when to use its powers to stop people.
Questions ‘about everything’
Mr Miranda, 28, was held at Heathrow on Sunday, on his way from Berlin to Rio de Janeiro, where he lives with his partner, Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald.
“I remained in a room, there were six different agents coming and going, talking to me,” Mr Miranda said.
“They asked questions about my entire life, about everything.
Is Glenn Greenwald’s journalism now viewed as a ‘terrorist’ occupation?
David Miranda’s detention shows that being the partner of the man who interviewed the NSA whistleblower is enough to see you treated like a terrorist
Simon Jenkins
theguardian.com
Monday 19 August 2013
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/19/glenn-greenwald-journalism-david-miranda-detention
Excerpt:
The detention at Heathrow on Sunday of the Brazilian David Miranda is the sort of treatment western politicians love to deplore in Putin’s Russia or Ahmadinejad’s Iran. His “offence” under the 2000 Terrorism Act was apparently to be the partner of a journalist, Glenn Greenwald, who had reported for the Guardian on material released by the American whistleblower, Edward Snowden. We must assume the Americans asked the British government to nab him, shake him down and take his personal effects.
Miranda’s phone and laptop were confiscated and he was held incommunicado, without access to friends or lawyer, for the maximum nine hours allowed under law. It is the airport equivalent of smashing into someone’s flat, rifling through their drawers and stealing papers and documents. It is simple harassment and intimidation.
Greenwald himself is not known to have committed any offence, unless journalism is now a “terrorist” occupation in the eyes of British and American politicians. As for Miranda, his only offence seems to have been to be part of his family. Harassing the family of those who have upset authority is the most obscene form of state terrorism.
Last month, the British foreign secretary, William Hague, airily excused the apparently illegal hoovering of internet traffic by British and American spies on the grounds that “the innocent have nothing to fear,” the motto of police states down the ages. Hague’s apologists explained that he was a nice chap really, but that relations with America trumped every libertarian card.