Thee is a diary on the reclist claiming that the UK government was correct to hold Glenn Greenwalds partner David Miranda. Miranda may have been carrying a thumbdrive with documents related to Edward Snowden. Diary This completely misses the point. Had the UK government detained Miranda claiming that the documents he was carrying somehow violated UK law, that would be within the law. Maybe not what we would like to see but it would be legal. Instead, Miranda was detained under and anti-terrorism statute. http://www.theguardian.com/...
In what world is carrying documents for a journalist an act of terrorism? This is the same is detaining somebody for drug smuggling (when you know that they are not smuggling drugs) so thatyou can search their luggage for evidence that they are a tax cheat. The crime Miranda was stopped for (terrorism) has nothing to do with what he was actually doing. Actually, I take that back. It seems that in the mind of some helping to question the US government in the press is a terroristic activity. God forbid we have a well informed debate about what our government is getting up to.
By all indications this is not something Greenwald setup. If you heard that your spouse was being detained in a foreign country for terrorism, wouldn't your first reaction be to worry?
What should concern us is the total incompetence showed by US and UK governments. Not only did they create yet another PR mess, it seems Julian Assange has uploaded all the Snowden files as a result of Miranda's arrest. I suspect that will cut down on the number of USB drives that need to be passed back and forth. Like the Morales flight, this seems like another instance of the NSA/GCHQ causing an uncontrolled escalation. Now that all of the documents are out there, they have to pray no foreign government is able to ge their hands on the encryption keys. Once again we are far less secure because out intellignece agencies took action than we would have been if they had done nothing.