High Court Rules Detention of David Miranda Was Lawful

Alain Williams writes with news that last year's detention of David Miranda and seizure of files destined for Glenn Greenwald has been ruled lawful. From the article: "The nine-hour detention ... of an ex-Guardian journalist's partner has been ruled lawful. ... At the High Court, Mr Miranda claimed his detention under anti-terrorism laws was unlawful and breached human rights. But judges said it was a 'proportionate measure in the circumstances' and in the interests of national security. ... In his ruling, Lord Justice Laws said: 'The claimant was not a journalist; the stolen GCHQ intelligence material he was carrying was not "journalistic material," or if it was, only in the weakest sense.'" Naturally, an appeal is planned.

Comments

Of course it's "lawful"

[fustakrakich]

To paraphrase, when the government does it, it's not illegal. It would be absurd to expect any other outcome.

Re:Of course it's "lawful"

[cardpuncher]

It has been a tradition in the UK for courts to refuse to intervene in executive decisions made on "security" grounds, with the justification that as the courts have no access to classified materials, they can't come to a judgment about whether the decision was properly made.

The rather notorious judge Lord Denning summed this up quite nicely in his decision supporting the deporation from the UK of US journalist Mark Hosenball for daring to mention the existence of GCHQ in an article for Time Out magazine:

They [the executive] have never interfered with the liberty or the freedom of movement of any individual except where it is absolutely necessary for the safety of the state. In this case we are assured that the Home Secretary himself gave it his personal consideration, and I have no reason whatever to doubt the care with which he considered the whole matter. He is answerable to Parliament as to the way in which he did it and not to the courts here.

The extent of his cognitive dissonance can be seen from his prefacing remarks:

In some parts of the world national security has on occasions been used as an excuse for all sorts of infringements of individual liberty. But not in England.

In other words, Denning (and two other judges on the bench concurred) was simulaneously of the opinion that every judgment the government had ever made in the past in curtailing liberty was justified; that the Home Secretary was above challenge in a court of law; and that England was a bastion of individual liberty.

With judges like that, courts are essentially redundant.

Incidentally, in a judgment on an attempt by the Birmingham Six (whose convictions as IRA bombers were finally quashed) to sue the police for beatings they received before finally confessing, Denning said:

If the six men win, it will mean . . . that the convictions were erronoeous. That would mean that the Home Secretary would either have to recommend they be pardoned or he would have to remit the case to the Court of Appeal . . . This is such an appalling vista that every sensible person in the land would say it cannot be right that these actions should go any further.

So, don't look to the law if you want justice.