10 ms·
UK Court: David Miranda Detention Legal Under Terrorism Law
- mavdi 13y agoChips are down. Western nations have realised democracy is expensive. Instead of China turning more democratic, to compete, they have turned into China.
- k-mcgrady 13y ago>> "According to documents made public during Miranda’s civil suit, police determined that he was subject to the anti-terror law because he was[...] promoting a “political or ideological cause.”" I understand they had other 'terrorism' related reasons for detaining him (which I don't agree with), but the fact that someone can be detained simply for promoting a political or ideological cause is a disgrace. I'm sure it's there to stop extremist preachers but it's way to broad and sounds like it could be used to stop a hell of a lot of non-terrorists.
- spindritf 13y agoSo harassing and silencing "extremist" preachers would be... fine? Is this OK? A Christian street preacher was arrested and locked in a cell for telling a passer-by that homosexuality is a sin in the eyes of God.[1] Is the law too broad only when it hits someone whose cause you care about? And how do we decide which opinions are "extremist" or may serve as justification for detention? Hey, maybe we could have courts rule on that. [1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/7668448/Christian-preacher-arrested-for-saying-homosexuality-is-a-sin.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/7668448/Christian-p...
- k-mcgrady 13y agoSorry, my point wasn't that I thought it was ok if used to silence certain people. It was that they have a reason that a lot of people would not object to. Hate speech isn't allowed in the UK (people have been locked up for racist tweets).
- blueskin_ 13y ago>A Christian street preacher was arrested and locked in a cell for telling a passer-by that homosexuality is a sin in the eyes of God.[1] Sounds fine to me.
- andyjohnson0 13y agoAccording to the article you cited, he was arrested for causing "harassment, alarm or distress" to a passer-by, who complained to a nearby police officer. He wasn't arrested for simply stating an opinion.
- girvo 13y agoHave you ever been arrested? The charges you end up with often have little to do with reality. I despise people like the one we are discussing, but your post isn't convincing evidence that he was doing more, to be honest.
- coldtea 13y agoCan the citing be any more vague? Anybody could claim "distress, harassment or alarm" -- just because he doesn't like what you're telling him.
- alephnil 13y agoPromoting a political or ideological cause is the corner stone of exercising democratic rights if it is not done by violent means. If that is a reason for detention, then you are no longer in a democracy.
- pera 13y agoActually I think this could be a good thing: we could put every politician in jail
- vidarh 13y agoThey would presumably present in their defence that they don't care about ideology or any political cause at all, but is just in it for the money and power.
- andyjohnson0 13y agoAccording to the cited Telegraph article, he was arrested for causing "harassment, alarm or distress" to a passer-by, who complained to a nearby police officer. He wasn't arrested for simply stating an opinion.
- Zigurd 13y agoWas that "passer-by" ever identified?
- hahainternet 13y agoWhy would they be? You have a right to privately report something to a police officer.
- Zigurd 13y agoWhy wouldn't you be able to subpoena a witness?
- 13y ago
- pgeorgi 13y agoThat applies to every politician (bringing home a kitchen knife set from the store, if the "dangerous material" part of the statement is significant).
- timthorn 13y agoYou snipped a quite important part there: > ...knowingly carrying material, the release of which would endanger people’s lives”...
- k-mcgrady 13y agoIt seemed to me that that was a separate reason. It reads as though you can be detained for "knowingly carrying material, the release of which would endanger people’s lives" OR promoting a political ideology and that you didn't have to satisfy both criteria.
- Anderkent 13y agoThe 'political or ideological cause' qualification has come up before, in relation to british people fighting in syria: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/10/orwell-hero-terrorism-syria-british-fighters-damned http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/10/orwell-...
- f_salmon 13y ago> David Miranda Detention Legal Under Terrorism Law Nowadays, everything is "terrorism". It's funny, because before Bush, nobody knew that word. Nobody ever talked about such a thing. It was something that was talked about maybe once in every 5 years. Nowadays, you can't read the news 1 single day without something being labeled "terrorism". Yesterday, it was the Ukrainian gov't calling the people in the tents "terrorists". It's become really easy to strike people down.
- hahainternet 13y ago> Nowadays, everything is "terrorism". It's funny, because before Bush, nobody knew that word. Nobody ever talked about such a thing Are you shitting me? Do you perhaps not realise the UK was bombed by the IRA for many many years? That 5 letter bombs were sent only the other week? Oh right, Americans didn't talk about terrorism, therefore it didn't exist. Gotcha.
- d0 13y agoActually as a resident of the UK, it was a "meh" thing. The word terrorist was still an extreme word used in rare circumstances even back in the height of the bombings. And no one really actually cared about it that much. Now it's a label for every crime. "The defendant is a terrorist unit proven otherwise".
- vidarh 13y agoI loved to London in 2000. I just realised today that there were at least 5 bombings and one rocket propelled grenade fired at Mi6 headquarters in the two first years I lived here - I only remember two (the car bomb outside BBC offices and the Ealing bomb where they'd phoned in a misleading warning naming a street that doesn't exist). The rest apparently got so little media attention that I either didn't notice them or have forgotten all about it. Of course that was well past the peak of the bombings, but it seems like a good illustration of how much of a "meh" thing it actually was.
- gadders 13y ago
- d0 13y agoMy father, an East German now living in the UK, was saying the other day that he sees parallels between the rise of the Stasi in the 1950's onwards and the UK government's behaviour over the last two decades. I'm inclined to believe him. The legal system was pretty much the first thing to fall there as well as the criminalisation of literally everything. We have so much legislation now that deals with criminalising people that people don't have a chance if they get in trouble even for something trivial.
- cmdkeen 13y agoThere's a difference between "seeing parallels" and the UK being anywhere close to East Germany. Miranda was carrying classified files relating to UK intelligence gathering out of the country. You would have been stopped at the border for that at any point in the last 100 years. Almost any country in the world would do that. I would question how many would then have a court system of the calibre of England and Wales' to allow the individual to appeal against it. The courts have repeatedly struck down bits of government anti-terror legislation, S44 being the most notorious.
- antr 13y agoI don't think he/she is referring to Miranda, but GCHQ's arbitrary espionage on citizens, interception of communications, etc., borderline legal, if not illegal. Although the Miranda detention is the story here, the real story is the NSA/GCHQ massive surveillance revelation.
- d0 13y agoFor the moment... Agree with your middle point however there are other laws in which he could have been stopped under which relate directly to the crime. Terrorism laws were picked selectively because they can hold suspects longer. This is the problem - everything looks like a target when a gun is handed to powerful people. This power was no accident either. The courts are inconsistent in general. There is no law of the land any more -- it's down to the prosecutor's opinion unless it is trial by Jury. Consider the post-riot sentencing system that appeared to process suspects overnight without a fair trial. Many people were issued criminal charges and a prison term for civil issues that would have usually resulted in a fine or community service.
- einhverfr 13y agoTo be honest though, the UK has been beyond laughable for a few years on this now. During the great Icelandic banking crisis, the UK government used anti-terrorism laws to seize assets held by Icelandic banks. I quipped at the time that maybe they were worried about the assets being used to buy lumber for longships from Norway and wealthy bankers going a-Viking again. They might furthermore give the folks up in Orkney ideas and what then? Lose Caithness and Sutherland? That's an existential threat there.... If it was legal to use anti-terrorism laws in that case against a foreign entity far removed from any real terrorist activity (moreso than, say, the British-owned HSBC), then it is hard to see how antiterrorism laws wouldn't be perfectly legal here or anywhere else. Maybe they can start arresting people for drinking tea suspiciously.
- celticninja 13y agoAnt-terrorism laws have been used by local councils to spy on parents to make sure they lived at addresses they say they lived at for the purpose of primary school (5-10years of age) applications. Anti-terror laws have been used way beyond their original intentions for a long time in the UK. In this case the original proponent of the legislation has come out and said excactly that. Will it change anything? Nope.
- cmdkeen 13y agoThere's been a change since the late 90s away from practising barristers being MPs. It used to be that barristers would be in court in the morning, see problems with legislation, and go to Westminster in the afternoon to fix them. Now of course the media, and parties that never had many barristers in them, demand MPs work "full time" - which means there is far less legal expertise available in drafting and scrutinising legislation. That's why things like the Terrorism Act happen. The name gets politicians to vote for it, but the contents is overlooked and full of powers that are not scoped to terrorism investigations.
- matthewmacleod 13y agoI dispute that RIPA is actually an "anti-terror" law in any way aside from popular description.
- moron4hire 13y agoOh, well if it was legal, then it's all okay, right? I mean, of course the law is always right. The law is always right, right? Right?! Oh god, the world is coming apart at the seams.
- JulianMorrison 13y agoColour me unsurprised - the courts have long shown that if political embarrassment is an issue, they are completely supine.
- rmc 13y agothe UK has historically been an outlier when it comes to both press freedoms and anti-terror policies. Yup. Don't forget Northern Ireland. They went heavy handed there. Did it work? Nope.
- blibble 13y agodid I miss something or is Northern Ireland still part of the Union?
- iamwithnail 13y agoNo, but there was a prolonged dirty war by the security services against the republicans, including collusion with murderers and terrorists on the 'loyalist' side.
- rmc 13y agoNorthern Ireland is still part of the UK. I meant that the heavy handed approach didn't work, and was abandoned by the UK Gov (and the IRA et al.). Instead all sides sat down at the table and came to a (more) peaceful solution.
- xbadxapple 13y agoHeavy handed approach is seldom adequate, especially in situations with separatist sentiment. Retribution is an invisible and hard-hitting enemy in the long run, and going all guns blazing is a guarantee to breed one.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- ris 13y agoWell, this is pretty good proof that the "terrorism law" is wrongly formulated then, isn't it?
- lotsofmangos 13y agoWe have form on this. We also used terror laws against the Icelandic government during the banking crash - http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aXjIA5NzyM5c http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aXjIA...
- andyjohnson0 13y agoThe full text of the judgement is at [1]. An interesting read. Apart from the political and human-rights implications, what I find most interesting is how the police knew what Miranda was actually carrying. Paragraph 11 of the judgement quotes a police document (written before Minranda was stopped) justifying his detention: "We strongly assess that MIRANDA is carrying items which will assist in GREENWALD releasing more of the NSA and GCHQ material we judge to be in GREENWALD’s possession. Open source research details the relationship between POITRAS, GREENWALD and SNOWDEN which corroborates our assessment as to the likelihood that GREENWALD has access to the protectively marked material SNOWDEN possesses. Our main objectives against David MIRANDA are to understand the nature of any material he is carrying, mitigate the risks to national security that this material poses..." Which reads like supposition to me. Based on open source research? Please. Later, in paragraph 13: "The claimant’s hand luggage was examined, and items retained which as I have said included encrypted storage devices. Mr Oliver Robbins, Deputy National Security Adviser for Intelligence, Security and Resilience in the Cabinet Office, indicates in his first witness statement (paragraph 6) that the encrypted data contained in the external hard drive taken from the claimant contains approximately 58,000 highly classified UK intelligence documents." Which is a very definite statement. Either it's based on guesswork, in which case the best that could be said is that it is merely an opinion, or else they broke the encryption (TrueCrypt?). I can't find anything in the facts section of the judgement to indicate that Miranda disclosed what he was carrying, or surrendered passwords. [1] http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/Resources/JCO/Documents/Judgments/miranda-v-sofshd.pdf http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/Resources/JCO/Documents/Judgment... [PDF]
- orblivion 13y agoDoes anybody know why they didn't just use PGP over the internet like Snowden supposedly did? He could have been caught holding onto a piece of paper with a 40 character fingerprint instead.
- atmosx 13y agoAre we sure that there were actual documents there? I thought that the UK authorities were under the impression that he might have GQHC (or whatever it is called) documents on his laptop.
- GotAnyMegadeth 13y agoGCHQ. It was only a Google away...
- chrisreichel 13y agoBasically the anti-terrorism laws are the contemporary inquisition. You can use for anything in order to obtain any outcome.
- skywhopper 13y agoWhat depresses me is the court's acceptance that this involved "'very pressing' issues of national security". The US courts are also far too cowed by executive assertions of "national security". As if there were a clear, bright line of demarcation between everyday ho-hum government data and secrets so critical that their revelation poses an existential danger to civilization itself. In fact, none of the data released by Snowden is a danger to national security in any sense. The identity of spies has not been released. No passcodes to nuclear weapons have been revealed. The courts ought to take responsibility to assess the legitimacy of executive privilege claims and make judgments based on the actual content being protected. But for whatever reason, they are afraid to do so.
- timthorn 13y agoThat the identity of spies has not been released does not mean that that information was not in the files carried by Miranda.