Slashdot Mirror
Partner of Guardian's Snowden Reporter Detained Under Terrorism Act
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."
Land of the Free(*).
*Conditions may apply.
Yep, you're gonna get stopped. Yep, they're going to go through your stuff.
I think a couple of Terabytes of 'Hello Kitty' videos placed on every bit of electronics that he owns should teach them the error of their ways.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
For all the Miranda rights jokes.. c'mon, get them out the way..
"I don't always travel around the world to topple foreign governments by revealing their deepest secrets, but when I do, I have my Famicom games collection with me."
Ezekiel 23:20
Even if he gets them back, would you trust a device that has been alone with a spook?
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.
This discussion suggests this is a spurious quote, like most attempts to lend prestige to a banal remark by attaching this writer's name to it.
Surely anyone worth their salt would just put their data in the Cloud, and password-protect it? Ah, just remembered it is illegal in the UK not to remember a password when the Authorities want you to decrypt something - punishable by itself with 2 years imprisonment - not to mention obstruction and all of the other offences they could mention.
This discussion suggests this is a spurious quote, like most attempts to lend prestige to a banal remark by attaching this writer's name to it.
"The spurious quote, like most attempts to build prestige from mediocrity, requires attaching things to it."
-Voltron
in US v Franklin et al, Rosen and Weissman were charged with " "Conspiracy to communicate national defense information to persons not entitled to receive it", and Rosen was charged with "Communication of national defense information to persons not entitled to receive it,"
The government believes that Assange conspired with his sources and communicated to his readers.
They're the worst kind of terrorist. Fighting with Pen And Truth and using the internet as IED and WMD.
The loyal ones write about what the government want you to believe.
Then there is a bunch of them that write about oil spills and the banking system.
But the worst are those that turn against their government and write the truth.
Privacy is terrorism.
Some assembly required.
I agree it is just as misleading to use partner to imply ONLY a personal relationship when the facts of the matter indicate that he was both a personal partner and a journalistic partner.
When traveling internationally, make backups. And don't take anything remotely incriminating - even if it means reformatting the laptop. Any data you need to work with, store online somewhere.
And if you really want to annoy those who seek to annoy you, take the family photo album and be happy knowing that some low-level agent is going to have to spend eight hours looking through the library of pictures of people standing around.
Apparently Snowden (and other heroes) had decided that any disappearing family members would trigger the tripwire that leads to releasing of insurance files. Since the journalist's spouse had suddenly gone missing (for 9 hours) and the police probably did not allow any phone calls to be made during interrogation,... Showden (and other heroes) then probably concluded they were under some kind of attack or that they were being tested. So Snowden (and other heroes) did what they had to do - what's the point of having an insurance policy that you would not use.
This is a chicken game. If many key wikileaks people would suddenly disappear, then Snowden (or other heroes) would probably release both encrypted insurance files and the encryption key to the smaller (49GB) insurance file. At least I hope that's what they are prepared to do. Then the NSA and GCHQ would probably have stopped the attack, at least for a moment, and considered the nature of payload data in the first insurance file. Based on that payload NSA might then choose to risk the release of the 349 GB file or they might stop their attack... maybe even for good. To prepare for the next attack phase Snowden (and other heroes) might again have split the remaining 349GB file into a 300GB and 49GB file - the small file being there again as a similar first response tool, but also the key to the nuclear option file (349GB) might also be released at any time.
Basically the NSA and GCHQ had to get this message.
This is so stupid, Snowden is obviously an American Patriot, who still isn't really seeking to harm his country... a country that is trying to harm him as much as it can. It is not very common that asylum seekers keep protecting the country that is doing all it can to harm the asylum seeker. Thus, the today's release of encrypted insurance files was probably just an expected reply to the earlier provocation by the NSA and GCHQ.
Being the 'partner' of a journalist does not entitle you to the normal freedoms of actually being a member of the press
No, but he's still entitled to the normal freedoms of being a fucking human being.
Papers, please.
Brought to you by the same people who entertained you with "Destroyed the Village to Save It" and "Fighting for Peace".
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
If that girl didn't want to get raped, she shouldn't have dressed so provocatively. What did she think was going to happen? SHE WAS ASKING FOR IT.
"David Miranda [...] was held for almost nine hours on Sunday by UK authorities [...] the maximum the law allows before officers must release or formally arrest the individual."
If direct, honest language were used, rather than euphemisms aimed at making the evil sound innocuous, the news report would say that Miranda was "abducted and held prisoner" for nine hours, not that he was merely "detained" or "held".
"Miranda was released without charge, but officials confiscated electronics including his mobile phone, laptop, camera, memory sticks, DVDs and games consoles."
In other words, after nine hours of intimidation, they robbed Miranda of several thousand dollars worth of his personal property.
It's clear who the criminals are here, who are the true menace to society.
Papers, please.
Brought to you by the same people who entertained you with "Destroyed the Village to Save It" and "Fighting for Peace"
... it hurts me every time people point out the truth of my country, and, it hurts me MORE when I realize that there is NOTHING I could do to change the situation
Indeed, my country is turning, from the best country in the world, into a terrifying state
My heart hurts, man, when I realize that, I, as an American, can't do shit to change the course of my own country
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Sure, holding Miranda for 5 hours smacks of intimidation, but I think what they were really after was the devices to see if he had the files. Then he could be charged with some malarkey like attempting to take national secrets to another country, and possible trump up some charge on his partner about transferring them or being an accessory. If he was carrying some sort of unencrypted backup of the data, that also lets the spook agencies have a shot at seeing how much is bluff, and how much Snowden really stole.
Silence is a state of mime.
Nonsense. Vote small (independent) and buy small (independent). Your actions won't count for much but if everyone does this ....money won't control politics regardless of the opinion of SCOTUS.
Sir, I do not know which world you live in, but the world which I am from, the scenario that you have outlined WILL NOT HAPPEN, not when the vast majority of my fellow Americans prefer keep their sheeple status
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
No, not "land of the free". This happened in the UK, not the US and so far we haven't been quite so out of touch with reality to call the UK the "land of the free" - that seems to be a peculiarly american delusion. That being said I really hope that there are some mitigating facts that will come to light because, as it stands now, it is extremely concerning to see such an obvious and open abuse of power. If they are wiling to do this in plain sight what are they willing to do (or already doing) behind the scenes?
"Do you want to see my papers?"
"No need, sir."
"But, I could be anyone!"
"No, you couldn't, sir."
even after you managed to grow yourself TEN THOUSAND PAIRS you still ain't gonna do no shit to the Government of the United States of America
they are so entrenched and they have EVERY PART of the system working for them
plus, even if the citizenry of the USA give a fuck, who are they going to vote for ?
i mean, what choice do they have in the polling station ?
vote Republicans ?
vote Democrats ?
vote alternative ? which alternative ??
Like old saying goes: Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely
Apparently he is a journalist but he is also a human being so he has human rights that stem from the fact that he is a human being.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Yes. Inasmuch as liberty can be divided into positive and negative freedoms, it's most useful to to think of the constitution as a guarantor of negative liberty.
See Positive and Negative Liberty for more details.
Not a bad theory, apart from the fact that Glenn Greenwald received a phone call - from a "security official at Heathrow airport.", only identified by his number 203654 - that
[his] partner, David Miranda, had been "detained" at the London airport "under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act of 2000."