Glenn Greenwald speaks out

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Re: Glenn Greenwald speaks out

Postby coffin_dodger » Mon Aug 19, 2013 11:37 am

"I am going to write my stories a lot more aggressively now," the Guardian reporter told Brazil's Globo TV on Monday in Rio de Janeiro.

"I am going to publish many more documents now. I am going to publish a lot about England, too, I have a lot of documents about the espionage system in England. Now my focus is going to be that as well."


:thumbsup about time we got more dirt on the maniacs in the UK. This statement does make me worry for his safety, though.
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Re: Glenn Greenwald speaks out

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Mon Aug 19, 2013 11:38 am

justdrew » Mon Aug 19, 2013 2:44 am wrote:Emory's probably over-reacting.


And Cheney is probably up to something.
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Re: Glenn Greenwald speaks out

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Aug 19, 2013 1:23 pm

Greenwald: Brazil’s Intervention Likely Kept Partner from Being Charged Under UK Terrorism Law
By: Kevin Gosztola Sunday August 18, 2013 8:02 pm

Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald (Creative Commons-licensed Photo by Gage Skidmore)

(update below)

The partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald was detained by United Kingdom authorities at Heathrow Airport for nine hours, the maximum period under a provision of a terrorism law in the country. His partner had “electronics equipment including his mobile phone, laptop, camera, memory sticks, DVDs and games consoles” confiscated.

Greenwald has been reporting stories containing information on top secret surveillance programs. He obtained the information from former National Security Agency contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden, who has successfully obtained a year of temporary asylum in Russia.

“David is smart and strong,” Greenwald told Firedoglake. “But still, it was scary: Guardian lawyers were speculating all day that given how much time he was held – which is very rare – he’d possibly be arrested under a terrorism statute.”

“It’s speculation, but I think the only reason that didn’t happen was because Brazilian government at high levels intervened so aggressively and angrily,” Greenwald added.

The story of his partner being held in detention has become the biggest story in Brazil, according to Greenwald.

The Guardian reported, “David Miranda, who lives with Glenn Greenwald, was returning from a trip to Berlin when he was stopped by officers at 8.05am and informed that he was to be questioned under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000. The controversial law, which applies only at airports, ports and border areas, allows officers to stop, search, question and detain individuals.”

Statistically, “most examinations under schedule 7 – over 97% – last under an hour, and only one in 2,000 people detained are kept for more than six hours.”

Miranda was visiting Laura Poitras, “the US filmmaker who has also been working on the Snowden files with Greenwald and the Guardian. The Guardian paid for Miranda’s flights.”

Since there is no way any official in government could defensibly argue Miranda had any connection to any terrorists or was involved in any terrorist activities, presumably, the authorities intended to use the terrorism law to intercept whatever files might have been loaded on to the electronic devices while he was in Berlin meeting with Poitras—a clear attack against journalists engaged in news gathering.

Greenwald published a post on the targeting of his partner, which provided some more details:

At the time the “security official” 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 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.

The authorities did not say if they would return any of the “electronics equipment.” Greenwald declared, “This was obviously designed to send a message of intimidation to those of us working journalistically on reporting on the NSA and its British counterpart, the GCHQ.”

The Brazilian government put out a statement:

The Brazilian government expresses grave concern about the episode today in London, where Brazilian citizen was detained and held incommunicado at Heathrow for a period of 9 hours in action based on British legislation to combat terrorism. It is unjustifiable as it involves [an] individual against whom do not weigh any charges that may justify the use of such legislation. The Brazilian government hopes that incidents like today registered with the Brazilian citizen [are] not repeated.

Amnesty International’s Widney Brown, senior director of international law and policy, reacted, “It is utterly improbable that David Michael Miranda, a Brazilian national transiting through London, was detained at random, given the role his husband has played in revealing the truth about the unlawful nature of NSA surveillance.”

“David’s detention was unlawful and inexcusable. He was detained under a law that violates any principle of fairness and his detention shows how the law can be abused for petty vindictive reasons.” Brown added. “States cannot pass anti-terror acts and claim they are necessary to protect people from harm and then use them to retaliate against someone exercising his rights. By targeting Miranda and Greenwald, the government is also sending a message to other journalists that if they maintain their independence and report critically about governments, they too may be targeted.”

This act committed by the United Kingdom (and likely in service to the United States government) is similar to what the government of Iran has done in its targeting of journalists’ families. While the family member was held for a much longer period of time, this person, who is related to a BBC reporter, was “arbitrarily detained and held as a hostage for close to two weeks” in 2012.

It was part of a”wave of arrests against journalists and bloggers prior to parliamentary elections” and led the Middle East director at Human Rights watch, Sarah Leah Whitson, to state, “Detaining a BBC reporter’s relative seems to be part of a wider campaign to harass Iranian journalists by putting pressure on them and their families. It suggests that authorities detained the relative to silence the reporter and the BBC. It also sends a message that the government’s long arm of repression can extend well beyond borders.”

For nine hours, Miranda was the United Kingdom’s hostage. The authorities had a window to extract whatever they could from him by imposing their power and telling him any number of things while they tried to question him. The hostage-taking was all to send a message to other journalists that this could happen to them if they report on information from whistleblowers, who dare to reveal how the national security apparatuses of countries are committing abuses and crimes by violating the rights and privacy of citizens.

Jacob Appelbaum, Tor software developer and former WikiLeaks volunteer who knows from being targeted by the Department of Homeland Security what Miranda possibly went through, declared, “Detainment under the veil of terrorism while traveling is awful. It is especially awful when the goal is indirect political intimidation.”

“These kinds of detainments are political thuggery. The detained person’s property is stolen without recourse and they are denied a lawyer,” he also stated.

The Guardian noted, “Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act has been widely criticized for giving police broad powers under the guise of anti-terror legislation to stop and search individuals without prior authoriation or reasonable suspicion – setting it apart from other police powers.”

It should go without saying—If you are a government official claiming the surveillance programs being exposed, which show close cooperation between US and UK intelligence agencies, are lawful and nothing to worry about, the last thing one should dare to do is target the relative of the person who is working aggressively on behalf of a source to continue to call attention to government surveillance.

The last thing a government should probably do is target a relative of someone, who major news television programs will give a platform to respond to this clear and obvious attack on press freedom.

And, if a terrorism law with controversial powers is valued, the last thing a government should do is abuse it by going after the relative of a prominent journalist. That could jeopardize the law’s existence by sparking a controversy that would lead political leaders to respond by pushing for reform or complete repeal.

It might also convince people, who were skeptical of what Greenwald has been saying about government abusing national security or surveillance state powers, that Greenwald is, in fact, correct. (Case in point: Andrew Sullivan of The Dish’s reaction.)

Nonetheless, the UK authorities held Miranda hostage under a terrorism law. The UK government (and to the extent that it was involved, the US government) deserve every bit of outrage and scrutiny that comes as part of the fallout from this significant attack on not only a journalist’s partner but freedom of press in general.

Update

Greenwald spoke to Charlie Savage of The New York Times and provided more details, which confirm that authorities intercepted documents that would have formed the basis of future Guardian news stories.

“Mr. Miranda was in Berlin to deliver documents related to Mr. Greenwald’s investigation into government surveillance to Ms. Poitras, Mr. Greenwald said. Ms. Poitras, in turn, gave Mr. Miranda different documents to pass to Mr. Greenwald,” Savage reported. UK authorities told “Mr. Miranda that they would obtain permission from a judge to arrest him for 48 hours, but he was released at the end of the nine hours, around 1 p.m. Eastern time.”

Also, what Greenwald told Savage further confirms the critical role Brazilian government played in ensuring Miranda was not kept longer than the maximum period under the terrorism statute:

A lawyer for The Guardian in London was working on trying to understand what had happened, as were foreign-affairs officials for Brazil both in that country and in London, Mr. Greenwald said. He said that he received a call from the Brazilian foreign minister about 40 minutes after alerting the Brazilian government, and that the Brazilian authorities were outraged.

*Correction: Parts of this post and the headline were adjusted for accuracy.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Glenn Greenwald speaks out

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Aug 19, 2013 6:10 pm

Glenn Greenwald ‏@ggreenwald 46m

Thank you, @kansasalps - great job, Reuters and HuffPost http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the ... o-his-job/ … - Reuters has now corrected this all



@ggreenwald from now on, better idea to call reporters who quote you accurately and provide context :)

Diane Kay Reedy ‏@dkreedy 45m




Glenn Greenwald ‏@ggreenwald 55m

Reuters told me they're correcting all the things they got wrong in reporting my comments - just a few hours after all damage is done



No, Glenn Greenwald didn’t ‘vow vengeance.’ He said he was going to do his job.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Glenn Greenwald speaks out

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Aug 19, 2013 6:48 pm

seemslikeadream » Mon Aug 19, 2013 5:10 pm wrote:
Glenn Greenwald ‏@ggreenwald 46m

Thank you, @kansasalps - great job, Reuters and HuffPost http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the ... o-his-job/ … - Reuters has now corrected this all



@ggreenwald from now on, better idea to call reporters who quote you accurately and provide context :)

Diane Kay Reedy ‏@dkreedy 45m




Glenn Greenwald ‏@ggreenwald 55m

Reuters told me they're correcting all the things they got wrong in reporting my comments - just a few hours after all damage is done



No, Glenn Greenwald didn’t ‘vow vengeance.’ He said he was going to do his job.





David Miranda, schedule 7 and the danger that all reporters now face

As the events in a Heathrow transit lounge – and the Guardian offices – have shown, the threat to journalism is real and growing

Alan Rusbridger
The Guardian, Monday 19 August 2013 17.30 EDT

Glenn Greenwald, left, with David Miranda, who was held for nine hours at Heathrow under schedule 7 of Britain's terror laws. Photograph: Ricardo Moraes/Reuters

In a private viewing cinema in Soho last week I caught myself letting fly with a four-letter expletive at Bill Keller, the former executive editor of the New York Times. It was a confusing moment. The man who was pretending to be me – thanking Keller for "not giving a shit" – used to be Malcolm Tucker, a foul-mouthed Scottish spin doctor who will soon be a 1,000-year-old time lord. And Keller will correct me, but I don't remember ever swearing at him. I do remember saying something to the effect of "we have the thumb drive, you have the first amendment".

The fictional moment occurs at the beginning of the DreamWorks film about WikiLeaks, The Fifth Estate, due for release next month. Peter Capaldi is, I can report, a very plausible Guardian editor.

This real-life exchange with Keller happened just after we took possession of the first tranche of WikiLeaks documents in 2010. I strongly suspected that our ability to research and publish anything to do with this trove of secret material would be severely constrained in the UK. America, for all its own problems with media laws and whistleblowers, at least has press freedom enshrined in a written constitution. It is also, I hope, unthinkable that any US government would attempt prior restraint against a news organisation planning to publish material that informed an important public debate, however troublesome or embarrassing.

On Sunday morning David Miranda, the partner of Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald, was detained as he was passing through Heathrow airport on his way back to Rio de Janeiro, where the couple live. Greenwald is the reporter who has broken most of the stories about state surveillance based on the leaks from the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Greenwald's work has undoubtedly been troublesome and embarrassing for western governments. But, as the debate in America and Europe has shown, there is considerable public interest in what his stories have revealed about the right balance between security, civil liberties, freedom of speech and privacy. He has raised acutely disturbing questions about the oversight of intelligence; about the use of closed courts; about the cosy and secret relationship between government and vast corporations; and about the extent to which millions of citizens now routinely have their communications intercepted, collected, analysed and stored.

In this work he is regularly helped by David Miranda. Miranda is not a journalist, but he still plays a valuable role in helping his partner do his journalistic work. Greenwald has his plate full reading and analysing the Snowden material, writing, and handling media and social media requests from around the world. He can certainly use this back-up. That work is immensely complicated by the certainty that it would be highly unadvisable for Greenwald (or any other journalist) to regard any electronic means of communication as safe. The Guardian's work on the Snowden story has involved many individuals taking a huge number of flights in order to have face-to-face meetings. Not good for the environment, but increasingly the only way to operate. Soon we will be back to pen and paper.

Miranda was held for nine hours under schedule 7 of the UK's terror laws, which give enormous discretion to stop, search and question people who have no connection with "terror", as ordinarily understood. Suspects have no right to legal representation and may have their property confiscated for up to seven days. Under this measure – uniquely crafted for ports and airport transit areas – there are none of the checks and balances that apply once someone is in Britain proper. There is no need to arrest or charge anyone and there is no protection for journalists or their material. A transit lounge in Heathrow is a dangerous place to be.

Miranda's professional status – much hand-wringing about whether or not he's a proper "journalist – is largely irrelevant in these circumstances. Increasingly, the question about who deserves protection should be less "is this a journalist?" than "is the publication of this material in the public interest?"

The detention of Miranda has rightly caused international dismay because it feeds into a perception that the US and UK governments – while claiming to welcome the debate around state surveillance started by Snowden – are also intent on stemming the tide of leaks and on pursuing the whistleblower with a vengeance. That perception is right. Here follows a little background on the considerable obstacles being placed in the way of informing the public about what the intelligence agencies, governments and corporations are up to.

A little over two months ago I was contacted by a very senior government official claiming to represent the views of the prime minister. There followed two meetings in which he demanded the return or destruction of all the material we were working on. The tone was steely, if cordial, but there was an implicit threat that others within government and Whitehall favoured a far more draconian approach.

The mood toughened just over a month ago, when I received a phone call from the centre of government telling me: "You've had your fun. Now we want the stuff back." There followed further meetings with shadowy Whitehall figures. The demand was the same: hand the Snowden material back or destroy it. I explained that we could not research and report on this subject if we complied with this request. The man from Whitehall looked mystified. "You've had your debate. There's no need to write any more."

During one of these meetings I asked directly whether the government would move to close down the Guardian's reporting through a legal route – by going to court to force the surrender of the material on which we were working. The official confirmed that, in the absence of handover or destruction, this was indeed the government's intention. Prior restraint, near impossible in the US, was now explicitly and imminently on the table in the UK. But my experience over WikiLeaks – the thumb drive and the first amendment – had already prepared me for this moment. I explained to the man from Whitehall about the nature of international collaborations and the way in which, these days, media organisations could take advantage of the most permissive legal environments. Bluntly, we did not have to do our reporting from London. Already most of the NSA stories were being reported and edited out of New York. And had it occurred to him that Greenwald lived in Brazil?

The man was unmoved. And so one of the more bizarre moments in the Guardian's long history occurred – with two GCHQ security experts overseeing the destruction of hard drives in the Guardian's basement just to make sure there was nothing in the mangled bits of metal which could possibly be of any interest to passing Chinese agents. "We can call off the black helicopters," joked one as we swept up the remains of a MacBook Pro.

Whitehall was satisfied, but it felt like a peculiarly pointless piece of symbolism that understood nothing about the digital age. We will continue to do patient, painstaking reporting on the Snowden documents, we just won't do it in London. The seizure of Miranda's laptop, phones, hard drives and camera will similarly have no effect on Greenwald's work.

The state that is building such a formidable apparatus of surveillance will do its best to prevent journalists from reporting on it. Most journalists can see that. But I wonder how many have truly understood the absolute threat to journalism implicit in the idea of total surveillance, when or if it comes – and, increasingly, it looks like "when".

We are not there yet, but it may not be long before it will be impossible for journalists to have confidential sources. Most reporting – indeed, most human life in 2013 – leaves too much of a digital fingerprint. Those colleagues who denigrate Snowden or say reporters should trust the state to know best (many of them in the UK, oddly, on the right) may one day have a cruel awakening. One day it will be their reporting, their cause, under attack. But at least reporters now know to stay away from Heathrow transit lounges.


A little over two months ago I was contacted by a very senior government official claiming to represent the views of the prime minister. There followed two meetings in which he demanded the return or destruction of all the material we were working on. The tone was steely, if cordial, but there was an implicit threat that others within government and Whitehall favoured a far more draconian approach.

The mood toughened just over a month ago, when I received a phone call from the centre of government telling me: "You've had your fun. Now we want the stuff back." There followed further meetings with shadowy Whitehall figures. The demand was the same: hand the Snowden material back or destroy it. I explained that we could not research and report on this subject if we complied with this request. The man from Whitehall looked mystified. "You've had your debate. There's no need to write any more."

During one of these meetings I asked directly whether the government would move to close down the Guardian's reporting through a legal route – by going to court to force the surrender of the material on which we were working. The official confirmed that, in the absence of handover or destruction, this was indeed the government's intention. Prior restraint, near impossible in the US, was now explicitly and imminently on the table in the UK. But my experience over WikiLeaks – the thumb drive and the first amendment – had already prepared me for this moment. I explained to the man from Whitehall about the nature of international collaborations and the way in which, these days, media organisations could take advantage of the most permissive legal environments. Bluntly, we did not have to do our reporting from London. Already most of the NSA stories were being reported and edited out of New York. And had it occurred to him that Greenwald lived in Brazil?

The man was unmoved. And so one of the more bizarre moments in the Guardian's long history occurred – with two GCHQ security experts overseeing the destruction of hard drives in the Guardian's basement just to make sure there was nothing in the mangled bits of metal which could possibly be of any interest to passing Chinese agents. "We can call off the black helicopters," joked one as we swept up the remains of a MacBook Pro.

Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Glenn Greenwald speaks out

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Aug 19, 2013 9:17 pm

Image

David Miranda: 'They said I would be put in jail if I didn't co-operate'

Partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald gives his first interview on nine-hour interrogation at Heathrow airport


Jonathan Watts in Rio de Janeiro
The Guardian, Monday 19 August 2013 16.30 EDT

Image
Glenn Greenwald, left, meets his partner, David Miranda, at Rio de Janeiro airport after he finally reached Brazil following his nine-hour detention at Heathrow – an experience that has changed Miranda’s view of Britain. Photograph: Ricardo Moraes/Reuters

David Miranda, the partner of the Guardian journalist who broke stories of mass surveillance by the US National Security Agency, has accused Britain of a "total abuse of power" for interrogating him for almost nine hours at Heathrow under the Terrorism Act.

In his first interview since returning to his home in Rio de Janeiro early on Monday, Miranda said the authorities in the UK had pandered to the US in trying to intimidate him and force him to reveal the passwords to his computer and mobile phone.

"They were threatening me all the time and saying I would be put in jail if I didn't co-operate," said Miranda. "They treated me like I was a criminal or someone about to attack the UK … It was exhausting and frustrating, but I knew I wasn't doing anything wrong."

Miranda – a Brazilian national who lives with Greenwald in Rio – was held for the maximum time permitted under schedule seven of the Terrorism Act 2000 which allows officers to stop, search and question individuals at airports, ports and border areas.

During that time, he said, he was not allowed to call his partner, who is a qualified lawyer in the US, nor was he given an interpreter, despite being promised one because he felt uncomfortable speaking in a second language.

"I was in a different country with different laws, in a room with seven agents coming and going who kept asking me questions. I thought anything could happen. I thought I might be detained for a very long time," he said.

He was on his way back from Berlin, where he was ferrying materials between Greenwald and Laura Poitras, the US film-maker who has also been working on stories related to the NSA files released by US whistle-blower Edward Snowden.

Miranda was seized almost as soon as his British Airways flight touched down on Sunday morning. "There was an announcement on the plane that everyone had to show their passports. The minute I stepped out of the plane they took me away to a small room with four chairs and a machine for taking fingerprints," he recalled.

His carry-on bags were searched and, he says, police confiscated a computer, two pen drives, an external hard drive and several other electronic items, including a games console, as well two newly bought watches and phones that were packaged and boxed in his stowed luggage.

"They got me to tell them the passwords for my computer and mobile phone," Miranda said. "They said I was obliged to answer all their questions and used the words 'prison' and 'station' all the time."

"It is clear why they took me. It's because I'm Glenn's partner. Because I went to Berlin. Because Laura lives there. So they think I have a big connection," he said. "But I don't have a role. I don't look at documents. I don't even know if it was documents that I was carrying. It could have been for the movie that Laura is working on."

Miranda was told he was being detained under the Terrorism Act. He was never accused of being a terrorist or being associated with terrorists, but he was told that if – after nine hours – his interrogators did not think he was being co-operative, then he could be taken to a police station and put in jail.

"This law shouldn't be given to police officers. They use it to get access to documents or people that they cannot get the legal way through courts or judges," said Miranda. "It's a total abuse of power."

He was offered a lawyer and a cup of water, but he refused both because he did not trust the authorities. The questions, he said, were relentless – about Greenwald, Snowden, Poitras and a host of other apparently random subjects.

"They even asked me about the protests in Brazil, why people were unhappy and who I knew in the government," said Miranda.

He got his first drink – from a Coke machine in the corridor – after eight hours and was eventually released almost an hour later. Police records show he had been held from 08.05 to 17.00.

Unable immediately to find a flight for him back to Rio, Miranda says the Heathrow police then escorted him to passport control so he could enter Britain and wait there.

"It was ridiculous," he said. "First they treat me like a terrorist suspect. Then they are ready to release me in the UK."

Although he believes the British authorities were doing the bidding of the US, Miranda says his view of the UK has completely changed as a result of the experience.

"I have friends in the UK and liked to visit, but you can't go to a country where they have laws that allow the abuse of liberty for nothing," he said.

The White House on Monday insisted that it was not involved in the decision to detain Miranda, though a spokesman said US officials had been given a "heads up" by British officials beforehand.

The Brazilian government has expressed grave concern about the "unjustified" detention.

Speaking by phone from the couple's home in the Tijuca forest, Miranda said it felt "awesome" to be back. "It's really good to be here. I felt the weight lift off my shoulders as soon I got back. Brazil feels very secure, very safe," he said. "I knew my country would protect me, and I believe in my husband and knew that he would do anything to help me."
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Glenn Greenwald speaks out

Postby 8bitagent » Mon Aug 19, 2013 9:45 pm

Yeah Greenwald is a real mole plant saboteur ...
:mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :lol2: :lol2: :lol2:

Snowden leak journalist: Britain will regret detaining partner at airport

Ricardo Moraes / Reuters

U.S. journalist Glenn Greenwald (front left) embraces his partner David Miranda upon his arrival at Rio de Janeiro's International Airport after British authorities used anti-terrorism powers on Sunday to detain Miranda.
By Henry Austin, NBC News contributor

LONDON - Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who first published the contents of classified documents provided by ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden, said Monday that Britain will regret detaining and questioning his partner.

"I will be more aggressive in my reporting from now,” he told reporters in Portuguese at Rio de Janeiro’s airport, where he met his boyfriend, David Miranda, who had flown from London to Brazil.

Greenwald told reporters he has many more documents to report on, including ones about the UK. He said he thinks British authorities would come to regret their actions.

Brazilian national Miranda, 28, who lives with Greenwald in Rio, was held at London’s Heathrow Airport for nine hours Sunday by authorities using powers granted under local anti-terrorism laws.


They dun f'd up
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Re: Glenn Greenwald speaks out

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Aug 19, 2013 10:06 pm

They’re Going After Greenwald
Aug 18th, 2013 @ 11:00 pm › Justin Raimondo

This time they’ve gone too far.

The enemies of liberty have escalated their attack on Glenn Greenwald – the Guardian journalist whose reporting on Edward Snowden’s revelations has provoked an international movement against the Surveillance State – in a way even I never thought possible. They have targeted his longtime partner, David Miranda: en route home to Brazil, where he and Greenwald presently reside, Miranda passed through London’s Heathrow Airport, where he was detained by officers and questioned for nine hours. They claimed authority to do so under the terms of the "Terrorism Act 2000," which allows them to detain terrorist suspects at airports and border crossings at will. Miranda had been visiting friends in Berlin. After confiscating his laptops, his cell phone, and all electronics, they finally let him go.

From news accounts of what happened at Heathrow, it looks as if the Brits dearly wanted to arrest him, or at least get clearance to hold him longer – and only the energetic efforts of the Brazilian embassy managed to just barely get Miranda out of there and home to a free country.

As of this writing, we don’t know exactly what the interrogation entailed, but it isn’t hard to imagine: Miranda had been staying with Laura Poitras, the American documentary filmmaker who has been instrumental in Greenwald’s reporting. Poitras has herself been stopped, detained, and interrogated over forty times at various airports in the course of her reporting career, which is outrageous in and of itself, but this latest move by the cretins who rule our destiny is a serious escalation of their attack on the free press. As Glenn pointed out in his amazingly calm account of the matter, "Even the Mafia had ethical rules against targeting the family members of people they feel threatened by."

Although Greenwald is increasingly the target of a concerted attack on his character and journalistic credentials, the authorities have so far left the dirty work to their journalistic Praetorian Guard, the David Gregorys, the Walter Pincus types, and the Mike Grunwalds of this world. This action by the British government – and does it make me a "conspiracy theorist" to think this was carried out at the direction of their Washington overseers? – crosses a very distinct line, the boundary between a free society that recognizes the rule of law and an authoritarian state that manipulates the law to serve its own purposes.

Miranda is not a journalist. His identity and his relationship to Glenn has only recently been revealed by the spotlight shown on his partner: a recent New York Times profile of Ms. Poitras was set in the Miranda-Greenwald household, in Brazil, when Poitras was visiting. To target Miranda is to cross into Soviet territory: the KGB, in their war on dissidents, also victimized loved ones, often sending entire families to the gulag.

By citing the "Terrorism Act" as justification for their actions, the Brits violated their own procedures, as this paragraph from their Code of Practice makes clear:

"The purpose of questioning and associated powers is to determine whether a person appears to be someone who is or has been concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism. The powers, which are additional to the powers of arrest under the Act, should not be used for any other purpose."

What have Miranda and Greenwald to do with "terrorism"? Are the Brits (and, standing behind them, the Americans) saying that he – and, by implication, Greenwald – is affiliated with or sympathetic to some Al-Qaeda-like group, and is actively involved in plotting terrorists acts? Of course not. What they are saying is that anyone involved in the practice of real journalism – as opposed to the professional shills like David Gregory and Walter Pincus – and who exposes their secret machinations will be dealt with by any "legal" means necessary.

The message to journalists everywhere is ominous indeed: if you report things the US government and/or its overseas vassals don’t like, not only you but your loved ones will be unmercifully harassed and quite possibly arrested until we make you stop. How is this different from what Josef Stalin, Saddam Hussein, and other world-infamous despots did to earn a prominent spot in history’s rogues gallery?

This incident was clearly meant as a warning shot aimed directly at Greenwald, who has publicly expressed his desire to return to the United States. He and Miranda have been living in Brazil, up until this point, due to the immigration restrictions previously put on spouses in same-sex relationships. Now that the Supreme Court has decided that straight people have to start treating us like human beings, Glenn has said he intends on returning to the US with Miranda soon rather than later. He has no illusions about the danger he faces. As he told Salon:

"Given that the Obama DOJ has adopted theories that would criminalize journalism in both the WikiLeaks Grand Jury proceeding and the investigation of James Rosen, given that it has waged what most observers agree is an unprecedented war on whistle-blowers, and given that several prominent political figures and journalists have called for my prosecution, I obviously take the risk seriously. But I take more seriously the Constitution’s guarantee of a free press in the First Amendment. So I have every intention of entering the U.S. as soon as my schedule permits and there’s a reason to do so."

If I were Glenn, I would stay in Brazil: there is no obligation to make oneself a martyr. I say this not because I’m so presumptuous as to offer him public advice on a highly personal matter (although I am that), but in order to make a political point: the guarantees of basic rights enshrined in the Constitution are simply no longer operable. It is admirable to take the Constitution seriously: for that reason, it is necessary to take the enemies of the Constitution just as seriously.

These people mean business – and quite a dirty business it is, too. They don’t care about the rule of law: as Greenwald spent a whole book explaining to us, today the law is applied in a grossly unequal manner, and this degeneration of our legal system has occurred over a long period of years. The vast secret surveillance apparatus he has so thoroughly exposed in his reporting shows this degenerative process is almost complete.

In short, no one is safe – and that is the hallmark of an authoritarian society, now isn’t it? No, not journalists, not the Guardian, not Antiwar.com – our power-crazed political class will stop at nothing to preserve its prerogatives and privileges. And if Greenwald thinks the Constitution will prove to be an obstacle in their path, then why is it that up until now they’ve used it as a doormat?

Nothing short of a revolution is going to stop this power grab: hopefully it will be like that which overthrew the old Soviet Union – relatively bloodless and nonviolent. That’s what I hope for – but I’m not betting the farm on it.

No, it isn’t too late to bring about peaceful change: but the hour is getting damned late. Which is why I fear it is going to take a lot more than a few bills in Congress – or even the victory of civil libertarians at the polls – to derail this coup d’etat against the rule of law and restore the Constitution.
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Re: Glenn Greenwald speaks out

Postby 8bitagent » Mon Aug 19, 2013 10:11 pm

This to me isn't a blame on Obama thing, but I honestly do not remember the level of behavior against journalists and whistleblowers during the Bush years that's going on now
(and yes Ive seen the Sibel Edmonds documentary Kill The Messenger)

Also like Manning, the right wing "anti government" Alex Jones types wont make a big fuss about this since they hate gay people. Funny how the mainstream LGBT groups aren't making Manning or Greenwald
as champions as they would have during the Bush years. Same goes for the average college crowd
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Re: Glenn Greenwald speaks out

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Aug 19, 2013 11:32 pm

Detention of David Miranda shows power of the Terrorism Act is broad and poisonous
20 Aug 2013 02:32

The director of civil rights pressure group Liberty on the detention of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald's partner
Detained: David Miranda, left. and Glenn Greenwald Detained: David Miranda, left. and Glenn Greenwald
Getty

In Britain we live in the oldest unbroken democracy on earth – not a police state.

And yet the increasing powers given to police under the Terrorism Act has passed under the radar.

The detention of David Miranda, the partner of the journalist Glenn Greenwald, who wrote about secret mass surveillance programmes in Britain and the US exposed by American whistleblower Edward Snowden, has highlighted one particular abuse of power that Liberty has been concerned about.

This power is Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000, under which a person can be held for up to nine hours at an airport without being under any suspicion of criminality.

It could be you or me. The power is so broad, and the authorities don’t have to justify it. That is the problem.

We all have something to fear from very, very broad coercive powers that can be used and abused by accident or design.

Schedule 7 is far too easy to abuse, whether it is discrimination, racial or political abuse. The power is so broad it will cause injustice.

It’s no good politicians complaining about how a law is used, when the law itself is rotten.

If you don’t comply, and tell the authorities you will not answer their questions, then you are liable to a criminal prosecution.

Worse still, you could get stuck without access to a publicly funded lawyer when this happens.

When you get arrested on a street in Britain, you’ve got a right to a lawyer. But at an airport this is not the same.

You could be in there without even knowing who is questioning you.

Is it the security services, the police, Special Branch, MI5, the UK Border Agency? You just don’t know.

In this case of Mr Miranda basic principles of freedom of speech are under threat and yet we have no idea who ordered his detention or who was involved in his questioning.

He flew from Germany, and surely if he was any risk, the authorities in Berlin would have reacted.

When it first became clear the United States government wanted to get their hands on whistleblower Edward Snowden, the British Government was among the first to offer support.

Within hours they had warned airlines not to fly the former CIA worker to the UK.

So this latest move by Britain could well be viewed by many as ordered by someone in Washington DC, not London.

But because of the secrecy involved, we don’t know.

The journalist Glenn Greenwald hasn’t broken any British laws in publishing his exposes from his source Edward Snowden, and yet in this sinister fashion his partner is detained.

The work journalists like him do keeps our democracy healthy - intimidation tactics like this have no place in a Britain that values the press’s ability to report freely.

Liberty already has a case lodged in the European Court of Human Rights challenging this provision of the Terrorism Act.

This isn’t just about whether the suspicion is reasonable or not; this is not requiring any suspicion at all before detaining people.

You can be kept under lock and key without any basis, not even reasonable suspicion, which is the normal trigger for a stop and search power.

This is no suspicion at all – you can just be detained.

What happened yesterday is dramatic because it’s obviously political – the man in question is in a relationship with a journalist who has highlighted the surveillance scandal on both sides of the Atlantic.

But there are lots of British Muslims who are stopped so routinely under Schedule 7 that they have started building it into their travel plans.

They add several hours otherwise they will miss flights and connections. It has become so normal that they just expect it to happen.

In the way most people factor in a few hours at the airport for check-in, they add an extra few hours knowing they will be stopped under Schedule 7.

Liberty has a client who was detained in November 2010 with his elderly mother after they had flown back to Heathrow via Bahrain.

He is British. He was detained for more than four hours. He was asked about his salary, his voting habits and the costs of his Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.

They went through his possessions with a fine tooth comb; they made copies of his credit cards; they kept his mobile phone and SIM cards which were only returned eight days later.

This man had never in his life been arrested or detained by the police.

This kind of abuse is possible when you have the power to detain people with no reasonable suspicion.

People can be detained for many hours and they can be strip-searched, which can be very humiliating, with absolutely no suspicion of criminality.

You have your property confiscated and you are swabbed in your mouth for a DNA sample.

It’s one thing to be strip-searched if you are suspected of carrying drugs or explosives.

There are laws for that and this isn’t one of them.

Imagine what it feels like for thousands of British people.

The statistics are breathtaking. In 2009 when British Asians made up 5.9% of the population, they were 44% of those detained under Schedule 7.

Some people are stopped pretty much every time they come in and out of the country, and asked the same pointless questions.

Nobody says Britain should not have proper anti-terror powers, but when you have powers so broad, so ripe for such abuse, it sets people against each other rather than uniting them in the cause of fighting terror.

What happened to Mr Miranda at Heathrow Airport yesterday was a shocking development.

But it is not entirely a bad thing because now we have MPs who have never spoken out before waking up to the dangers of this power.

In fact this case may help us to get Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act scrapped, once and for all.

Arbitrary powers bring huge dangers of injustice. When these things are passed, people think it will never happen to them.

Cases like this make us realise anybody could be targeted. This is the wake-up call we need – let’s scrap these poisonous powers.

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Re: Glenn Greenwald speaks out

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Aug 20, 2013 8:21 am

David Miranda's lawyers threaten legal action over 'unlawful' detention

Partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald seeks return of equipment seized during nine-hour interrogation at Heathrow

Lisa O'Carroll
theguardian.com, Tuesday 20 August 2013 08.10 EDT

David Miranda: Glenn Greenwald's partner has threatened legal action over his nine-hour detention at Heathrow. Photograph: Ricardo Moraes/Reuters

Lawyers for the partner of the Guardian journalist who exposed mass email surveillance have written to home secretary Theresa May and the head of the Metropolitan police warning them that they are set to take legal action over what they say amounted to his "unlawful" detention at Heathrow airport under anti-terror laws.

In their letter to May and Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe they warn they are seeking immediate undertakings for the return David Miranda's laptop and all other electronic equipment within seven days.

His lawyers at the London firm Bindmans are seeking an official undertaking that there will be "no inspection, copying, disclosure, transfer, distribution or interference, in any way with our client's data".

But they say if there has already been an inspection of his laptop and other equipment it should not be disclosed to any third party, domestic or foreign and should be kept secure pending the outcome of the legal action.

Miranda, whose partner Glenn Greenwald has been working since May with the National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, was transiting in Heathrow airport en route from Berlin to Brazil on Sunday when he was detained under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000.

He was questioned for nine hours and according to the letter had belongings including his mobile phone, laptop, memory sticks, smart-watch, DVDs and games consoles confiscated.

The letter says the decision to detain Miranda "amounted to a frustration of the legislative policy and objects of the Terrorism Act 2000" and was for "an improper purpose and was therefore unlawful".

Bindmans say if the undertakings are not given by Tuesday afternoon they will have no option but to seek an urgent interim injunction in the high court.

The lawyers say they will also be seeking a "quashing order" confirming that his detention was "unlawful" and a mandatory order that all data seized is returned and copies destroyed.

"The decisions to use schedule 7 powers in our client's case amounted to a grave and manifestly disproportionate interference with the claimant's rights" under European human rights legislation, the letter adds.

Gwendolen Morgan, the lawyer at Bindmans dealing with the case, said: "We have grave concerns about the decision to use this draconian power to detain our client for nine hours on Sunday – for what appear to be highly questionable motives, which we will be asking the high court to consider. This act is likely to have a chilling effect on journalists worldwide and is emphatically not what parliament intended schedule 7 powers to be used for."

Bindmans say the police used the anti-terror laws in order to have "deliberately bypassed" the normal statutory procedures for seeking confidential journalistic material such as court orders under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984.

Using Pace police can get permission to search premises and seize property but some classes of material are protected, including journalistic material.

"The decision was a flagrant misuse of the defendant's statutory powers," says the letter, which is signed by Bindmans.

The letter says Miranda was detained by police for almost nine hours in a secure area at Heathrow airport, adding that this was an unlawful "deprivation of liberty" under article 5 of the European Convention of Human Rights.

A Guardian News & Media spokesperson said: "David Miranda has filed a legal claim with regard to his detention at Heathrow airport on Sunday 18 August under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act. The Guardian is supportive of that claim."


Anonymous Hit Back With Cyber-Attack After David Miranda Detention

The Huffington Post UK | By Charlotte Meredith Posted: 20/08/2013 12:39 BST | Updated: 20/08/2013 13:02 BST

Hackers, Hackers, Anonymous, edward snowden, nsa, UK News

Anonymous hackers behind the @OpLastResort Twitter account have hit back after the partner of the the first journalist to interview American whistleblower Edward Snowden was detained and quizzed by six agents on his "entire life" while travelling through Heathrow.

Anonymous are believed to have hacked UK sites after David Miranda, the partner of Glenn Greenwald – the journalist at the centre of revelations about US and British security services – was stopped on Sunday on his way home to Rio de Janeiro following a trip to Berlin.

In a lengthy ordeal, the journalist's partner was held by police under terror laws for nine hours - the legal limit before a suspect must be charged or released - and had all of his personal possessions confiscated.
Image
anonymous
Anonymous hacked the website of the Mole Valley District Council


In retaliation, hackers thought to be responsible for a number of high-profile hacks against the US government, the Federal Reserve and financial institutions earlier this year, have accessed and leaked personal information of alleged US officials.

Declaring their outrage over the targeting of Greenwald’s partner, Anons appeared to leak personal information of US military and diplomatic personnel along with their family members' details.

Somewhat bizarrely, the hackers also gained access to molevalley.gov.uk – a site used by the local government district in Surrey.

The hacked domain has since been taken down.

A statement posted by Anonymous condemned Miranda's detention as "draconian," and an "act of pure spite and intimidation."


"We have been very, very angry over the last few months… and very, very busy," it read, concluding the statement by warning: "You ain't seen nothing yet."

“You know.... the more we think of it, the more that makes sense,” Anonymous wrote on the website. “Actually, we agree wholeheartedly, and to demonstrate this, we have employed our own Antisec Radical Surveillance Enterprise to uncover some other possible -- indeed, highly likely -- terrorists on account of their relations to employees at the highest reaches of government and military employment in the USA.”

The statement continued, “We have taken the liberty to present this vital anti-terror surveillance information to the authorities in the form of the table below. We encourage anyone who is interested in preventing terror attacks to fully investigate these spouses and siblings and mothers and fathers and son and daughters, before they too are embroidered [sic] in terrible terror plots of the most heinous variety.”
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Re: Glenn Greenwald speaks out

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Aug 20, 2013 10:47 am

Britons Question Whether Detention of Reporter’s Partner was Terror-Related
Marcelo Piu/European Pressphoto Agency

By STEVEN ERLANGER
Published: August 20, 2013 71 Comments

LONDON — Demands grew on Monday for the British government to explain why it had used antiterrorism powers to detain the partner of a journalist who has written about surveillance programs based on leaks by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden.


David Michael Miranda, a Brazilian citizen and the partner of the American journalist Glenn Greenwald, who lives in Brazil, was held Sunday at Heathrow Airport in London for nine hours, the maximum allowed by law, before being released without charge.

“They were threatening me all the time and saying I would be put in jail if I didn’t cooperate,” Mr. Miranda said Tuesday in an interview with The Guardian newspaper, where Mr. Greenwald is a columnist. “They treated me like I was a criminal or someone about to attack the U.K.”

On its Web site, The Guardian said the interview was the first since Mr. Miranda returned to his home in Rio de Janeiro on Monday. “It was exhausting and frustrating, but I knew I wasn’t doing anything wrong,” Mr. Miranda said. Speaking separately on Monday, he said that all of his electronic equipment, including his laptop computer and cellphone, had been confiscated. In the interview, he added that he was not allowed to call his partner, who is a qualified lawyer in the United States, nor was he given an interpreter, despite being promised one because he felt uncomfortable speaking in a second language.

“I was in a different country with different laws, in a room with seven agents coming and going who kept asking me questions. I thought anything could happen. I thought I might be detained for a very long time,” he said.

Mr. Miranda was traveling from Berlin to Rio de Janeiro. In Berlin, he had met with Laura Poitras, an American filmmaker who has worked with Mr. Greenwald on the Snowden leaks about secret American and British surveillance programs that they argue violate individual rights and liberties.

The Guardian, where Mr. Greenwald is a columnist, reported that it had paid for Mr. Miranda’s flights but that he was not an employee of the paper. “As Glenn Greenwald’s partner, he often assists him in his work,” The Guardian said in statement. “We would normally reimburse the expenses of someone aiding a reporter in such circumstances.”

In an e-mail Monday to The Associated Press, Mr. Greenwald said that he needed material from Ms. Poitras for articles he was working on related to the N.S.A., and that he had things she needed. “David, since he was in Berlin, helped with that exchange,” Mr. Greenwald wrote.

Keith Vaz, an opposition Labour Party legislator who is chairman of Parliament’s Home Affairs select committee, said he had written to the head of the Metropolitan Police Service, which has jurisdiction in the matter, to ask for clarification of what he called an extraordinary case.

“What needs to happen pretty rapidly is, we need to establish the full facts,” he told the BBC. “Now you have a complaint from Mr. Greenwald and the Brazilian government — they indeed have said they are concerned at the use of terrorism legislation for something that does not appear to relate to terrorism. So it needs to be clarified, and clarified quickly.”

The editor of The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, disclosed on Monday that the British government had sent officials from Government Communications Headquarters, which is known as GCHQ and is the British version of the National Security Agency, to the newspaper’s offices in London to destroy computers containing documents leaked by Mr. Snowden. Mr. Rusbridger said that he had protested that the same information was available elsewhere, but that the officials had insisted on proceeding.

“And so one of the more bizarre moments in The Guardian’s long history occurred — with two GCHQ security experts overseeing the destruction of hard drives in The Guardian’s basement just to make sure there was nothing in the mangled bits of metal which could possibly be of any interest to passing Chinese agents,” he wrote, adding, “We will continue to do patient, painstaking reporting on the Snowden documents, we just won’t do it in London.”

The police said in a statement that Mr. Miranda, 28, had been lawfully detained under Schedule 7 of Britain’s Terrorism Act 2000, which allows them to stop and question people traveling through ports and airports to determine whether they are involved in planning terrorist acts.

Mr. Miranda told The Guardian that, as his flight from Berlin approached London, “there was an announcement on the plane that everyone had to show their passports. The minute I stepped out of the plane they took me away to a small room with four chairs and a machine for taking fingerprints.”

His carry-on bags were searched, The Guardian quoted Mr. Miranda as saying, and the police confiscated a computer, two thumb drives, an external hard drive and several other electronic items, including a games console, as well two newly bought watches and phones that were packaged and boxed in his checked luggage.

“They got me to tell them the passwords for my computer and mobile phone,” Mr. Miranda said. “They said I was obliged to answer all their questions and used the words ‘prison’ and ‘station’ all the time.”

“It is clear why they took me. It’s because I’m Glenn’s partner. Because I went to Berlin. Because Laura lives there. So they think I have a big connection. But I don’t have a role. I don’t look at documents. I don’t even know if it was documents that I was carrying. It could have been for the movie that Laura is working on.”

Mr. Vaz and his party said they wanted to know how the government could justify using Schedule 7 in this case, arguing that any suggestion that antiterrorism powers had been misused could undermine public support for those powers.

A Home Office spokesman said Monday that the detention was an operational police matter and that neither he nor the police would provide any details. “Schedule 7 forms an essential part of the U.K.'s security arrangements,” the spokesman said. “It is for the police to decide when it is necessary and proportionate to use these powers.”

David Anderson, Britain’s official independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, said he had also asked the authorities to explain why Mr. Miranda was detained for so long. He said fewer than 40 of the 69,000 people stopped under Schedule 7 in 2011-12 were held for six hours or more. In most cases, Mr. Anderson said, those questioned under Schedule 7 are detained for less than an hour.

“It is such a wide power that it would be surprising if it was used perfectly on every occasion,” Mr. Anderson told the BBC. “It is a very extensive power, and this just points up the need to have it properly controlled.”

A White House spokesman, Josh Earnest, told reporters Monday that the British government had given the United States notice that it intended to detain Mr. Miranda when his plane landed, but that there had been no American request to do so.

“This is the British government making a decision based on British law on British soil about a British law enforcement action,” he said, adding, “This is something that they did not do at our direction, is not something that we were involved with. This is a decision that they made on their own.”

He and other administration officials declined to say on Monday whether the British had given the United States government any of the electronic materials seized from Mr. Miranda.

Mr. Miranda arrived Monday in Rio de Janeiro and was greeted by Mr. Greenwald, who said that in response to the detention, he planned “to write much more aggressively than before” about government snooping.

“I’m going to publish many more things about England as well,” he said. “I have many documents about the system of espionage of England, and now my focus will be there, too. I think they’ll regret what they’ve done.”

Mr. Miranda told reporters in Rio on Monday that all of the documents encrypted on the thumb drives came from the trove of materials provided by Mr. Snowden.

Nick Cohen, a columnist for the conservative weekly The Spectator, wrote on Monday that the detention of Mr. Miranda was “a clarifying moment that reveals how far Britain has changed for the worse.”

Nearly everyone, Mr. Cohen wrote, suspects that the police held Mr. Miranda “on trumped-up charges because the police, at the behest of the Americans, wanted to intimidate Miranda’s partner, Glenn Greenwald, the conduit of Edward Snowden’s revelations, and find out whether more embarrassing information is on Greenwald’s laptop.”

He criticized the police for saying so little about the case, and concluded: “The next time they try to tell you that the secrecy and attempts to silence legitimate debate are ‘in the public interest,’ do not forget what they did to David Miranda, because they can do it to you, too.”
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Re: Glenn Greenwald speaks out

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Aug 20, 2013 12:54 pm

The Snowden Effect, Continued
By Charles P. Pierce at 10:05AM

There is one thing for which we can thank Edward Snowden, International Man Of Luggage. His revelations clearly have delineated, once and for all, the parameters of liberalism's inner authoritarian. We all have one, that little voice that whispers, "Not all slopes are slippery," and we take its advice and then, 60 years or so later, we wonder how we all wound up in the ditch. Those parameters now appear to be sharply defined as Don't Be Unpleasant To Me On The Teevee, and Don't Inconvenience A President I Like. We've seen that over the weekend as various liberals half-defended the bullshit use of an anti-terrorism statute to detain David Miranda because of documents Miranda was carrying, which requires you to ignore the loud bell that ought to ring every time the British government starts using anti-terrorism statutes to conduct its intelligence business. (Ask the Irish what I'm talking about.) If the Brits thought that Miranda would be carrying documents he shouldn't have had -- and if, as appears likely, they were tipped by the American government to that effect -- then they should have let the American governnment swear out a warrant on those charges and conduct a proper arrest. Any argument aimed at mitigating the deployment of an anti-terrorism statute in this case is drowned out by the howls of political -- and, I fear, personal -- oxen being gored.

Comes now Jeffrey Toobin in The New Yorker, to kick things off with a slapstick comedy episode of Bad Historical Analogy Theater, after which he moves along to explaining how much damage Snowden may have done because, as we know, they are all honorable men, First, our drama critic steps in.

The assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy led directly to the passage of a historic law, the Gun Control Act of 1968. Does that change your view of the assassinations? Should we be grateful for the deaths of these two men? Of course not. That's lunatic logic. But the same reasoning is now being applied to the actions of Edward Snowden.

I am sorry, but I'd forgotten how, at trial, James Earl Ray mounted a defense saying that he'd iced Dr. King in order that the country might have more effective gun control. I know how much damage the assassinations of King and Kennedy did. I watched their funerals on TV. We have no idea what damage Snowden may or may not have caused. The NSA would like to tell us but, goshdarnit, they just can't. And, of course, they are all honorable men. This is so far off the plane of the ecliptic that Toobin's already halfway to Mars.

In this debate, Snowden himself says, those who followed the law were nothing better than Nazis: "I believe in the principle declared at Nuremberg, in 1945: ‘Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring.' "

This is both mendacious and completely ahistorical. Snowden here is not remotely comparing anyone at the NSA to the Nazis, unless you believe that the Nuremberg principles, which were adopted after the defeat of Nazi Germany, were adopted merely to prevent the rise of the Fourth Reich somewhere in the world. Rather, they were statements in law acknowledging that what Hitler's Germany did changed the paradigm of both nationalism and patriotism forever by perverting both of those concepts to monstrous ends. They apply universally. Is Toobin seriously arguing that the United States is, simply through its own inherent goodness, a place where the principles it primarily expounded do not apply? To say a country violated them is not to say that country is run by Nazis. It is to say that a country should check itself before it wrecks itself, and that its citizens have obligations to the common humanity that may supersede adherence to national laws. This is something with which, among other folks, Dr. King would have agreed.

To be sure, Snowden has prompted an international discussion about surveillance, but it's worthwhile to note that this debate is no academic exercise. It has real costs.

Tough. Welcome to the United States Of America, where we ought not to be afraid to debate openly any activity of our government, a principle we have abandoned to the shamans of the national-security state far too often in the past 70 years.

What if Snowden's wrong? What if there is no pervasive illegality in the National Security Agency's surveillance programs?

Not bloody likely, considering that we already have learned that they concocted cover stories. But, if so, then the law is an ass.

It is true that, as the Washington Post's Barton Gellman recently reported, the N.S.A. sometimes went beyond its authority. According to Gellman, the agency privately admits to two thousand seven hundred and seventy-six incidents of unauthorized collection of data within a twelve-month period. This is bad-but it's not clear how bad. If it's that many incidents out of a total of, say, three thousand initiatives, then it's very bad. But if-as is far more likely-it's two thousand seven hundred and seventy-six incidents out of many millions, then the errors are less serious. There should be no mistakes, of course. But government surveillance, like any human activity, is going to have errors, and it's far from clear, at this point, that the N.S.A.'s errors amounted to a major violation of law or an invasion of privacy.

Why is that conclusion "far more likely"? Why should I believe that? A year ago, we didn't know about this program at all. A week ago, we didn't know about all these all-too-human "errors" that our all-too-human spooks may have committed. And to step briefly onto the stage of BHAT myself, why not watch Dr. Strangelove and conclude that, "There should be no mistakes, of course. But nuclear deterrence, like any human activity, is going to have errors." Pretty soon, you're riding the bomb down.

The United States, like any great power, is always going to have an intelligence operation, and some electronic surveillance is obligatory in the modern world. But, because of Snowden's disclosures, the government will almost certainly have to spend billions of dollars, and thousands of people will have to spend thousands of hours, reworking our procedures. This is all because a thirty-year-old self-appointed arbiter of propriety decided to break the law and disclose what he had sworn to protect. That judgment-in my view-was not Snowden's to make. And it is simply grotesque that Snowden compares these thousands of government workers-all doing their jobs to protect the United States-to the Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg.

I was thinking just the other day that it's long past time that someone did a cost-benefit analysis on the Fourth Amendment. Here's the thing about what this country may or may not spend on its intelligence "operations" -- we pay the bills and we don't know what we're paying for, or how much we're paying for it. They'd tell us, of course, but, goshdarnit, again, they just can't. And they are all honorable men.

There is obviously some legitimate debate to be had about the extent and the legality of American surveillance operations. But there is no doubt about the nature of China and Russia. Snowden's pious invocation of the Nuremberg trials will probably be small comfort to the dissidents and the political prisoners whose cell doors may be locked a little tighter today because of what these authoritarian governments may have learned from his hard drive.

Ah, the old "liberal anti-Communist" position gets rebooted for the 21st Century. If Toobin wants to accuse Snowden of espionage, he should man-up and do it. Otherwise, this is just incoherent. We can't have "some legitimate debate about the extent and legality of American surveillance operations" because one side of the debate is swathed in secrecy and duplicity. (There is simply no logical reason to take anything the NSA says on this topic in good faith.) As to the plight of Chinese and Russian dissidents, if Toobin can demonstrate plausibly how, in revealing to Americans what their government has been about, Edward Snowden has somehow made their plight worse, then he should show his work. Otherwise, he's just waving the bloody shirt.

I would like to believe that this is not simply another salvo in the ever-escalating Toobin-Greenwald pissing contest. The issues are simply too important to get buried under a mudslide of personal pique, even though they're half-interred in that already. But, Green Room hooleys aside, Toobin here fundamentally is telling us, again, that they are all honorable men. I don't care what you think of Glenn Greenwald or Edward Snowden. In this democracy, "trust us" is not half good enough any more.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Glenn Greenwald speaks out

Postby elfismiles » Tue Aug 20, 2013 1:50 pm

probably won't be up long ...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPMpzKcZ9cM
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Re: Glenn Greenwald speaks out

Postby justdrew » Tue Aug 20, 2013 3:16 pm

Wombaticus Rex » 19 Aug 2013 08:38 wrote:
justdrew » Mon Aug 19, 2013 2:44 am wrote:Emory's probably over-reacting.


And Cheney is probably up to something.


yes.

well, I still think his central thesis of the 3rd Reich gone 'underground' is basically an accurate assessment of the Primary Movers behind the scenes.
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