# Is Glenn Greenwald's partner a terrorist? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 19, 2013, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-glenn-greenwalds-partner-a-terrorist/666640 "2013-08-19T14:15:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![PBear42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecccb3/32.png) [@PBear42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PBear42)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2013, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-glenn-greenwalds-partner-a-terrorist/666640/101 "2013-08-21T04:49:22Z")
Unfortunately, I’m having internet access problems which make it impossible for me to continue the discussion. It’s taken me an hour and a dozen attempts to get this far. I will mention that Jack of Kent’s blog (linked above) supports the interpretation of the Terrorism Act which I suggested. ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2013, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-glenn-greenwalds-partner-a-terrorist/666640/102 "2013-08-21T05:29:40Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > It seems like a catch 22 to me. It’s likely the data dump contains sensitive information and possession of it would be a crime. Unlike the 1971 trial there is certainly a great deal more information involved. > > So if the person who took the information can be arrested and tried then by extension there is the potential to do the same thing to anyone who conspires to distribute it. Possession of it is not a crime, and neither is “conspiring” to distribute it. That’s what that case says. The only person who can legitimately even be _accused_ of committing a crime is Snowden (and even then, he wouldn’t be if Obama wasn’t such an asshole), not any journalist who subsequently received the information. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2013, 6:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-glenn-greenwalds-partner-a-terrorist/666640/103 "2013-08-21T06:46:34Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > Possession of it is not a crime, and neither is “conspiring” to distribute it. That’s what that case says. The only person who can legitimately even be _accused_ of committing a crime is Snowden (and even then, he wouldn’t be if Obama wasn’t such an asshole), not any journalist who subsequently received the information. while IANAL I doubt the case covers all aspects of stolen information. ---
**Author:** ![Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cc9497/32.png) [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2013, 8:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-glenn-greenwalds-partner-a-terrorist/666640/104 "2013-08-21T08:09:38Z")
> [@ctnguy](#): > > It has now been revealed that the UK security services destroyed the Guardian’s copy of the Snowden information in the UK. So it would seem that the only way for the Guardian to carry out its work in the public interest is indeed for it to transport that information to a country outside the reach of the US/UK security apparatus. Perhaps if they didn’t want the info to be removed from the UK, they shouldn’t have come in like thugs and smashed up the Guardian’s hard drives. Sorry, don’t buy it. Miranda had been in Berlin. No moves were made against him, nor were they likely forthcoming given the political situation in Germany regarding the NSA scandal. They only acted when it became clear that he was trying to transport secret documents on his person to Brazil. If the UK security services could stop him at the airport, what was to stop the Brazilians stopping him, cloning the drive and sending him on his way? Absolutely nothing. As it stands we have the UK stopping a member of the public, not a member of the press, from exporting stolen top secret information on his person to a third country in Brazil. There’s literally no scandal there. The scandal is in the use/misuse of the Terrorism Act 2000 to stop him when existing laws dealing with possession of stolen material would have sufficed, and the incredibly broad nature of the wording of said Terrorism Act which makes this possible. > [@](#): > > Aside from which, as far as I can see it’s not even been stated that Miranda was carrying any of the Snowden information. Incorrect. [Cite:](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/19/world/europe/britain-detains-partner-of-reporter-tied-to-leaks.html?_r=0) > [@](#): > > 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. Those documents, which were stored on encrypted thumb drives, were confiscated by airport security, Mr. Greenwald said. **All of the documents came from the trove of materials provided to the two journalists by Mr. Snowden.** ---
**Author:** ![tagos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2013, 8:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-glenn-greenwalds-partner-a-terrorist/666640/105 "2013-08-21T08:32:09Z")
> [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](#): > > Sorry, don’t buy it. Miranda had been in Berlin. No moves were made against him, nor were they likely forthcoming given the political situation in Germany regarding the NSA scandal. They only acted when it became clear that he was trying to transport secret documents on his person to Brazil. Incorrect. Can’t read that cite but I am aware that the UK Govt ‘claims’ he had material ‘likely to give aid and comfort to terrorists’ - which could be anything. My bet being the documentary footage from the film-maker he met. The Guardian have said he was carrying nothing that could be remotely considered to meet that definition. Until independently proven otherwise I do not believe anything the Govt says about this case. I beleive what they call ‘stolen documents’ are legitimate items of interest to investigative hournalists pursuing a story in which the public interest of disclosure far outweighs any distantly theoretical, unspecified and unproven ‘aid’ to terrorists. Also the Guardian seems to be doing a way better job of protercting data than the US govt, who appears to let any low level Tom, Dick or Harry help themselves to whatever they want. And at this point we have absolutely no idea who among this apparently huge cast, or their employers, have not helped themselves to much more damaging data for much more venal goals than Snoden and the Guardian. This is not data on agents or operations - it is detail of the nature and scope of programs that have not been subject to proper oversight or public debate. Snowden is not a spy he is a whistleblower and the Guardian and Greenwald should be thanked by people who actually value freedom and democracy. ---
**Author:** ![tagos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2013, 8:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-glenn-greenwalds-partner-a-terrorist/666640/106 "2013-08-21T08:40:44Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > (bolding mine) > > Isn’t it reasonable to conclude that law could justifiably be used to assess _the degree_ of terrorist threat a person represents or the information he is holding)? No - those powers were there to assess him as a terrorist threat. And if they thought he had ‘stolen’ papers then they are within their rights to arrest him and subject him to due process. Instead they chose to abuse a power given for another purpose so they could remove his right to reprsentation and his right to silence. Did they arrest him for having stolen papers? No they did not. And I do not concede this information is ‘stolen’ information. I believe they are information put into the public domain by a legitimate whistleblower. And again I point out this is information on programs not operations. And that the Guardian has multiple copies stored electronically all over the world already. And I point out again the Guardian is taking more responsible care of the data than the NSA did. This is not about terorism this is about shielding programs from oversight and public debate and in furtherance of this the police abused their powers to a chilling extent for the purpose of intimidating journalists and impeding them in their work to this effect. ---
**Author:** ![tagos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2013, 8:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-glenn-greenwalds-partner-a-terrorist/666640/107 "2013-08-21T08:44:18Z")
> [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](#): > > The Guardian apparently takes the position that gigabytes of data can be passed around to the partners of journalists and flown halfway around the world to Brazil. You have no knowledge at all of what was being carried. And you have no evidence at all that the Guardina have not behaved responsibly. There is plenty of evidence that they have been way more responsible than the NSA’s open door ‘steal as much as you want’ policy for low level contractors. And if the USA really had any real concerns at the damage that Snowdens’s data could really cause they wouldn’t have forced him to take asylum in an unfriendly country. I lesson I draw from this is the information is not ‘dangerous’ but ‘embarassing’. ---
**Author:** ![tagos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2013, 9:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-glenn-greenwalds-partner-a-terrorist/666640/108 "2013-08-21T09:01:42Z")
[Lord Faulkener, the former Lord Chancellor and the man who helped introduce the 2000 Terrorist Bill says](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/21/david-miranda-law-detention-heathrow?guni=Network%20front:network-front%20main-3%20Main%20trailblock:Network%20front%20-%20main%20trailblock:Position1:sublinks): > [@](#): > > The Metropolitan police had no legal basis to detain David Miranda under the Terrorism Act 2000, Tony Blair’s former lord chancellor has claimed. > > Lord Falconer of Thoroton, who helped introduce the bill in the House of Lords, said that the act makes clear that police can only detain someone to assess whether they are involved in the commission, preparation or instigation of terrorism. > > Falconer told the Guardian: “I am very clear that this does not apply, either on its terms or in its spirit, to Mr Miranda.” > [@](#): > > Falconer cited in detail the Terrorism Act 2000, which was passed as the government moved to crack down on dissident Irish republican terrorists in the wake of the 1998 Good Friday agreement, to show that there was no legal basis for the detention of Miranda. He said that schedule 7 of the act allows police to detain someone even when they have no grounds for suspicion. But he added that police can only stop an individual to determine whether they are involved in commission, preparation or instigation of terrorism. And this somewhat right wing Guardian columnists puts the wider issues much better than I can. [So the innocent have nothing to fear?](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/20/innocent-fear-david-miranda?guni=Network%20front:network-front%20main-3%20Main%20trailblock:Network%20front%20-%20main%20trailblock:Position1:sublinks) > [@](#): > > Two great forces are now in fierce but unresolved contention. The material revealed by Edward Snowden through the Guardian and the Washington Post is of a wholly different order from WikiLeaks and other recent whistle-blowing incidents. It indicates not just that the modern state is gathering, storing and processing for its own ends electronic communication from around the world; far more serious, it reveals that this power has so corrupted those wielding it as to put them beyond effective democratic control. It was not the scope of NSA surveillance that led to Snowden’s defection. It was hearing his boss lie to Congress about it for hours on end. > > Last week in Washington, Congressional investigators discovered that the America’s foreign intelligence surveillance court, a body set up specifically to oversee the NSA, had itself been defied by the agency “thousands of times”. It was victim to “a culture of misinformation” as orders to destroy intercepts, emails and files were simply disregarded; an intelligence community that seems neither intelligent nor a community commanding a global empire that could suborn the world’s largest corporations, draw up targets for drone assassination, blackmail US Muslims into becoming spies and haul passengers off planes. T > [@](#): > > here is clearly a case for prior censorship of some matters of national security. A state secret once revealed cannot be later rectified by a mere denial. Yet the parliamentary and legal institutions for deciding these secrets are plainly no longer fit for purpose. They are treated by the services they supposedly supervise with falsehoods and contempt. In America, the constitution protects the press from pre-publication censorship, leaving those who reveal state secrets to the mercy of the courts and the judgment of public debate – hence the Putinesque treatment of Manning and Snowden. But at least Congress has put the US director of national intelligence, James Clapper, under severe pressure. Even President Barack Obama has welcomed the debate and accepted that the Patriot Act may need revision. > > In Britain, there has been no such response. GCHQ could boast to its American counterpart of its “light oversight regime compared to the US”. Parliamentary and legal control is a charade, a patsy of the secrecy lobby. > [@](#): > > The war between state power and those holding it to account needs constant refreshment. As Snowden shows, the whistleblowers and hacktivists can win the occasional skirmish. But it remains worrying that many otherwise liberal-minded Britons seem reluctant to take seriously the abuses revealed in the nature and growth of state surveillance. The arrogance of this abuse is now widespread. The same police force that harassed Miranda for nine hours at Heathrow is the one recently revealed as using surveillance to blackmail Lawrence family supporters and draw up lists of trouble-makers to hand over to private contractors. We can see where this leads. > > I hesitate to draw parallels with history, but I wonder how those now running the surveillance state – and their appeasers – would have behaved under the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. We hear today so many phrases we have heard before. The innocent have nothing to fear. Our critics merely comfort the enemy. You cannot be too safe. Loyalty is all. As one official said in wielding his legal stick over the Guardian: “You have had your debate. There’s no need to write any more.” > > Yes, there bloody well is. ---
**Author:** ![Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cc9497/32.png) [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2013, 9:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-glenn-greenwalds-partner-a-terrorist/666640/109 "2013-08-21T09:27:45Z")
> [@tagos](#): > > You have no knowledge at all of what was being carried. Nor do you. > [@tagos](#): > > And you have no evidence at all that the Guardina have not behaved responsibly. There is plenty of evidence that they have been way more responsible than the NSA’s open door ‘steal as much as you want’ policy for low level contractors. Well, yeah, that’s kind of my point. The UK’s intelligence agencies are in some sort of symbiotic relationship with US intelligence agencies that are institutionally incapable of understanding compartmentalisation or flagging when a junior functionary is downloading gigabytes of data completely unrelated to their immediate job for no apparent reason. We’ve literally no idea what else is included in that data that’s been handed over to the Guardian, or what Miranda was trying to carry with him to Brazil. ---
**Author:** ![tagos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2013, 11:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-glenn-greenwalds-partner-a-terrorist/666640/110 "2013-08-21T11:07:47Z")
> [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](#): > > Nor do you. > > Well, yeah, that’s kind of my point. The UK’s intelligence agencies are in some sort of symbiotic relationship with US intelligence agencies that are institutionally incapable of understanding compartmentalisation or flagging when a junior functionary is downloading gigabytes of data completely unrelated to their immediate job for no apparent reason. We’ve literally no idea what else is included in that data that’s been handed over to the Guardian, or what Miranda was trying to carry with him to Brazil. Then perhaps the Government should tell us more than ‘information likely to offer aid and comfort to terrorists’. If he had anything they would have arrested him. All this phrase means is ‘We got nuthin’.’ The Guardian say he was carrying dvd’s of a documentary and nothing that meets even the vague definition above. I have no reason to disbelieve them given the careful manner in which they are handling this story and every reason to disbeleive the statements of the USA and the UK given their constant pattern of lies, evasions and falsehoods - even to Congress. And the very notion that we should trust the judgement of security services who failed to spot 9/11, failed to spot 7/7, failed to spot Boston and failed to spot Iraq had no WMD’s is laughable. They are a bunch of ass-covering clowns. If Snowden uploaded everything to Wikileaks for all the world to see I don’t beleive it would affect ‘national security’ one bit. If it did then forcing him to seek asylum in Russia instead of granting him whisltblower status and opening an honest and informed debate with Congress, Parliament and the general public of both countries was the most stupid and irresponsible thing to do. This is exactly analagous to the whole WMD thing when the USA made no attempt to secure sites that they were screaming held WMD’s and made a bee-line for the Oil Ministry. They knew there were no WMD’s and they know there is no security threat. All that is strictly to keep the horses scared. This is about governments wanting to hide embarassing stuff, not National Security. We live in a democracy and we have not just the right but the responsibility to have a far-reaching, open and informed debate about the extent and nature of state surveillance. We have been actively denied this. In both countries we and our representatives have been actively misled and now we have the authorities saying: ‘Trust us, this debate will make you all unsafe. Unsafe we tells you. Trust us. Terrorists! Bad.’ And this is what happens when governments lie, when securaucrats answer congress questions with ‘the least untruthful answer’ they could give; when they ‘forget’ to mention entire programs in testimony. When they falsify data going before regulators. Where in the UK the Met send agent provocateurs to infiltrate peaceful protest groups to the extent of having sex and children with those they are spying on. See that smoke - right there on the horizon. That’s the Trust Boat and it sailed a long time ago. And the only way it’s turning around and sailing back into port is a free, frank and informed debate that leads to proper regulatory oversight of a severely cut back program. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance not eternal surveillance. ---
**Author:** ![Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cc9497/32.png) [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2013, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-glenn-greenwalds-partner-a-terrorist/666640/111 "2013-08-21T11:50:02Z")
> [@tagos](#): > > I have no reason to disbelieve them given the careful manner in which they are handling this story and every reason to disbeleive the statements of the USA and the UK given their constant pattern of lies, evasions and falsehoods - even to Congress. Careful manner? They first claimed he was stopped merely as being the partner of a journalist in an intimidation tactic. “My partner is not a journalist” stated Greenwald. It was only later revealed that his plane seat was paid for by the Guardian, he was in the habit of “helping Greenwald with his stories”, and was ferrying data back and forth between journalists. They next claimed that he was denied legal representation. Then 10pm Sunday night (conveniently after the rest of the press had turned in for the day) they claimed he was offered legal representation but turned it down as he “didn’t trust the authorities”. Now it turns out he had legal representation with him at all times whilst being questioned. Miranda claims he had no idea what he was carrying (_cough_ bullshit _cough_). Greenwald states in the cite I gave above (that you conveniently can’t read, weird as the NYTimes website seems pretty reliable to me) that the documents were from the trove given to the Guardian by Snowden. Greenwald later states: > [@](#): > > I am going to write my stories a lot more aggressively now. I’m 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 on that. I for one am glad he’s self-appointed as arbiter of what can and cannot be revealed about the work of the UK’s security services! I see no particular reason to trust the Guardian or Greenwald in this. Their stories have continuously changed. The Greenwald quote above makes him sound unhinged. Look, **tagos** , what did you honestly expect to happen here? A guy who is not officially a member of the press turns up at a British airport possibly carrying stolen documents which may be prejudicial to the security of the UK. The guy is trying to fly the documents to another country that has a lukewarm relationship with the UK at best. Are you honestly stating that the UK should have let him on his way? ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2013, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-glenn-greenwalds-partner-a-terrorist/666640/112 "2013-08-21T13:12:51Z")
**tagos** , you reposted this question from me: > [@](#): > > Isn’t it reasonable to conclude that law could justifiably be used to assess the degree of terrorist threat a person represents or the information he is holding? …and answered thusly: > [@tagos](#): > > No - those powers were there to assess him as a terrorist threat. To me, you’re answer seems to contradict itself. You state that the law is there to enable the state to “assess him as a terrorist threat”, yet you begin your answer with “no”. But in doing their assessment, aren’t they, in fact, assessing the degree to which he is a terrorist threat? And that the answer will be somewhere between zero threat and “Holy shit, he has a bomb strapped to him.”? ---
**Author:** ![tagos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2013, 1:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-glenn-greenwalds-partner-a-terrorist/666640/113 "2013-08-21T13:13:18Z")
> [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](#): > > Careful manner? They first claimed he was stopped merely as being the partner of a journalist in an intimidation tactic. “My partner is not a journalist” stated Greenwald. It was only later revealed that his plane seat was paid for by the Guardian, he was in the habit of “helping Greenwald with his stories”, and was ferrying data back and forth between journalists. They next claimed that he was denied legal representation. Then 10pm Sunday night (conveniently after the rest of the press had turned in for the day) they claimed he was offered legal representation but turned it down as he “didn’t trust the authorities”. Now it turns out he had legal representation with him at all times whilst being questioned. Miranda claims he had no idea what he was carrying (_cough_ bullshit _cough_). Greenwald states in the cite I gave above (that you conveniently can’t read, weird as the NYTimes website seems pretty reliable to me) that the documents were from the trove given to the Guardian by Snowden. Greenwald later states: > > I for one am glad he’s self-appointed as arbiter of what can and cannot be revealed about the work of the UK’s security services! > > I see no particular reason to trust the Guardian or Greenwald in this. Their stories have continuously changed. The Greenwald quote above makes him sound unhinged. > > Look, **tagos** , what did you honestly expect to happen here? A guy who is not officially a member of the press turns up at a British airport possibly carrying stolen documents which may be prejudicial to the security of the UK. The guy is trying to fly the documents to another country that has a lukewarm relationship with the UK at best. Are you honestly stating that the UK should have let him on his way? He was not ‘offered legal representation’. If you bothered actually finding about about what happened you’ll find that the Guardian’s lawyers were consistently denied access. The ‘representation’ he was offered was in hour 8 of his detention and was an unknown person chosen by the interrogators. Yes - I expect people who are not terrorists not to be subject to the abuse of terrorist legislation. If the authorities suspect him of a crime I expect them to seek a warrant for his arrest and for the suspect to then have all the rights and protections afforded him by law, including representation of his own choosing and the right to silence. And then if they have evidence, I expect them to charge him. Yea - I’m a crazy, far out liberal. I know but what problem do you and the authorities have with that? All the rest of your stuff has no bearing on whether the Guardian is reporting responsibly on the case. You go read what they have published and you cite me the bits that have threatened our ‘national security’. Then for bonus points you tell me how the Guardian can meet your stringent safety standards? Or are you saying that by definition just possessing information of this sort is inherently unsafe and therefore investigative journalism can never be based on such material. Investigative journalism demands evidence otherwise there is no evidence and without evidence people and institutions cannot be held to account. Then tell me again how trustworthy the State has proven that we should let them remove themselves from Press oversight. Most of it is from a low level powerpoint slide presentation of capabilities. This is material from a whisstleblower that meets the definition of being in the Public Interest. Obama has already conceded it has sparked a necessary debate. You can join with the govt and assert some nebulous ‘threat’ to ‘national security’ but until you can show why this trumps the Public Interest then it has no weight. Or are you arguing that in a democracy there is no public interest in disclosing this hitherto unknown depth and hitherto unsuspected scope of mass surveillance? It’s already demonstrated that there was no security surrounding this data and literally any one of thousands of people could just help themselves to it. ---
**Author:** ![Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cc9497/32.png) [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2013, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-glenn-greenwalds-partner-a-terrorist/666640/114 "2013-08-21T13:38:48Z")
> [@tagos](#): > > Or are you arguing that in a democracy there is no public interest in disclosing this hitherto unknown depth and hitherto unsuspected scope of mass surveillance? No, my position has remained remarkably consistent throughout this thread: the Guardian should be able to develop stories in the public interest from classified data passed to them by whistleblowers. On the other hand, the Guardian also has a responsibility to ensure that any classified data passed to it is not passed around for any and all to see, does not fall into the hands of people who should not possess it, namely the spouses, partners or paracletes of bloggers with no formal connection to the Guardian, and should not be flown to countries with a lukewarm diplomatic relationship with the UK where it can quite easily fall into the hands of the security services of the aforementioned country. I also think that stopping Miranda under the Terrorism Act was a scandal, clearly isn’t the sort of thing that the Act was developed to counter, the wording of the act is much too broad and needs narrowing, and in the end the use of the Act will backfire on the government. On the other hand, I’d be perfectly fine with him having been stopped under another Act related to e.g. handling stolen goods, and I’m not particularly convinced that the stop itself under the Terrorism Act was illegal as the Act is currently written. It’s not really a difficult position to understand, **tagos**. ---
**Author:** ![tagos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2013, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-glenn-greenwalds-partner-a-terrorist/666640/115 "2013-08-21T14:10:26Z")
> [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](#): > > No, my position has remained remarkably consistent throughout this thread: the Guardian should be able to develop stories in the public interest from classified data passed to them by whistleblowers. On the other hand, the Guardian also has a responsibility to ensure that any classified data passed to it is not passed around for any and all to see, does not fall into the hands of people who should not possess it, namely the spouses, partners or paracletes of bloggers with no formal connection to the Guardian, and should not be flown to countries with a lukewarm diplomatic relationship with the UK where it can quite easily fall into the hands of the security services of the aforementioned country. > > I also think that stopping Miranda under the Terrorism Act was a scandal, clearly isn’t the sort of thing that the Act was developed to counter, the wording of the act is much too broad and needs narrowing, and in the end the use of the Act will backfire on the government. On the other hand, I’d be perfectly fine with him having been stopped under another Act related to e.g. handling stolen goods, and I’m not particularly convinced that the stop itself under the Terrorism Act was illegal as the Act is currently written. > > It’s not really a difficult position to understand, **tagos**. The Guardian have repeatedly denied he had dangerous-to-reveal data so until you demonstrate with evidence other than the govt’s own self-serving and nebulous assertions then you’ve got nothing. Besides if it was securely encrypted then it was as safe as it could get. Theresa May could dispel all of this doubt by telling us what this ticking information bomb was. And then she could explain why they didn’t arrest him. I wonder why none of that happened? It’s because they got nothing either. He was not transporting a ticking info-bomb. Brazil is not a hostile country and until you explain to me how this is so much worse than forcing Snowden and his ‘oh-so-dangerous-really-you can-trust-us-on-this-guys’ information to seek refuge in Russia (a manifestly unfriendly country) then again you have nothing. ---
**Author:** ![ctnguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@ctnguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ctnguy)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2013, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-glenn-greenwalds-partner-a-terrorist/666640/116 "2013-08-21T15:56:05Z")
> [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](#): > > On the other hand, the Guardian also has a responsibility to ensure that any classified data passed to it […] should not be flown to countries with a lukewarm diplomatic relationship with the UK where it can quite easily fall into the hands of the security services of the aforementioned country. I ask again, how is the Guardian supposed to do that when the UK security services have made it clear that they will destroy copies of the information held within the UK? Clearly the Guardian cannot assume that the same will not happen in other countries with sufficiently close relationships with the UK to meet your standard. In fact, by forcibly destroying the copy in London, the UK security services have effectively forced the Guardian to keep copies outside the reach of the UK and its partners. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2013, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-glenn-greenwalds-partner-a-terrorist/666640/117 "2013-08-21T16:20:09Z")
Even if attempts to intimidate Greenwald worked, they wouldn’t work – confirmations of the initial whistle-blowing alarm keep coming in from elsewhere: > [@](#): > > [New Details Show Broader NSA Surveillance Reach](http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424127887324108204579022874091732470-lMyQjAxMTAzMDIwMDEyNDAyWj.html) > > The National Security Agency—which possesses only limited legal authority to spy on U.S. citizens—has built a surveillance network that covers more Americans’ Internet communications than officials have publicly disclosed, current and former officials say. > > The system has the capacity to reach roughly 75% of all U.S. Internet traffic… ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2013, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-glenn-greenwalds-partner-a-terrorist/666640/118 "2013-08-21T17:59:03Z")
> [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](#): > > Well, yeah, that’s kind of my point. The UK’s intelligence agencies are in some sort of symbiotic relationship with US intelligence agencies that are institutionally incapable of understanding compartmentalisation or flagging when a junior functionary is downloading gigabytes of data completely unrelated to their immediate job for no apparent reason. We’ve literally no idea what else is included in that data that’s been handed over to the Guardian, or what Miranda was trying to carry with him to Brazil. I am absolutely astounded that there is even a method of downloading the material. It’s routine for companies to lock down every external port on “regular” computers. In this case I would expect workstations with no external methods of downloading anything. Might not be the case here but it’s my 2C. Maybe he used his 007 computer hacking gizmo. ---
**Author:** ![BrokenBriton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@BrokenBriton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrokenBriton)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2013, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-glenn-greenwalds-partner-a-terrorist/666640/119 "2013-08-21T18:43:43Z")
Can I just be the first to say: Data mule! ---
**Author:** ![alexandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e68b1a/32.png) [@alexandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alexandra)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2013, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-glenn-greenwalds-partner-a-terrorist/666640/120 "2013-08-22T15:36:40Z")
> [@tagos](#): > > No - those powers were there to assess him as a terrorist threat. And if they thought he had ‘stolen’ papers then they are within their rights to arrest him and subject him to due process. Instead they chose to abuse a power given for another purpose so they could remove his right to reprsentation and his right to silence. This point is crucial and can’t be emphasised enough. For all those saying that he was possessing stolen goods and therefore this detention was okay - he did not have the right to a lawyer and was compelled to answer police questions, unlike someone arrested specifically on charges of theft. Even the government thinks this is wrong: [QUOTE=BBC] [The government] has introduced a number of reforms [to schedule 7], which are currently going through Parliament. These include allowing those held for longer than an hour to consult a solicitor, a reduction in the time someone can be held from nine hours to six hours, and training and accreditation for all officers using schedule 7 powers. [/QUOTE] [Source](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23757133). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-glenn-greenwalds-partner-a-terrorist/666640.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-glenn-greenwalds-partner-a-terrorist/666640.md?page=7)