4 ms·

I'm not sure that is a material change in circumstance. If it was actual terrorist materials that he was carrying, or drugs/whatever, the relevant UK law would

by Ntrails 13y ago

I'm not sure that is a material change in circumstance. If it was actual terrorist materials that he was carrying, or drugs/whatever, the relevant UK law would have applied in the same way. You are attempting to board a plane in the UK, and the same tests apply to a simple change of flight as they do to passenger flying from the UK. Out of interest, if he had in fact stolen them from the UK (in the same way Snowdon did) would you object to his being stopped? What if it were Snowdon himself on his way to Russia? I think the only argument I can see is that after the leak the documents should have been declassified? Since they were in the public domain. Sort of. I can't get a copy of them though so I don't see that being totally applicable.

andyjohnson0 13y ago
I was commenting on the misleading wording of cmdkeen's comment, not disputing the legal basis under which Miranda was detained. But since you asked... "You are attempting to board a plane in the UK, and the same tests apply to a simple change of flight as they do to passenger flying from the UK." Agreed. Transit passengers are subject to UK law. An important issue, though, is whether Miranda had actually committed any offence in UK law. Since he was ultimately released, it seems reasonable to assume that the police felt they couldn't establish that he had. Nevertheless, the judges in the present case found that the detention was a lawful means for the police to try to determine whether an offence had been committed. This seems reasonable to me, even though I'm sympathetic towards what Snowden/Greenwald/Miranda/Poitras have done to date. "Out of interest, if he had in fact stolen them from the UK (in the same way Snowdon did) would you object to his being stopped? What if it were Snowdon himself on his way to Russia?" First question: No, I wouldn't object. He could have committed a crime, even though I might argue that it was in the public interest. Second question: Depends on whether a crime had been committed by Snowden in the UK (unlikely, imo), or whether the UK had accepted a US warrant for his arrest (which they almost certainly would). Declassifying the documents just because they had been leaked would be absurd.
- Ntrails 13y ago
  "Depends on whether a crime had been committed by Snowden in the UK (unlikely, imo), or whether the UK had accepted a US warrant for his arrest (which they almost certainly would)" I don't know if he was carrying the documents when he left, if so the same offence as Miranda. Declassifying the documents just because they had been leaked would be absurd. Yes, but to me it seems just as absurd to have openly available documents classified.
  - andyjohnson0 13y ago
    "the same offence as Miranda" Miranda didn't commit an offence in the UK. He was released without being charged with anything. Today's judgement was about whether it was lawful to detain him under counter-terrorism laws.
    - Ntrails 13y ago
      Sorry, yes, casual with language. Would have had the same reason for detaining, I guess is what I meant.
      - Zigurd 13y ago
        You may want to read why he was detained. It only emphasizes that the detention was bogus from the beginning. It was harassment, and the harassers should be punished.
- mpyne 13y ago
  > I was commenting on the misleading wording of cmdkeen's comment That's just it though; it wasn't even misleading. They were: - Materials relevant to UK national security. - Materials present in a UK airport. - Materials about to be sent (w/ Miranda) across UK borders. Those were the material facts of the day Miranda was detained. 'cmdkeen wasn't being "misleading" by not including the months of actions that led to Miranda being there with those documents on that day, because they really are irrelevant to the point he was talking about. If Miranda should not have been stopped because of press freedoms or whatever, then that would have been just as true if Miranda had been personally handled the documents by a GCHQ mole that morning, as if he'd obtained them in Brazil weeks earlier from Greenwald.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- logfromblammo 13y ago
  It would be prudent to automatically declassify anything published by any newspaper, though. I think the reason why they don't is because that would be an admission that the documents leaked were actually true copies of real classified materials. But then they as much as admit that the leak is real by pulling crap like this. It would be far more effective these days to simply claim that the leak was all honeypot disinformation, deny that it has any relation to real classified data, and imply that the leaker was flagged as an insider threat from the beginning. When you arrest a journalist at the airport and hold him for hours, people might start to think said journalist is on to something. The smart thing to do would be to arrest him, make a show of searching him, and quickly send him on his way without seizing anything, and then tell anyone who asks: "After a thorough search of the documents in his possession, no actual state secrets were found. Materials purporting to be classified as Top Secret were found, upon further investigation, to be decoys used by the US government to reveal its insider threats. Mister Snowden stole a lot of documents and gave them to the press, but if any of them were the real thing, we haven't seen them yet." Between this, and destroying hard drives with angle grinders, they just look like Keystone Kops.
logfromblammo 13y ago
As the documents were produced by the government, they are unequivocally in the public domain. You can't be called out for copying them under copyright law. There is, however, the other pile of laws governing the handling of classified documents. In the US, the system is stupid enough that once The Guardian has published a Top Secret document to the entire world, and someone visits their website with a non-classified computer, the security guys go just as crazy trying to clean up the leak from the affected machine as they would with a top secret file that somehow made it onto that machine from the secure network. To avoid this, the network guys add the Guardian website to the web filter rules. As a result, the only people in the world not allowed to read about the leak are the people cleared by the government as trustworthy enough to keep its secrets. Irony. The system really is that stupid. It always has been. The problem now is that the humans running the system have lost the ability to act in a manner most other people would consider reasonable. They stopped and searched someone at the airport who was carrying contraband information, after all.
- timthorn 13y ago
  Documents produced by the government in the UK are protected by Crown Copyright and are emphatically not as a matter of course in the Public Domain.
  - logfromblammo 13y ago
    Perhaps the UK could sue the US for copyright violations, then? The leaked stuff was originally copied from a US facility.
- rmc 13y ago
  As the documents were produced by the government, they are unequivocally in the public domain. You can't be called out for copying them under copyright law. One of the nicest things about the US copyright system is the rule that things produced by the US government are in the public domain. That is very much not the case in all countries. In the UK, the government does own the copyright on the things they produce, and they commercially sell it. OpenStreetMap started in the UK because the government produced maps (by the Ordenance Survey) were very heavily copyrighted.
jnbiche 13y ago
It's Snowden, not Snowdon. At least spell the man's name properly.

by Ntrails 13y ago

andyjohnson0 13y ago

I was commenting on the misleading wording of cmdkeen's comment, not disputing the legal basis under which Miranda was detained. But since you asked... "You are attempting to board a plane in the UK, and the same tests apply to a simple change of flight as they do to passenger flying from the UK." Agreed. Transit passengers are subject to UK law. An important issue, though, is whether Miranda had actually committed any offence in UK law. Since he was ultimately released, it seems reasonable to assume that the police felt they couldn't establish that he had. Nevertheless, the judges in the present case found that the detention was a lawful means for the police to try to determine whether an offence had been committed. This seems reasonable to me, even though I'm sympathetic towards what Snowden/Greenwald/Miranda/Poitras have done to date. "Out of interest, if he had in fact stolen them from the UK (in the same way Snowdon did) would you object to his being stopped? What if it were Snowdon himself on his way to Russia?" First question: No, I wouldn't object. He could have committed a crime, even though I might argue that it was in the public interest. Second question: Depends on whether a crime had been committed by Snowden in the UK (unlikely, imo), or whether the UK had accepted a US warrant for his arrest (which they almost certainly would). Declassifying the documents just because they had been leaked would be absurd.

Ntrails 13y ago
"Depends on whether a crime had been committed by Snowden in the UK (unlikely, imo), or whether the UK had accepted a US warrant for his arrest (which they almost certainly would)" I don't know if he was carrying the documents when he left, if so the same offence as Miranda. Declassifying the documents just because they had been leaked would be absurd. Yes, but to me it seems just as absurd to have openly available documents classified.
- andyjohnson0 13y ago
  "the same offence as Miranda" Miranda didn't commit an offence in the UK. He was released without being charged with anything. Today's judgement was about whether it was lawful to detain him under counter-terrorism laws.
  - Ntrails 13y ago
    Sorry, yes, casual with language. Would have had the same reason for detaining, I guess is what I meant.
    - Zigurd 13y ago
      You may want to read why he was detained. It only emphasizes that the detention was bogus from the beginning. It was harassment, and the harassers should be punished.
mpyne 13y ago
> I was commenting on the misleading wording of cmdkeen's comment That's just it though; it wasn't even misleading. They were: - Materials relevant to UK national security. - Materials present in a UK airport. - Materials about to be sent (w/ Miranda) across UK borders. Those were the material facts of the day Miranda was detained. 'cmdkeen wasn't being "misleading" by not including the months of actions that led to Miranda being there with those documents on that day, because they really are irrelevant to the point he was talking about. If Miranda should not have been stopped because of press freedoms or whatever, then that would have been just as true if Miranda had been personally handled the documents by a GCHQ mole that morning, as if he'd obtained them in Brazil weeks earlier from Greenwald.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
logfromblammo 13y ago
It would be prudent to automatically declassify anything published by any newspaper, though. I think the reason why they don't is because that would be an admission that the documents leaked were actually true copies of real classified materials. But then they as much as admit that the leak is real by pulling crap like this. It would be far more effective these days to simply claim that the leak was all honeypot disinformation, deny that it has any relation to real classified data, and imply that the leaker was flagged as an insider threat from the beginning. When you arrest a journalist at the airport and hold him for hours, people might start to think said journalist is on to something. The smart thing to do would be to arrest him, make a show of searching him, and quickly send him on his way without seizing anything, and then tell anyone who asks: "After a thorough search of the documents in his possession, no actual state secrets were found. Materials purporting to be classified as Top Secret were found, upon further investigation, to be decoys used by the US government to reveal its insider threats. Mister Snowden stole a lot of documents and gave them to the press, but if any of them were the real thing, we haven't seen them yet." Between this, and destroying hard drives with angle grinders, they just look like Keystone Kops.

logfromblammo 13y ago

As the documents were produced by the government, they are unequivocally in the public domain. You can't be called out for copying them under copyright law. There is, however, the other pile of laws governing the handling of classified documents. In the US, the system is stupid enough that once The Guardian has published a Top Secret document to the entire world, and someone visits their website with a non-classified computer, the security guys go just as crazy trying to clean up the leak from the affected machine as they would with a top secret file that somehow made it onto that machine from the secure network. To avoid this, the network guys add the Guardian website to the web filter rules. As a result, the only people in the world not allowed to read about the leak are the people cleared by the government as trustworthy enough to keep its secrets. Irony. The system really is that stupid. It always has been. The problem now is that the humans running the system have lost the ability to act in a manner most other people would consider reasonable. They stopped and searched someone at the airport who was carrying contraband information, after all.

timthorn 13y ago
Documents produced by the government in the UK are protected by Crown Copyright and are emphatically not as a matter of course in the Public Domain.
- logfromblammo 13y ago
  Perhaps the UK could sue the US for copyright violations, then? The leaked stuff was originally copied from a US facility.
rmc 13y ago
As the documents were produced by the government, they are unequivocally in the public domain. You can't be called out for copying them under copyright law. One of the nicest things about the US copyright system is the rule that things produced by the US government are in the public domain. That is very much not the case in all countries. In the UK, the government does own the copyright on the things they produce, and they commercially sell it. OpenStreetMap started in the UK because the government produced maps (by the Ordenance Survey) were very heavily copyrighted.

jnbiche 13y ago

It's Snowden, not Snowdon. At least spell the man's name properly.