Threatening to release them unless the state acts how you want it to act gets pretty close, I would think, and could plausibly have been what they were investigating with respect to Miranda. (And as Greenwald confirmed today, he possesses both American and British secrets.)
Those aren’t ‘threats’ and Snowden isn’t a spy he’s a whistleblower exposing misdeeds of the state. That’s what whistleblower protection is meant to be for.
Exposing stuff that embarasses the State is not the same as ‘threatening national security’. Nothing Snowden or Greenwald has done in any way threatens ‘national security’ whatever the hell that is.
Not in my opinion. Governments acting like bullies are amongst the most dangerous threats I can think of. If you don’t want your suposedly damaging information released, don’t act like you’re heading a police state.
It’s wildly inappropriate. Miranda is someone who knows people who have leaked government documents. There’s no sensible reading of the word “terrorist” that applies to him. It doesn’t really matter if the goal here was intimidation or finding the source of a leak because either one would be out of line and a tremendous overreach. I expect governments to investigate leaks, but they have to do that within sensible limits that don’t result in unjustified searches and heavy handed intrusion into the rights of journalists and private citizens.
Here you go. The whole article is worth considering, including the final para:
You’re conflating two things. You can argue that what Greenwald has released so far is just investigative journalism or whistleblowing. But what Greenwald has threatened to release is, by his own account, very damaging. And it was evidently either not illuminating or safe enough to release as part of the journalism, and is being held back as a threat to keep the governments from doing things he and Snowden don’t want them to do. That isn’t whistleblowing.
Rhetorical Q&A:
Did the Brits charge Miranda under the statute by which they interrogated him?
No, they did not.
Did they charge him under any statute?
No, they did not. They held him the 9 hours they were allowed to hold him, they legally confiscated his telephone and other electronic storage devices and then they released him.
Did they have any evidence of terrorist ties to Miranda?
I’ve no idea - and neither do any of the respondents to this thread.
I think it’s significant that Miranda’s trip between Brazil and Germany was at The Guardian’s expense, for the purpose of couriering documents between Greenwald and Poitras, and that Greenwald had tweeted before that he’d sent sensitive documents obtained from Snowden to Miranda in encrypted format. I also think it’s not out of the question that either Poitras or Greenwald or both have had contact with organizations which are now or have been under terrorist watchlists. So it doesn’t seem unreasonable to me that the British government would be able to show cause to detain and question Miranda under that terrorism statute.
If you don’t know what’s meant by “national security,” how can you possibly conclude that nothing Snowden or Greenwald has done in any way threatens it?
It’s not a question of safety, but of scope. Glenn Greenwald is an American journalist who unsurprisingly writes most often about America. He doesn’t have the time to write about every piece of news in the entire world, so he focuses on the news that is most important to him. By targeting his boyfriend, Britain’s anti-“terrorism” community made themselves important to him.
The NSA is not the nation.
Obama is not the nation.
The CIA is not the nation.
Nixon was not the nation.
Revealing the corrupt for what they really are is not an attack on the United States of America.
It’s interesting how “divided opinion” is on something that, under normal circumstances, is pretty simple.
Simple as in – you either do it right (charge someone with something) or you enter shades of grey by stating we detain you for 9 hours, no disclosure of any kind, we let you go.
You think this guy will ever have a chance at normal life? Well, that was the point …
I don’t think there’s any such thing as ‘national security’. It’s just a catch-all frighten the rubes term for ‘embarassing shit we don’t want exposed’ in most cases.
Nothing Greenwald has written in any way threatens ‘national security.’ All it does is threaten the security of the state to do what the hell it likes without being held to account and get politicians asking awkward questions.
And if any of you truly in your heart of hearts believe this was anything other than intimidation of a journalist then you don’t deserve whatever illusion of freedom you think you have.
Are you all so scared of the terrorist bogey-man that you’ll turn a blind eye to everything if you have some sort of ‘well, he MIGHT be a terrorist’ straw to cling to?
I didn’t say it was whistleblowing. I said that the threat of governments acting like bullies is so severe that this kind of retaliation would be justified. And it could be whistleblowing and damaging at the same time, by the way.
Currently, I’m not worried nearly as much by terrorism threats or the release of damaging information than by the actions of our own supposedly democratic governements. Again, if they don’t want damaging informations to be released, they should stop behaving like police states by spying on citizens or detaining people who are related to people who are in contact with people who might hold on damaging information.
He does write about UK terrorism policy somewhat regularly, though I agree that the NSA story was almost exclusively about the US. But that’s not really the point, since only the most recent threats were about the UK. The prior threats were about the US.
It is one thing to use your journalist credentials as a shield from the criminal law governing the solicitation and release of classified information. The US, at least, recognizes that this kind of investigative journalism acts as a kind of safety valve on over-classification that is regulated by the leakers’ willingness to face the consequences of their action.
It is another thing entirely to obtain classified documents to use as blackmail if governments do things you do not like. And that’s true regardless of whether you think the documents are actually damaging or merely sufficiently embarassing to use as blackmail. The scope of our permitting you to break the law in order to further the public interest should not extend to your using that permission for your private ends.
I disagree. I think the exception to investigating and prosecuting people for crimes related to classified information should be quite narrow, and apply to the journalists who help facilitate the release of information designed to inform the public so that the public may take action.
What you’re defending seems to me to be much broader than that. With these particular threats, Greenwald is not trying to achieve change by informing the public so that the public pressures the US or UK government to change. The threat is the damage or embarrassment from the release. Defending it means concluding that it is appropriate to take one’s personal policy views and threaten to harm or embarrass the government unless it acts accordingly, and that seems extremely dangerous to me.
Should only people who agree with your policy views be entitled to such immunity from the law? Or can someone who believes the US should withdraw from Saudi Arabia and cut off aid to Israel (or invade Saudi Arabia and double aid to Israel, if you prefer) similarly threaten to release damaging or embarrassing information to achieve those ends?
Huh. So here’s a statute which allows the brief detention and interrogation of someone suspected of carrying leaked top secret documents from an allied government (which may also contain top secret information from or about British state security), and which allows confiscation of material to be held in evidence, but which does not require any more permanent or damaging legal action against the courier.
On the other hand, Miranda probably missed his connecting flight and the Guardian probably had to pay for another nonrefundable ticket. So there’s that.
That’s how I read it as well. That’s why I thought that what happened appears to have been legal. My question was aimed more at whether it was just.
Miranda may have been carrying classified material. One question would be whether it was US-classified or UK-classified. If it was US-classified, I’m not sure that it’s illegal under US law for him to possess it, and whether the UK should seize it seems more like a diplomatic decision than a legal one.
Again you’re confusing a statement regarding what the law should be with a statement about what is currently technically legal.
No he isn’t.
I don’t see a conditional or imperative in there. This reads as a statement of existing law. That is not to say I wouldn’t agree that the onus should be on the state to show cause.