Detaining my partner: a failed attempt at intimidation

The salient quote from Greenwald&#x27;s article on this:<p><i>They completely abused their own terrorism law for reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism: a potent reminder of how often governments lie when they claim that they need powers to stop &quot;the terrorists&quot;, and how dangerous it is to vest unchecked power with political officials in its name.</i> [1]<p>This is a great example of why we should treat terrorism like any other crime, and why the police should never be trusted with exceptional powers simply because we feel under threat. Give them the powers, and they will be misused - in this case they were used on a relative of someone nothing to do with terrorism purely for the purpose of intimidation. The security services even called Greenwald to give him the news that his partner had been detained.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/18/david-miranda-detained-uk-nsa" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;commentisfree&#x2F;2013&#x2F;aug&#x2F;18&#x2F;david-m...</a>

Greenwald just posted his own account:<p><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/18/david-miranda-detained-uk-nsa" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;commentisfree&#x2F;2013&#x2F;aug&#x2F;18&#x2F;david-m...</a><p><i>At 6:30 am this morning my time - 5:30 am on the East Coast of the US - I received a telephone call from someone who identified himself as a &quot;security official at Heathrow airport.&quot; He told me that my partner, David Miranda, had been &quot;detained&quot; at the London airport &quot;under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act of 2000.&quot;</i><p><i>David had spent the last week in Berlin, where he stayed with Laura Poitras, the US filmmaker who has worked with me extensively on the NSA stories. A Brazilian citizen, he was returning to our home in Rio de Janeiro this morning on British Airways, flying first to London and then on to Rio. When he arrived in London this morning, he was detained.</i><p><i>At the time the &quot;security official&quot; called me, David had been detained for 3 hours. The security official told me that they had the right to detain him for up to 9 hours in order to question him, at which point they could either arrest and charge him or ask a court to extend the question time. The official - who refused to give his name but would only identify himself by his number: 203654 - said David was not allowed to have a lawyer present, nor would they allow me to talk to him.</i><p><i>I immediately contacted the Guardian, which sent lawyers to the airport, as well various Brazilian officials I know. Within the hour, several senior Brazilian officials were engaged and expressing indignation over what was being done.</i>

Disgusting.<p>If I went out and suggested that the families of the politicians who did this should be kidnapped, held by force for hours without any contact with the outside world, and have all their possessions stolen, I&#x27;d be rightly condemned all around. Hell, even if I suggested one of the politicians who conceived this should be abducted by goons and abused for hours on end, I&#x27;d probably be indicted under some terrorist act or another.<p>And perhaps I should be: it&#x27;s a deep depravity what happened here, and I&#x27;m deeply ashamed it happens anywhere, let alone in the Western world. Soon we won&#x27;t be able to hold ourselves up as beacons of freedom to those in savage, barbaric places like China where all Internet usage is surveilled or Russia where you can be targeted for being gay or being a member of the press who has printed stories critical of the State.

About two or three years ago I was taken aside when boarding a plane at a London airport back to Belfast by a policeman and held under their terrorism legislation. Being heavily hungover from a night spent funding London&#x27;s publicans, and a little nervous about flying, I just wanted to board the plane and go home.<p>Nevertheless, I was questioned by the queue as others boarded the plane, casting nasty looks my way. The cop asked some pretty insulting, at times ignorant, questions. I guess to see if I harboured any anti-British&#x2F;anti-state&#x2F;anti-cop feelings. I got the impression if I lost my cool I&#x27;d be spending a lot longer in that airport.<p>I didn&#x27;t know my rights, that&#x27;s my fault. Nor did I want to escalate a situation where the odds were stacked against me. I did feel pretty disgusted though, given that I&#x27;d done nothing wrong. Even now I feel like I shouldn&#x27;t share this kind of thing online lest the wrong person read it. I found myself asking; why me? Was it something I said on Twitter or Facebook? Did I just look at him the wrong way without realising?<p>Luckily he let me go after some thorough questioning and the plane waited for me (although finding my seat was basically a walk of shame). They probably do this day and daily to all kinds of people. And most would never talk about it for fear of receiving worse down the line.

&gt; Miranda was then released without charge, but officials confiscated electronics equipment including his mobile phone, laptop, camera, memory sticks, DVDs and games consoles.<p>Thievery and intimidation are good indicators of who and what we&#x27;re dealing with.

As bad as things are in America vis-a-vis the surveillance state, I&#x27;ve always thought that England is actually worse. I guess it explains why they have such a rich history of dystopian thought. When I saw the &quot;Secure beneath the watchful eyes&quot; poster [1] I couldn&#x27;t believe it wasn&#x27;t satire.<p>[1] <a href="http://i.imgur.com/PS6c0IS.jpg" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;PS6c0IS.jpg</a>

&gt; The 28-year-old was held for nine hours, the maximum the law allows<p>What a flagrant abuse of power. It looks like their power should be reigned in.<p>The acts are fascism. The public would pay more attention if we refer to them as such.<p>* edits: wording. I have hard time being dispassionate about this.

I&#x27;m shocked that police actually have the power to hold you for nine hours, refuse you a lawyer and that you are not allowed to refuse to answer questioning.<p>Edit: shocked is probably the wrong word it&#x27;s hard to get surprised by this stuff anymore.

And one of the foot soldiers of the Powers That Be weighs in:<p>&quot;Glenn, Glenn - did you really think there&#x27;d be zero consequences for you and those close to you? I expected Ed to believe WL lies, but you?&quot;<p>- John Schindler (@20committee) August 18, 2013<p><a href="https://twitter.com/20committee/statuses/369169570298208257" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;20committee&#x2F;statuses&#x2F;369169570298208257</a>

This is crime. The people who authorized this should be put in jail and the officers present should at least be fired.<p>It should not be allowed that power is so easily abused, nor should written laws be so easily twisted without fear of consequence.<p>I believe a civil disruption of the airport specifically targeting the security apparatus would be an appropriate response.<p>To the cynics, yes, I am idealistic and, yes I&#x27;m pretty much just venting, but damn, this is just going too far. Suggestions for <i>constructive</i> frustration welcome.

As Greenwald&#x27;s response[0] suggests, it seems the only obvious way to cause any type of change (from small to moderate), seems to speak in terms of &#x27;mafia&#x27;, &#x27;fascism&#x27;, and &#x27;police state&#x27;.<p>Allow me to take John Stuart Mill out of context momentarily, because he was speaking with regard to Irish-English relationship (territory disputes between the two countries). But it summarises Mill&#x27;s thought on why radical and extreme thought is useful: it helps bring small to moderate change because it incites dialogue. Unfortunately, this seems to be where we are at now.<p>&quot;...I well knew that to propose something which would be called extreme was the true way not to impede but to facilitate a more moderate experiment. [...] To induce them to approve of any change it is necessary that they should look upon it as a middle course: they think every proposal extreme and violent unless they hear of some other proposal going still farther, upon which their antipathy to extreme views may discharge itself&quot;.[1]<p>[0] <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/18/david-miranda-detained-uk-nsa" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;commentisfree&#x2F;2013&#x2F;aug&#x2F;18&#x2F;david-m...</a><p>[1] Autiobiography. John Stuart Mill. Penguin Classics. p. 216.

HN is a smart bunch, so I&#x27;m going to ask:<p>Why do people think the security state is being rammed through with such a sense of urgency right now? Are they expecting something? A war? An economic crisis? Ecological meltdown? Invasion from outer space?<p>I ask because I get the impression that there is a top-down (from the executive branch) full-court-press on this, and that the gloves are coming off. That leads me to wonder if there&#x27;s something driving this, some sense of urgency.

I happened to be a fairly conservative high schooler after September 11th, living in NJ suburb. 9&#x2F;11 happened in my time there. I saw smoke from the city, not quite the buildings themselves, and classmates lossed parents. We were all militant after that, and someone needed to burn.<p>No matter how conservative my friends and I were, we saw not so long after those days Farenheit 9&#x2F;11, the then controversial 9&#x2F;11 documentary. No matter how hard-core Republican I was then (spending time in the Arab world later had me quickly outgrow that), I was appalled by the admission of lifer Congressman, scumbag Charles Rangel (NY - D) in his interview in the movie. He said no one he knew read the Patriot Act, not a single one, him included. No one would say no at the time to such legislation. Even as a sophomore I was appalled and said in the first real interest in non-partisan politics, we should have people removed for such incompetence.<p>As I said I was a sophomore then, and discovered subsequently how very sophmoric I was. Nothing is more self-serving than govt in crisis, in the alia acta est way. That was the beginning of my disbelief in my government, then all government more as each year passes. Fuck them all.

If you were one of those people who still -- after all this time -- says things like, &quot;it&#x27;s OK, [insert law] is only for acts of terrorism&quot;, now would be a good time to reconsider that.<p>Or issues of national security or state emergencies or...

I apologise for my country&#x27;s idiotic and rude behaviour. I will make sure that I vote for none of the political parties that currently run the country, nor the previous one, as none of them can be trusted.<p>Again, sorry. Our country is being run by fuckwits. We keep voting for different parties but it doesn&#x27;t seem to make a difference.... Hang on a sec....

So many countries have &quot;Detain first, something-something later&quot; policies that it&#x27;s easier to make a list of the ones who don&#x27;t. Like Japan, for example, allows suspects to be arrested and detained for 20+ days without being charge<p><a href="http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/japan-end-abusive-detention-system-after-murder-conviction-quashed-2012-11-07" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amnesty.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;news&#x2F;japan-end-abusive-detention-s...</a>

I guess Greenwald, his family and friends are now on terrorist watch list. I wonder how soon Guardian will be dubbed Terrorist Organization.<p>More and more, it appears western governments are following the policy of if you criticize us, you are terrorist.

This and the fact that Obama is constantly being caught in lies says to me that the U.S. government has no clue what information Edward Snowden has passed off to Greenwald.

I think it&#x27;s time we started talking of the &quot;English-speaking axis&quot; and its totalitarian tactics.

more of this : &quot;But the last thing it will do is intimidate or deter us in any way from doing our job as journalists. Quite the contrary: it will only embolden us more to continue to report aggressively.&quot;<p>less of this: &quot;ohh noo.. Should I write my opinion on the internet? What if the NSA is watching????! Will I be put on the...the. the list???&quot;

Just more evidence that the world is controlled by an oppressive totalitarian Govt that we&#x27;re effectively powerless to stop.<p>At least with these incidents we get to know which other countries are complicit and under the influence of the NSA.

&gt;The official - who refused to give his name but would only identify himself by his number: 203654<p>Yup, looks like we are officially living in some sort of Orwellian dystopia.

I&#x27;m curious exactly what you have to do in transit through the UK if detained and questioned. I&#x27;d presumably identify myself, and comply politely for a few minutes, but once it became pretty clear I was going to miss my flight, I&#x27;d want to know the various options. I have zero interest in being in the UK if in transit, so &quot;we&#x27;re going to send you back to Germany&quot; &quot;do it, then&quot; is fine. Or, &quot;you&#x27;re an asshole, we&#x27;re going to put you on the next flight to Brazil and never let you enter the UK&quot; is also fine. The risk would be that &quot;actively non-cooperative&quot; is a sign of &quot;is a terrorist&quot; and then you get the free flight to Cuba.<p>It seems obvious that a targeted person should travel with a lot of older&#x2F;disposable devices full of lightly encrypted but legal &quot;NSFL&quot; material, like medical&#x2F;battlefield&#x2F;surgery photos or, depending on the country, various types of legal porn. Or perhaps Slavoj Zizek books sans title information.

I find this so hard to deal with. There&#x27;s party of me screaming at the screen saying what is happening is so so so wrong more, but another part of me fears for my family. The fact I fear for my family feels like my head is above the parapet. The problem more than anything is that nobody around me seems to be that bothered about this. WTF do I do?

For me the most absurd thing is that all this erosion of peoples rights and several wars have been justified by the threat of terrorism. I&#x27;m not going to even bother finding some statistics to post right now but the actual threat of terrorism is vanishingly small. For example in 2012, more Americans died crushed by their TVs or furniture than from terrorism.<p><a href="http://filipspagnoli.wordpress.com/stats-on-human-rights/statistics-on-war-conflict/statistics-on-terrorism/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;filipspagnoli.wordpress.com&#x2F;stats-on-human-rights&#x2F;sta...</a>

I think this is a terrible mistake but I do wish he&#x27;d stop referring to himself as a journalist. He&#x27;s a political protagonist using his platform for change. Journalist&#x27;s don&#x27;t &quot;aggressively&quot; report on stories. It matters because GG is now so tightly integrated into this story that we need to view his comments not as those of an impartial reporter.<p>I doubt they think they can intimidate him. They probably are hoping they can get their hands on as yet unreleased docs to stop them being published. Either way it&#x27;s a real mistake.

As a U.S. citizen, I am more and more surprised that we aren&#x27;t subject to a world wide trade embargo... We&#x27;re as reliant on food grown in south&#x2F;central america as in our own country, or others are reliant on us. As for tech, if China&#x2F;Taiwan&#x2F;Japan closed off all sales, the public would show significant outrage.<p>I don&#x27;t think most people in this country will care until they can&#x27;t buy a new iPhone 6, or Galaxy S 5... What I am really surprised by is how many other countries have tolerated this so far.

Welcome to the UK<p>[1] <a href="https://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/human-rights/terrorism/overview-of-terrorism-legislation/index.php" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk&#x2F;human-rights&#x2F;terrori...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/policy/bill-tracker/past-bills/2012/protection-of-freedoms-bill-2011-12.php" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk&#x2F;policy&#x2F;bill-tracker&#x2F;...</a><p>I think I&#x27;ll buy the Guardian tomorrow...

Fox news has it now: <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/08/18/partner-nsa-leaks-journalist-held-for-hours/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.foxnews.com&#x2F;world&#x2F;2013&#x2F;08&#x2F;18&#x2F;partner-nsa-leaks-jo...</a>

I can&#x27;t think of any legitimate government questioning someone and not allowing an attorney to be present. This is really scary.

Someone left a Gandhi quote in the comments section on the Guardian... worth rewriting here I think:<p>&quot;First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.&quot; -Mahatma Gandhi

God, imagine if Russia had done this, and how the UK&#x2F;USA would have responded.<p>The UK&#x27;s credibility as a democracy is fading fast...

Shades of Joseph Wilson. There will be some serious fall out from this, I wonder what they were thinking when they pulled this stunt, Greenwald is not going to be intimidated.

The UK should be kicked out of the EU. Until they learn how to behave.

I will be writing to my MP about this disgraceful incident. I will be encouraging others to do the same. In fact I will door step them at their surgery and let them know that this is a line that&#x27;s been massively overstepped.

I stopped reading when he implied that the US was behind it. GB is a sovereign country, and still a democracy. If you don&#x27;t like the fascist laws people are voting for, stop voting for them. If you blame some outside party, you&#x27;re just passing the buck and making excuses why you can&#x27;t convince people to grow a spine and stop voting for the status quo -- &quot;oh, my people would never put up with this, but the big bad USA is forcing us to&quot;. If your politicians have signed you up to be the enforcers for a little mafia protection racket, maybe they shouldn&#x27;t be in office.

Disclaimer: This is largely speculative and WHOLLY me playing devil&#x27;s advocate. I do not condone this sort of behaviour by my government.<p>Could the case be made that journalists are legitimate targets for investigation following on from Manning and Snowdon? My focus here is less on terrorism and more towards counter-intelligence. Were I a rival nation-state I would see an intelligence-gathering opportunity in what&#x27;s happened: Rather than bribing&#x2F;coercing people into become informants, there is now the option to invite them to &#x27;blow the whistle&#x27; by posing as a journalist.

I don’t understand why this article so carefully avoids the word “spouse”. I had no idea what kind of partner David Miranda was – business, romantic, or marriage – for most of the article. The story only hinted at the meaning in the third-to-last paragraph, about “detaining the family members and loved ones of journalists”. Was this just bad editing, or does nobody talk about “business partners” any more?

They do it because they can and they learned that the public will scream for a few days and move on with their daily problems soon after.<p>It&#x27;s sad, very sad. I am pessimistic and I have an impression looking at how Obama and co. are lying without any consequences, what NSA has being doing and other recent examples, that we lost that war and we have no tools to fight against it.

Effing cheap intimidation pricks. One day it will come back to haunt them.

Does anyone have the original article link? There are several indications in the comments that it was changed by an HN editor.

Not really relevant, but I am greatly amused between the current relationship that we have with our security services and the situation that Terry Gilliam portrays in his excellent film: &quot;Brazil&quot;.<p>After all, when the security state starts to be driven by the profit motive, were we really so naive as to expect anything less?

Unlikely and perhaps wrong under most perspectives, but as soon as I read Greenwald&#x27;s account I thought &quot;shit, he&#x27;s caught the bait&quot;. The government and those detaining his man were wholly aware of what a shitstorm this would have caused. I would have LOVED to see the alternative scenario, where Greenwald tells Miranda &quot;Don&#x27;t tell anyone else.&quot;. The police wouldn&#x27;t and couldn&#x27;t speak publicly, no-one gets to know about the event, the political game of those who had this brilliant idea is now in pieces. The gov&#x27;s option at that point would have been to further escalate their offensive, exposing themselves even more. Instead what we got now is a lawful, yet badly-intentioned use of the law, which is grave, but likely insufficient to warrant &amp; spark any significant tectonic movements.

It seems to me that a good line to draw regarding overreach by the government is to determine who or what they&#x27;re efforts are protecting. Terrorism laws were sold to us as necessary to protect the people. More recently, it seems that the efforts of the government has been to protect itself FROM the people.

There&#x27;s no doubt &quot;terrorism&quot; laws are abused on a daily basis to intimidate and scare people into being good citizens, the question here is who in the chain of command and how far up the chain did the order get carried down from and why? This whole NSA, Prism stuff is getting out of hand. It&#x27;s not a nice feeling living in a world where Governments are spying on their citizens and those abroad in plain sight and knowing there is nothing anyone can do about it except go off the grid completely and well, it&#x27;s 2013, it&#x27;s not exactly easy to do that.<p>I can only hope that this incident is investigated further and that we get some solid answers from those in power about why David had been detained for the legally permitted time of 9 hours without charge.

I find awesome when this kind of thing happen, It makes pretty clear how the law is manipulated to protect those in power, the fear politics is obviously a strategy to intimidate and control the masses but fortunately, with this kind of abuses, it is becoming more and more apparently.

How long until the organizations that protect us meet the definition of terrorists themselves?

Pressure-intimidation tactic? Turn up the indignation up a few notches to make Greenwald trip and release more&#x2F;all NSA-related information in one go, instead of the slow drip-of-death that is making them look like liars with every denial they make.

The UK has a long history of abusing anti-terrorism laws. Just look at Northern Ireland.

I&#x27;d guess what they were looking for was any one of the leaked top-secret NSA documents on his laptop, the hard drive of which is being analyzed as we speak...<p>Had they found anything during the 9 hours, I&#x27;m afraid he wouldn&#x27;t be flying to Brazil - he would have been detained indefinitely as a &quot;terror&quot; suspect in order to intimidate Greenwald even more.

I was just saying on a post the other day how badly the government(s) are losing the PR battle. Quite amazing: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6223584" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=6223584</a>

so this is one side of the story. no one knows what happened during that questioning, why amd how it started and how his partner acted.<p>case in point, there was this guy who stripped naked at a TSA check a while back.<p>you yourself can easily trigger an incident like this and escalate it.<p>right now there is one side of the story, reported by a deeply involved, non-objective actor. if you ask a parent about what happened to their kid in school when it was expelled you&#x27;ll also get a very subjective, partisan take.<p>this &quot;discussion&quot; here smells of the reddit hivemind, quickly jumping to conclusion, throwing around terms like fascism and full of nerd bravado. nobody asks what really happened.

&quot;Those stopped have no automatic right to legal advice and it is a criminal offence to refuse to co-operate with questioning under schedule 7, which critics say is a curtailment of the right to silence.&quot;<p>Wait...What? HFSMFCSWTF!

Disgusting. But may I dare to suggest that in his case it was extremely naïve, if not outright deliberate, to choose an airport in the UK to change planes?

I know it is the British who detained Mr. Miranda, and not the US but Groucho Marx would have loved the setup.

That&#x27;s the last straw for me. From now on, my private communications are between me and my deceased cat.

Welcome to dystopia, friend. We have polonium-laden cookies, would you like some?

Does anyone else see the humor in his last name being &quot;Miranda&quot;?

So what do we do?

if a 82 year old nun is charged terrorism than why not journalists and who ever else that&#x27;s not convenient:<p><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/09/sister-megan-rice-sentencing_n_3246071.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.huffingtonpost.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;05&#x2F;09&#x2F;sister-megan-rice-s...</a><p>tomorrow this can be us just for posting the truth on the forum here folks! Wake up!