Sunday Not-So-Funnies
The police at Heathrow decided to play ‘silly buggers’ with David Miranda, Glenn Greenwald’s partner, as he was changing planes during a trip from Berlin to Rio de Janeiro. They detained him for 9 hours and confiscated all of his electronics under Schedule 7 of the UK 2000 Terrorism Law. That Schedule gives the police the right to detain anyone they feel like annoying for 9 hours without any access to a lawyer or their country’s embassy, and the person detained is required to answer all questions or be arrested for obstructing an investigation.
Greenwald responded to what he felt was an obvious attempt at intimidation by telling US-UK authorities to stick it where the sun doesn’t shine, because he’s angry, not afraid. He noted that even the Mafia exempted family members when they were going after someone.
Also angry are Brazilian authorities for the treatment of a Brazilian citizen by UK authorities. Based on the past responses of Brazil to actions taken by the US, I would recommend that UK citizens who are planning to go to or through Brazil to arrive 10 hours early for their flights.
South America was more than annoyed after what happened to Evo Morales, so this was a really stupid thing to do.
Jeff Jarvis writes about The White House credibility deficit, but I think it covers the UK as well – people no longer believe anything said by their officials, especially on the topic of terrorism, so access to officials is of no use to journalists.
4 comments
My guess is that the UK press is not going to be happy with a fellow journalist getting The Treatment either. And the UK press is a much more vicious lot than the rather lazy and complacent U.S. press, even with the UK’s draconian libel laws (which they know how to work around). On the other hand, Miranda is a wog. So who knows.
The BBC has already had an interview with the head of the appropriate Parliamentary committee and basically wanted to know WTF with taking all of the electronics from the partner of a journalist, especially since the Guardian reporting has nothing to do with terrorism.
The MP mumbled along saying things along the lines of ‘well, if they are going to be using terrorism laws for things other than terrorism, we need to know’.
This law was passed in 2000, not in reaction to 9/11, and certainly didn’t seem to prevent or predict the 7/7/2005 attack on London. Actually, none of the new terrorism legislation seems to be having much effect on the terrorists, only on the rest of us.
The sh*t is really hitting the fan now. I did a Google News search for “David Miranda” and of the first hundred or so news stories that popped up, only one by the Wall Street Journal basically defended the UK government. Of the rest, even the most staid and conservative papers seem appalled. There’s a saying, “never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel”. Perhaps the same should be said of electrons by the gigabyte in today’s Internet-connected world :).
Oh, BTW, the detention wasn’t even in accordance with EU human rights laws, which don’t allow governments to arbitrarily detain people unless said people are suspected of committing a crime. Journalism is not a crime. Just sayin’.
That detention came as a shock to MPs of all parties, so Question Time should be an interesting show this week. The world media don’t like it when it happens anywhere, but having it happen in the UK is really making them nervous. Miranda probably did have something on those thumb drives, but we both know that ‘Lady Paranoia’ encrypted it, so it will be a very long time before GCHQ finds out what it is.
This is going to mean more air traffic through other countries, and people will change the way they collaborate. It is going to get very expensive for the companies that have been cooperating with the US.