I’m not particularly sorry that your inability to frame an argument about a law and its application has you so frustrated, and neither am I willing to stop discussing it. You’re just going to have to deal.
Derail away then. I’m sure people will treat your contributions with all the due consideration they generally merit.
Here’s an analysis by UK lawyer David Allen Green (aka Jack of Kent). As with most legal things, it’s all just word soup to me, but hopefully it’ll be interesting to some:
http://jackofkent.com/2013/08/nine-hours-in-the-life-of-david-miranda/
Boiled down, he’s saying that the purpose of Section 7, the law under which Miranda was detained and questioned, is to determine whether a particular person is a terrorism risk. He then says that the fact that British authorities tipped off the US in advance to their intention to detain Miranda indicates that they knew beforehand exactly who he was, which meant that they were already capable of determining whether or not he was a terrorism risk. There was thus no need to question and detain him under Section 7.
Seriously? Every single word after the quote box is an expression of opinion or values or aspiration. There’s not one word in there that can reasonably taken to be meant to be a technical description of the law.
That’s why there’s so much frustration in this exchange.
I thought this was an outrage at first, now I’m not so sure after having read more. The facts, as near as I can ascertain, are:
[ul]
[li]The Guardian are in possession of classified material likely gained from British security service work. This is fine if the Guardian have a legitimate need for those files whilst working in the public interest (e.g. to disclose illegal operations on the part of the SIS) and as long as the Guardian are responsible in handling them (e.g. not disclosing the names and details of British informants to the public).[/li][li]Instead, the Guardian seems happy to have an individual not in any sort of formal relationship with the Guardian be in possession of those files.[/li][li]Said individual is not only not formally affiliated with the Guardian, being merely the spouse of one of its journalists, but then attempts to fly those files halfway across the world to a potentially hostile third country in Brazil, where they can quite easily be “acquired” by the Brazilian security services to the detriment of the UK’s national interest.[/li][/ul]
Now, it’s quite easy to separate the issue of whether the Guardian has a legitimate interest in possessing those files, as a newspaper working in the public interest, should they be used responsibly, from the fact that the Guardian are complete fucking amateurs who are allowing gigabytes of classified information containing who knows what to be passed onto individuals with no formal affiliation with the newspaper, proceeding to fly the files out of the country into countries with at best a lukewarm relationship with the UK.
As for whether he was a terrorist or not. As far as I can see from the JackOfKent post above lawyers are arguing over whether the stop was legal. Some say yes, some say no. Who knows?
Read the comments under the post. It’s not that simple.
You may be right, but your interpretation makes the portion I quoted a nullity:
That sounds like a Catch-22. “If there is reason to question someone under Section 7, then there is no reason to question them under Section 7.”
I’m sure. I was just trying to relate what the blogger himself was saying.
I thought that at first too, but now I’ve changed my mind. I see him as saying that the Section 7 powers were intended only for situations of uncertainty, and this just wasn’t one such.
[quote=“Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party, post:86, topic:666640”]
I thought this was an outrage at first, now I’m not so sure after having read more. The facts, as near as I can ascertain, are:
[LIST]
[li]The Guardian are in possession of classified material likely gained from British security service work.[/li][/QUOTE]
No. Snowden worked for the NSA. He and the Guardian have information that whistleblows on the unprecedented and the unsuspected scope of programs of highly questionable legality that raises huge public interest issues. Even Obama has conceded this.
This is not a national security issue, it is a government embarassment issue. And IMO the public interest in the disclosure of this information far outweighs any theoretical and completely unproven claim that in some magic way will aid terrorists if disclosed.
This information exists in multiple formats in multiple locations as Rusbringer has said - particularly in the USA where unlike the UK there can be no prior restraint against publication.
The pretence that they had to sieze it in case it came into terrorist hands is just that - a pretence. Are they saying he was going to give it to terrorists (even if for the moment we accept the assertion he was carry journalistic material originating from Snowden) so they had to detain him and take his stuff? Are they saying the risk was terrorists would seize it from him en-route?
Bollocks, bollocks and more bollocks.
Seizing (alleged) copies of information through an outrageous abuse of terrorist legislation achieved nothing.
This was intimidation aimed at journalists revealing things 2 governments want to keep hidden from their own publics and their own legislatures.
This legislation was intended to allow police to question someone to determine if he was a terrorist. They already knew he was not.
Stop making excuses for them with fanciful mud slinging.
If there’s actual evidence that he’s a terrorist, there are other laws under which he can be detained, and section 7 is not appropriate. If the government knows he’s not a terrorist, then there’s no reason to detain him and section 7 is not appropriate. Section 7 is specifically supposed to be used in the case of uncertainty.
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.
Aside from which, as far as I can see it’s not even been stated that Miranda was carrying any of the Snowden information.
Yes. We have laws covering stolen information. But if they arrested and charged him then legal protections kick in. This approach was used precisely because it offers the suspect no access to their own lawyer and no right of silence.
This is abuse of pwer.
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. The middle ground is the press. It’s within their legal ability to expose criminal activity. That middle ground certainly has a gray area to it.
Can someone be detained for possessing material that doesn’t belong to them and have said material confiscated?
The comments lead me to believe that this a badly-drawn law with way too wide a scope. Agree?
So, the lesson to be learned from the UK security services’ action is that a whistleblower should immediately spread copies of all information he acquires far and wide, rather than risk having it destroyed while he takes time to carefully separate necessary disclosures from legitimate secrets. Jolly good show, chaps!
Yeah as it stands everybody likely falls under their definition of terrorism. I wonder if the courts have narrowed the interpretation?
Kindly dismount your towering steed. Nobody disputes the Guardian has a public interest role in bringing Tempora and other programmes to light. Where we, tagos, diverge is over whether the press has a duty of care, even when handling classified information legitimately, in how undifferentiated classified information is handled. 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.
(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)? Let’s say that some of the files Snowden stole cover steps the U.S., and possibly others, are taking or plan to take in order to combat terrorism. If so, then wouldn’t those papers be valuable to terrorists in helping them? And wouldn’t the questioning of Miranda then be justified?
Also, I’m not a lawyer, but when did it become okay for a person to possess stolen goods. What right does Miranda have to possess papers that were stolen?
Finally, regarding the Pentagon Papers. It is easier to conclude that those documents, which covered past activity could be characterized to merely "embarrass the government. Since we’re not sure exactly all that Snowden stole, we really can’t assume that there isn’t anything there that would be detrimental to, say, the current and future efforts to fight terrorism.