The salient quote from Greenwald's article on this:
They completely abused their own terrorism law for reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism: a potent reminder of how often governments lie when they claim that they need powers to stop "the terrorists", and how dangerous it is to vest unchecked power with political officials in its name. [1]
This is a great example of why we should treat terrorism like any other crime, and why the police should never be trusted with exceptional powers simply because we feel under threat. Give them the powers, and they will be misused - in this case they were used on a relative of someone nothing to do with terrorism purely for the purpose of intimidation. The security services even called Greenwald to give him the news that his partner had been detained.
I wonder from how high up this order came. After all, it's not like Greenwald is going to take this lying down and that's something that they could predict quite accurately ahead of time. To abuse these powers on the partner of the journalist that is reporting the abuses is the worst tactical mistake made by any government to date, short of the diversion of a diplomats plane.
Taking into account that the UK law enforcement and Brazil have a bit of a history when it comes to labelling people terrorist wrongly makes it even worse.
2 tests perhaps and a warning. I suspect they are a step ahead, and actually did think this through. Whether it will backfire or not is up to the citizens to decide. But I suspect it won't backfire enough to cause a dent.
1) A test to see how the journalist will react and to flush out more information. I.e. force him to disclose more information so they know what he has.
2) Another test is to test public opinion. So far we have seen nothing but defensiveness and accusations from the White House. That bill to de-fund the NSA had some legs but didn't get off the ground. If there is no reaction that is a good benchmark, they don't have to stop and do anything. They could even push the envelope further and probably not get an real repercussions.
3) A warning is a powerful thing. It is message to all other journalists working with NSA sources. "Are you prepared to open your family to harassment, black lists and 9 hour detentions during travel?". As some mentioned in the comments, even the Mafia has basic engagement rules to leave family members alone. That tells one the level of engagement and the mentality of government actors we are dealing with.
I do think this is driven by fear and incompetence rather than malice but you could easily be right. I'd love to be a fly on the wall in the various offices dealing with the fall-out from this, especially the interface boundary between the foreign affairs and the anti-terror branches.
Also note that this wasn't the US government; it was the British state, which for the past decade seems to have based its foreign policy obsessively on playing Mini-Me to the USA's Dr. Evil.
Quite possibly the idea of detaining Mr. Miranda originated from an overzealous busy-body relatively low in the hierarchy. Or perhaps it's merely meant to look like that.
(I discount the gay smear argument. It might play in the US, but here in the UK there are/have been out-of-the-closet gay Conservative cabinet ministers.)
> (I discount the gay smear argument. It might play in the US, but here in the UK there are/have been out-of-the-closet gay Conservative cabinet ministers.)
Somewhat surprisingly, I don't think it plays in the US anymore either. I have heard fairly little about either Greenwald or Manning's GSM status. The media has made more of a deal with Snowden and his "pole dancing" ex-girlfriend.
This is actually the 2nd salvo. Glenn Greenwald basically made his opening statement in the negotiation for how this is going to go down in the NYT's profile of Laura Poitras:
> Their discussion turned to the question of coming back to the United States. Greenwald said, half-jokingly, that if he was arrested, WikiLeaks would become the new traffic cop for publishing N.S.A. documents. “I would just say: ‘O.K., let me introduce you to my friend Julian Assange, who’s going to take my place. Have fun dealing with him.’ ”
> Poitras prodded him: “So you’re going back to the States?”
> He laughed and pointed out that unfortunately, the government does not always take the smartest course of action. “If they were smart,” he said, “I would do it.”
“When I was in Hong Kong, I spoke to my partner in Rio via Skype and told him I would send an electronic encrypted copy of the documents,” Greenwald said. “I did not end up doing it. Two days later his laptop was stolen from our house and nothing else was taken. Nothing like that has happened before. I am not saying it’s connected to this, but obviously the possibility exists.”
After that his partner was definitely in play and that set the stage for todays (or yesterday, depending on where you live) action.
Records are usually kept. After all, that is what bureaucracies do. They keep records. Even if the government's action was technically legal, the UK legal system is pretty robust and independent, and the government is defeated in the courts all the time.
Mr Miranda should consult a qualified lawyer: There will likely be several good ones who would do the work pro bono, to explore avenues whereby he can seek redress.
At the very least, it will cost the government (significant quantities of) time and money in legal expenses, and may cause them to think twice about using such tactics in future.
> 1) A test to see how the journalist will react and to
> flush out more information. I.e. force him to disclose
> more information so they know what he has.
I think they already know through a post event review of MicroSoft's built in auditing logs. My understanding is that Snowden was a low level Windows admin that copied stuff that was either 1) in transit through a Microsoft Sharepoint server 2) anything he could find by roaming around the intranet. The NSA disclosed that he started grabbing documents when he was working as a contractor under Dell. They said he was aggressively exploring the limits of his network access and announced that 1) documents on their intranet would from now on be encrypted 2) that they would drastically reduce the number of system and network (as in Microsoft misuse of the term) administrators.
Plus, Wikileaks leaked an AES256 encrypted insurance file that presumably is everything that have from Snowden. Wikileaks has some of the shittiest OPSEC ever (as the Manning events showed). So, we know that they probably used openssl for the encryption and that the STK string is probably a sentence, or a few sentences, from a seminal published book about liberty/privacy. The NSA has probably already cracked the insurance file key. So, if they don't have the Manning portfolio from audit logs, they probably have it from Wikileaks.
There's an ex-NSA NWC guy that is putting out a lot of excellent information on this whole thing: 20committee
Wow that guy is a dick. Tons of FUD and highly partisan cheerleading, and some pretty sad troll responses (though I'm sure he gets a lot of troll attention, which does wear down a person's reasonableness).
I can understand that someone may have a different view on the balance between liberty and security, but his view is hyperbolic, not informative.
He is a dick but he unfortunately has some ammo in the sense that the Guardian appears to have financed the trip. That still doesn't make what happened acceptable but it will assuage those who lean towards sympathizing with the NSA. The fact that Greenwald wasn't more forthcoming about this makes it even more difficult.
I don't see how that makes any difference, in fact if it makes a difference it makes it worse.
Detaining partner of journalist -> bad.
Detaining newspaper employee, possibly journalist -> very bad.
Once journalists will feel that they are in danger of no longer being free to do their reporting this story will get a lot more attention than it does at the moment.
Agree with this. There's a large measure of difference between detaining a private citizen (bad), and detaining somebody under the employ of a journalist organisation (far, far worse).
One is harrassment, the other is political intimidation in an attempt to censor.
In this day and age of blogging, everyone can be a journalist. Interesting fact - when the US constitution was written, the phrase "free exercise ... of the press" did not refer to news reporting, it referred to literal printing presses. Over time the phrase "freedom of the press" has been reduced to nominal news reporting agencies. But at the time it basically meant anyone mass-producing text.
John Schindler is only a source of "excellent information" on this case in the sense that Ann Coulter provides "excellent political commentary". What a total joke.
As I recall it, one of their partner newspapers deliberately misunderstood how encryption worked, leaked their special passcode to one of the document archives, and then pointed at Wikileaks for being shitty after themselves handing the keys to the unredacted documents to the world.
The reason this was a critical screwup is that wikileaks reused decryption keys with data they shared so when one person leaked their key, it was usable on many people's encrypted data.
Useful test for Greenwald and the Guardian too, no?
Useful to run this partner through an airport with some clean electronics to see what the reaction would be and to perhaps see how far the British are prepared to go to please our Us masters.
Imagine if the confiscated electronics contained as-yet unreleased documents describing abuses of "anti-terror laws" by UK authorities - in similar ways to the evidence-laundering revelations in the US?
4) Highlight the fact that Greenwald is in an openly gay relationship in an attempt to discredit him / colour what he's saying in a personal light. Sadly, a large part of the conservative base will cling to this I think.
The political elite in the UK has a somewhat different relationship with the "base" than the political elite in the US does. It is a much, much, much smaller country, and the difference in size makes a real difference to the way that the machinery of politics operates.
No doubt, but this is the first time I've heard of it. Before it was just a random fact about Greenwald, now it's splashed all over the media, in people's faces.
Whether it will backfire or not is up to the citizens to decide. But I suspect it won't backfire enough to cause a dent.
Maybe in the US, but this is unlikely to make a ripple in the British public sphere.
The Snowden story has not been a big deal here and today's news has not had much airtime either (it's not even on the BBC News front page). The majority of Brits don't know about this story, nor are likely to have the context to care if they did.
Issues of UK-US cooperation, even over matters as worrying as extraditing Brits to the US for trial, rarely stir up great feelings amongst everyday folk. Being on Twitter and HN, I do know about this story and I still don't care for it much (in terms of how I consider British policy).
"I could never have thought I could hold up the Mail as a good source :-)"
It's a struggle for me to even vaguely consider the Mail as a good source but they do seem to needle the government over certain things the others won't touch. I'd imagine because they feel they have such a swing over a large proportion of the main voter base for the UK they feel like they can get away with things that a lesser newspaper would be dragged over the coals for.
No, I think they just screwed up. Don't assume these intelligence services people are intelligent and have thought through all the angles, especially in the UK.
The people who really benefitted from this action are Greenwald, The Guardian and those of us who want our governments to stop abusing their power. The UK government just look like assholes again. This will spawn further news stories in places like The Guardian as the legal fallout from this continues thereby keeping the surveillance state in the news cycle longer.
The intent was quite likely to intimidate other journalists, whistle blowers, or just people in a position to help them. It could also have been to make more public that Greenwald has a younger gay Brazilian partner, something we gloss over in this crowd, but for which he'll be judged harashly for in other social circles.
I don't think it was a coincidence that Greenwald was contacted when Miranda was detained. Whoever made the decision is playing a PR game, and wanted this to be in the news.
> It could also have been to make more public that Greenwald has a younger gay Brazilian partner, something we gloss over in this crowd, but for which he'll be judged harashly for in other social circles.
Well, it's not like the Guardian is really terribly popular amongst bigots, anyway... If he wrote for the Daily Mail I could see your point.
The irrational (but very real) reasoning goes like this:
Glenn reported on the NSA leaks. Glenn is gay. Everything gays do is wrong, therefore reporting on the NSA leaks is wrong. Also, supporting gays is bad, because someone might think you're gay. Therefore supporting NSA leakers is bad.
Where Glenn works is irrelevant. The NSA probably wants to discredit everyone involved, and garner as much support for themselves as they can.
The leader of the Scottish Conservative Party is a lesbian, the Conservative government just pushed through same-sex marriage legislation. I don't think the idea 'gays are wrong' gets you very far in the UK any more.
The only prominent politician I can think of who pushes that line is Nick Griffin, and he's literally a nazi.
Farage has started pushing that line a bit, but it seems to be more a way of pulling in some more hardline conservatives than a strong personal conviction
Still, he was contacted. It's amazing that the owner of Lavabit can't even talk about what he can't talk about, yet Greenwald gets a mysterious phone call letting him know Miranda is in the process of being questioned?
First off, those two things aren't even in the same jurisdiction.
But, you know that can go both ways. Maybe the caller was sympathetic to Miranda's situation but his hands were tied by the bureaucracy and all of his fellows who were less-than-sympathetic? By alerting Greenwald he let someone else without anything to lose take action. Maybe the reason he wouldn't give out his name is because he didn't want to face internal reprisals, but he had to give his serial number because of policy so he went by the book.
I'm just saying that with such little information we have so far, it is a real rashomon situation. Also, hanlon's razor.
I would be very surprised if what would clearly become a high-profile detainment wasn't choreographed ahead of time to the minute, the possible routes of questioning prepared, and the timing and contents of the phone call thought through and structures to elicit particular response. These are moves in a PR campaign of the utmost importance, not some random detention decided by a low-level bureaucrat.
That's what puzzles me the most. It's like both sides are going through some highly planned, highly choreographed steps to do....something.
Greenwald sends his husband all the way to Berlin and back to meet with Poitras? And he's allegedly (from some headlines this weekend) carrying all the Snowden documents? Wouldn't Greenwald already have this? Why would he send his husband and not some unknown person that was probably under the radar?
And obviously the US/UK is trying to let the Snowden/Assange group know that their every step is being watched. I'm also guessing Poitras' safe house in Berlin is now not as safe anymore.
This is like watching a spy novel unfold in real life. I can't wait for the book that eventually explains everything that is currently happening.
Also a bit strange that he went from Germany to Brazil via the UK, and was allegedly carrying documents, which seems harder than sending encrypted files over the internet. Even if journalists aren't themselves technical, surely the Guardian must have some specialists that can advise them on setting up communications which snooping governments can't intercept?
As for what they're trying to accomplish... that seems like a fun thing to speculate about over drinks :)
Don't make the mistake of putting the cart before the horse. Just because things worked out a certain way is not proof that the end result was intentional.
Diversion of a plane carrying a head of state, to be precise.
But yeah, it's not easy to imagine how such decisions are made. Of course, it's one of the features of authoritarianism that the display of authority trumps "tactical mistakes". But it's people who give such orders, not "authoritarianism". The simplistic explanation would be to state they're "pissed off". But maybe reality is quite close to that. By arresting Greenwald's partner, the UK authorities primarily demonstrate, to themselves, that they still hold certain powers -- and I wouldn't underestimate the self-motivational dimension of such a demonstration.
I don't think the UK government is just a US puppet here. A lot of materials that Snowden released are directly related to UK interests -- part of which is to at least be perceived as an autonomous entity that can make autonomous decisions.
I think it would be foolish to underestimate how closely the interests of the Five Eyes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement)
track together. They were all hurt by the Guardian articles.
FWIW, this sort of behavior was expected from the UK and US authorities. They did the same to @ioerror and will likely do the same to any individual who is seen as challenging the interests of the US and UK intelligence organizations.
If you've de-cloaked yourself as an investigative apparatus that's dedicated to exposing the secrets of folks who expressly do NOT want their secrets exposed, you should expect no less.
the worst tactical mistake made by any government to date
Why would this be a tactical mistake? The general public DOES NOT GIVE A FUCK. The government(s) know(s) this quite well.
If you think for a second that detention of associates of political enemies matters to an electorate far more interested in the minutiae of Kanye West's baby, you're living in a fairy land of your own making.
I'm kind of confused by what you consider the "general public" here.
Right now, in addition to this being the top story on HN, it is is on the default reddit front page at #9 and rising. It's also on the front page of the New York times website, and also in the top three headlines at news.google.com. Google reports 25 articles most being published in the last hour.
By these measures, it seems to me that a lot of people are rather interested in the story.
Now, I understand that you may not consider "the population that consumes its news on the internet" to be equivalent to the "general public". But any argument about that question is a much larger one than an argument about the public's interest in this particular story.
The fact is, even amongst all of the tabloid trash real news stories do matter to people, and people who consume cotton candy celebrity media for entertainment can also be consumers of hard news. The existence of one doesn't preclude interest in the other.
Neither the BBC, Independent, The Sun nor Daily Mail report on it; q.e.d., the "general public" doesn't care.
Edit: The Sun does, however, have boobs on its homepage, the Daily Mail talks about celebrities and the BBC's international site talks about Syria, Gibraltar and Usain Bolt, with its England page concerned with assisted suicide, a rider who died after a horse accident, something about climate activists and this gem: "Leicester Globe pub closes over anti-military rumours"...
Edit 2: Colour me impressed, the Telegraph not only reports on it on its frontpage, it also has an additional quote by an Amnesty International spokesperson. That's at least something, I suppose?
Certain HN contributors seem to subscribe to a very strange idea that if something is news on HN, it surely is not news elsewhere.
You see it all the time. Go back to the very first HN discussions about PRISM and phonetapping and you'll see people swearing on their mothers life that nobody outside HN will ever care because it is just a 'nerd issue' or something.
This is starting to look like a nice example of the Streisand effect. The more work the authorities do to squash the story and intimidate those associated with it the more legs it is getting.
It's possible, but I don't think it's likely. D-notices are very British things - they're a polite request to the media not to report on specific areas, and carry no legal weight. The assumption is that as long as they are issued in good faith, then the media goes along with them and everyone's happy because the security services don't have to start lobbying for censorship powers.
Now, along comes a situation which looks a lot like an attempt at journalistic suppression by the state. The incentive for the media to go along with any potential D-notice has evaporated because this is just censorship by other means, and if you're going to censor us anyway, why bother with D-notices? Issuing a D-notice over harrassing a journalist (via their family, in this case) would be something of a bodyliner, and I don't think even the British press would have a hard time figuring out what to do about it.
The super-injunctions were ridiculed pretty much out of existence. TV newscasters talked so much about them they started letting names slip or details sufficient that "everyone" knew. Twitter was overflowing of people publishing the names. TV comedians ridiculed anyone involved, and made jokes about how they'd get arrested, faked calls from their lawyers to shows they were on, and in general showed no respect for them.
If anyone issued a super-injunction over this, the British media would see it as a challenge as to who could ensure the details were insinuated in such as way as to ensure the widest distribution.
I didn't catch it all but it had a significant section on the main BBC Six O'Clock News.
I wrote to my MP, (Michael Gove) about this. While I disagree with him on many (if not most) things as an ex-journalist I hope he is unhappy with this.
It's a mistake because targeting a journalist's family member is quite likely to piss the average journalist the fuck off. The Washington Press corps can make Obama's life fucking miserable if they so choose, and absolutely drown his agenda in press about Snowden, Greenwald, how and when the White House communicated with the UK about this, and a million other things.
They can make an oxygen-sucking scandal out of nothing. This could devour the rest of Obama's second term if it gets out of hand (and the Republicans decide there's more mileage in beating him up about it rather than supporting the security state).
The public does not have to care for this to be a huge negative for the gov't. The only people who need to care are precisely the ones most likely to--folks rather like Greenwald.
You realise that such speculation is more immoral than the acts carried out so far right? You're ostensibly describing trying to blackmail the most powerful man in the world.
Stop licking the boots of power for a second and think about what you've said: literally, that imagining questions one might ask of misbehaving public servants is worse than the original misbehavior of those public servants. What color is the sky in your world?
The actions cited: investigating the behavior of government, and questioning public servants about that behavior. Which is basically the role of the fourth branch; read any founding father. But you describe this, with a vindictive imagination zealous enough to do any federal prosecutor proud, as "blackmail". Journalists, doing their jobs. What. The. Fuck.
If it were up to those in power to define what is and is not "an oxygen-sucking scandal out of nothing", nothing would get investigated by journalists, ever. That's why, at least until recently, it has been journalists who have decided the proper focus of their work. The First Amendment is not vague on this point: Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press...
I know you're trolling me here, but fuck it there probably are some halfwits out there nodding along with these power-worshiping redefinitions of old, well-understood law. From 18 U.S.C. § 873, blackmail: "Whoever, under a threat of informing, or as a consideration for not informing, against any violation of any law of the United States, demands or receives any money or other valuable thing, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned..." There's no money here. What is the "other valuable thing"? The safety of journalists' innocent loved ones? That's monstrous, and that isn't a proper interpretation of law.
> There's no money here. What is the "other valuable thing"? The safety of journalists' innocent loved ones? That's monstrous, and that isn't a proper interpretation of law
No, the 'other valuable thing' in this case is immunity from search or seizure.
No, the actions being speculated were about the possibility of retaliation if the government pisses off the wrong journalists too much. For there to be blackmail, someone would need to make a threat in advance.
Retaliation for a perceived offence can be blackmail. I'm not suggesting the poster was actually blackmailing anyone, but it's hardly the most moral position to take.
No, I think that's a rediculous assertion. Journalists have choices about what the direct their attention to. Various things help them make those choices, and misuse of state power against somebody they can personally identify with is the sort of thing that will draw their attention.
It is a tactical mistake because stuff like this will tip the scales into the direction of the general public caring about it without giving much of anything in return. It's mostly downside unless Greenwald & co did something dumb, and so far they don't strike me as dumb.
Really? If you talk with any of your non-tech friends about this topic, does a single one of them care? My money is on no. And in the unlikely case the answer is nonzero, the proffered solution is always to vote for "the other guy".
It's naiveté at the highest level to think that any meaningful proportion of the electorate cares, and that a single thing will change. If anything, the State now has tacit permission to press even further down the road of dystopia.
We live in a highly insular world in which our ideas are echoed by like-minded people. In such a world, it's easy to make the mistake of assuming that the broader populace is similarly like-minded. The reality, however, is that so long as sufficient bread and circuses are provided, nobody will care nearly as much as you or I do.
The number of random people who ask me about NSA spying now vs. 6 months ago is huge.
The DEA partnership basically won over minorities, drug people, young people.
You could probably find ways to make this an anti-immigrant issue in general (spying on foreigners; obviously if you're Muslim or brown, but maybe it could somehow extend to Chinese immigrants too?)
Tech people hate it naturally. Business people (other than defense contractors) hate it because it makes doing business harder, particularly if you're doing business with Europe or other international business.
This abuse of Greenwald's lover might win over gay people.
Gun people were already super suspicious of the government since Sandy Hook w.r.t. registry and confiscation (honestly for the entire Obama administration, and even during Bush, and definitely during Clinton, too, but more so now)
Right wing people are suspicious due to IRS and general hatred of Obama. "NSA shares records with IRS" would be a great extension to the story, but even lawful IRS subpoena of electronic records supports the case for strong crypto under the control of the end user.
All we need is for NSA records to be used against Christians (pro life groups? I'm finding it hard to find ways NSA spying is specifically anti mainstream Christians) to essentially have 80% of people on the side of freedom, each for his own reason and maybe totally different from the others.
The only people left on the other side are die-hard militarists, defense contractors, and the political class, or people who are irrationally putting hypothetical safety over even their own liberty (I'd expect people to sacrifice unused liberty or the liberty of other people for their own hypothetical safety, always).
Basically all the people I met in be military we're essentially libertarian and "personal responsibility" on safety issues; some of the more religious people were against eg gay marriage for moral/religious reasons. I don't think most of the military outside the IC is in favor of domestic spying at all -- they are even pro drug decriminalization.
I fit in sroerick's demographic. My evidence is anecdotal, but pretty much exactly in line with your critique, for both me and my ex-military friends.
It may not be related, but we know first hand what its like to have the government entirely too "in the know" about your life. Not many of us are fans of it, even when it was arguably necessary to keep people alive.
If you talk with any of your non-tech friends about this topic, does a single one of them care?
FWIW, the nephew of a very close friend of mine mentioned the topic of Snowden to me. He's a former army ranger, just recently mustered out and now going to veterinary school. He thought Snowden was a hero. His mom, who basically owns a few gas stations, has been very pro Assange and Bradley Manning for years and I'm sure is also paying a decent amount of attention to Snowden's story.
Snowden has been on the front page of the Huffington Post for months - just like this particular story is at just this moment. This submission was posted from The Guardian. Masses of people read these publications.
Astrophysicists, mathematicians, and scientists, for the most part, don't read Hacker News. But they do read the Huffington Post. Some of them even are so clever they made these microwaveable-beef taquitos that always come out crunchy that I'm just about to snack on. They don't care about issues that directly affect their freedoms and liberty? The masses are unwashed?
I suspect you suffer from this insularity you reference. You're completely out of touch with "Main St" where this story has legs and is turning the tide against terrorism based laws. Look at quotes from various leaders of US congress for how the shift is in play.
In fact that could be one of the reasons behind the revelations/leaks coming out in bite-size doses. To counter the short public memory, instead of a big dump of the information with short shelf-life, a drip feed of revelations/news on abuses and overreaches would help keep the issues in line of sight and would help cementing public opinion.
People may not be up in arms and shouting in streets now, but once the public opinion takes root in the mind, it would be hard to change come election no matter who promises what.
People don't care. Never did, never will. Yet, things do change, from time to time. One way out of this deadlock of apathy and perception of apathy would be to study -- in depth, historically -- what has made power erode, often in very short periods of time, sometimes even single events. Maybe you'll come to the conclusion that just "raising awareness" is not what gets you there, and that there may be situations where people who, essentially, don't care are much more likely to bring down a regime than people who do.
I've seen a few comments that say the same thing. Care to elaborate how far their "care" really goes? Are they doing something about it, or is just like any other news in America where it's dinner-table conversation, but nothing else.
Over the past few months at a 'working class' bar that I regular, I've listened to plenty of people rant about the NSA, DEA, and the Feds in general, usually prompted by a television turned to 24hr news.
What catches my attention is the wide variety of reasons people have for carrying. Some are afraid that the government is going to use it to take away their guns, others are concerned about surveillance of GSM/LGBT activists, others are particularly disturbed by the NSA/DEA angle. One of those conversations was then followed up with a tirade about 9/11 and the moon landing... but the vast majority of people who are concerned by this are perfectly normal people.
> If you talk with any of your non-tech friends about this topic, does a single one of them care?
From what I've seen so far, many people care, but not in the way we'd like. A surprising amount of people think along the lines of "If Greenwald/Snowden/etc are doing something wrong, maybe they shouldn't be doing it" or "If this makes me safe from terrorists, then I support it".
Don't underestimate the stupidity of the general populace. People are dumb and selfish and generally won't stand up against injustices unless it somehow directly affects them.
Of course they care. Everyone I have asked whether techy or otherwise has said the government has no business reading people's e-mails etc.
This has been news for two months now and it continues to be news. It affected US-Russia relations, its big in Brazil, Germany. There was a vote which almost succeeded in defunding the NSA. Ordinary people do care and opinion polls show it.
The first, obviously, is swift and violent revolution. Historically speaking, totalitarian power has only ever succumbed to greater power. Obviously this is not an option I would advocate or consider. Nor is it an option that's even possible. Drunk NRA members with Mini-14s versus the US Naval Carrier Fleet, USMC, and USAF, all of which are provided with dossiers on high value targets sympathetic to the cause provided by the NSA? Lulz, no contest.
The second option is equally unpleasant, but for different reasons. We would require a total and catastrophic economic collapse, such that bread and circuses can no longer be affordably provided and such that the populace becomes sufficiently uncomfortable to actually start giving a shit. THIS solution is also not advisable, since such scenarios don't offer options to guide who is elected in the place of the devil we know. The transition from the Weimar to the Third Reich offers a valuable, and scary, precedent here.
Since both of the above are unpalatable, my solution is to drink heavily and bitch endlessly on the internet while still enjoying my comfortable life.
You could also look at what Upworthy is doing: a "mission-driven" company engineering viral content for the purpose of promoting social awareness and other things they find to be generally healthy for society.
People overestimate the impact of the Internet, but they also underestimate it; I have a suspicion that the dissolution of traditional mass media will make it easier for interest groups to influence the public sphere via social networks, using propagation techniques similar to those that Upworthy is currently harnessing. That's what I find fascinating about Upworthy: using social media marketing strategies to sell ideas instead of products.
You're attacking a strawman, since he made it quite clear that he wasn't calling for swift and violent revolution: "Obviously this is not an option I would advocate or consider. Nor is it an option that's even possible."
There is a political solution. Public opinion holds great sway. So the politicians may go on a uturn to keep their jobs.
There is a legal solution. Courts may yet declare this unconstitutional.
Then there is a voting solution. People voted for Obama because he promised to get rid of all this. As Bush said fool me once, you cant fool twice. So people might in 2016 elect someone who has a record of being against these measures.
Plenty of solutions before a violent revolution. See for example the transition from The McCarthy era.
> Really? If you talk with any of your non-tech friends about this topic, does a single one of them care?
I've had quite the opposite experience so far. Most of the non-tech people I met recently on buses, shops etc. seemed to understand the problem very clearly and they cared. People cared about the issues at hand and quite intensely at that.
True that the majority seems silent, but deep inside almost everyone expressed a kind of hatred towards the 'O-force'.
Let's not misunderstand people because each one of us wants to hear positive news everyday. Stuff like Kanye's baby. This is not an unexpected behavior because ordinary people like us really want only one thing: Not being hassled by assholes.
In my opinion most of the times people are in pursuit of happiness and that is also, mark my words, the sole reason why people voted the O's to power in the first place. Let's not underestimate the power of people and lose hope altogether. It's much quicker to fall downhill than to climb high in the trust game of politics. Ever wondered how many people still dislike the bygone Bush?
Who's Kanye? But seriously, there's a lot of people who care. I think we have to shake the habit of concluding that what the celebrity insider press reports on is what people at large care about. Most people don't read the papers that aren't covering the story. So what?
The typical reaction I've seen is snark. The most memorable one was a Facebook post:
"I don't care if Obama reads my text messages. All he'll learn is how to sext."
Most of the "smart" people I know, both in and out of the tech industry, are more interested in Egypt, Syria, and the large drop in US stock market indices last week.
How sad is it that Orwell's dire portrayal of Big Brother is no longer as relevant to most people as following reality TV's Big Brother...
That's probably because Orwell's utopia is too extreme to happen... the steps that lead to it are too radical, and can only happen in some extreme circonstances.
So Orwell was a little paranoid... but Huxley was spot on.
I guarantee that they were not expecting the intensity of the reaction on this one.
A lot of stories, like the LavaBit shutdown for example, never elicited the strong backlash that it should have. It was however, well known in security and technology media circles.
Because it is a slow(er) Sunday news morning, the reaction on twitter to this story has been quite intense, and that is translating into a huge amount of print and broadcast news stories.
If this was intended to intimidate journalists, that would have been achieved through the inevitable reporting in specialty blogs and twitter feeds of those intensely interested in the subject.
This controversy on the other hand, is blowing up in their face, which will result in reporters making the next 72 hours hell for the various authorities involved on both sides of the pond.
My sense from obama's recent remarks is that there is definitely some change under consideration as a result of the snowden revelations and greenwald's important involvement. So I disagree with you pretty strenuously. And I do think more people care about this than you think, both in the tech and non-tech worlds.
I know... I'm just taking the man at his word. My bad ;)
Either those changes are due to Snowden and then he should own up and show some of that transparency he's promised or he's lying through his teeth. Either way it is not looking good.
"have nothing whatsoever to do with Snowden, Greenwald or the leaks"
Probably need a citation for that. I didn't see such an assertion in his conference. In fact, he said "repeated leaks of classified information have initiated the debate".
Fortunately, an act such as this oftentimes is enough to start getting celebrities involved and prompting them to be outspoken to their fans. We don't always need to make Americans care directly. It can be enough to make the people who Americans listen to to care.
> Why would this be a tactical mistake? The general public DOES NOT GIVE A FUCK. The government(s) know(s) this quite well.
It might be a well-planned tactical move: perhaps they wanted to enrage and provoke Greenwald, hoping he might make mistakes, accidentally disclose sources or additional material.
But yes, the most likely explanation is that they simply don't care, they abuse their power all the time and act like criminals, why should they respect people like Greenwald?
The lesson is that some celebrities need to be recruited to act as ambassadors for the cause of privacy. If Tom Cruise had been held for nine hours the whole world would have known.
> Taking into account that the UK law enforcement and Brazil have a bit of a history when it comes to labeling people terrorist wrongly makes it even worse.
In case anybody is wondering, the UK murdered a Brazilian man on the train with several bullets to the head after they explicitly identified him as a suspect and authorized his takedown. He had no ties to terrorism at all.
Even if we accept the operational mistakes they made, and if we also accept their questionable explanation of why it was necessary to shoot a prone man in the head... even then it's unforgivable they way they lied to the press about the incident afterwards.
I think it is quite possible that it was clerical.
Some nameless official put anyone plausibly close to Snowden on one of however many "people of interest" type lists the UK has. It might even be a trickle down from some list in the USA. The original list may not even be intended as a "detain this person" list, but the way these secret lists work sourcing from other lists with different intents means the end result isn't necessarily the intended result.
Tyranny through bureaucracy basically. A little bit ironic what with the guy being Brazilian and Terry Gilliam's opus Brazil dealing with basically the same theme.
No, it isn't because these lists are one-way. Once you are detained no one in authoritay ever considers the possibility that you are on the list incorrectly. There is absolutely no benefit to themselves to question the list. If they are wrong they let a terrorist go, meanwhile detaining the guy is all by the book so no risk to their job security.
No, this is Special Branch. David's passport is on a stop list. SB have a database that is outside the usual police records that contains information that you won't get by making an FOI request. They know exactly who is coming through and when. They will have had specific instructions on what to do, and those instructions come directly from the Home Office. Even HMIC don't get to look at this stuff. Stopping someone in transit is pretty unusual.
Any tech they seized is now being foresically analysed. He is unlikely to get it back.
They probably thought that it was highly likely he was a data mule between Greenwald and Poitras. I'd guess that they were probably right in that assumption.
I know a man, who knows a dog. I'll leave it at that.
> They probably thought that it was highly likely he was a data mule between Greenwald and Poitras. I'd guess that they were probably right in that assumption.
If you're right, they screwed up, because they detained him on his trip back to Brazil. Any data he might have been carrying to Poitras he could have already delivered -- and I'm sure he would have been smart enough not to keep a copy.
Alternative explanation (without endorsing either): it took 9 hours because nobody high enough could be found that would sign off on keeping him longer.
1) Spend 9 hours pressing the guy in order to learn any details they are interested in. He was probably not prepared enough for that, most of people aren't. Apparently, in such an occasion you don't even have the "right to remain silent!" That is, Mr. David Miranda had no Miranda rights there. I guess they had a good laugh.
2) Get anything from the electronic devices. It's reasonable to expect that both GG and his partner aren't crypto security specialists (GG had problem even starting using crypto).
That they make the pressure to the journalists they saw as the added bonus. Obviously they don't expect that the "public" reacts much.
Note also that UK has laws where you have to give your passwords to the police.
> He was probably not prepared enough for that, most of people aren't.
For better or worse, Glenn Greenwald is very skilled in these sorts of extended adversarial interviews. As a litigator in civil matters he would spend days being obstructionist in depositions. One of them, involving a dispute with Greenwald's former landlord runs over 500 pages. It was effective enough to get the opposing legal council fired.
So anyone who's working with Mr. Greenwald is probably much better prepared than the average Joe to spend 9 hours being questioned.
I personally suspect this was mostly about getting a look at the electronics Mr. Miranda was carrying. It's basic law enforcement strategy to realize targets will eventually make a mistake and for investigators to put themselves in a position to benefit from that.
Of course they never had. The goal was to point that it's not like in the movies. He can't demand the lawyer, he can't even stay silent. A lot of things to slip the tongue during the nine hours of interrogation. Being detained under terrorist laws, it must have occurred to him that they can even throw him in Guantanamo and claim legality. Intimidation, you bet!
Do you claim that UK doesn't deliver the "terrorist suspects" to the US? Do you claim that US then never places somebody in Guantanamo? Do you claim such order of events is impossible?
How do you propose they forced him to talk? They're interrogators, not torturers. It would be perfectly valid to sit there and refuse to answer questions for 9 hours, if not particularly pleasant.
Consider that Grenwalds partner had a laptop stolen from their house (with nothing else missing) recently after Greenwald had told him he might send him an encrypted copy of the Snowden documents.
I'm pretty sure that Greenwald and Miranda learned to be particularly careful about data integrity after that incident.
1) That's a huge assumption. Especially given that he went to see Laura Poitras
2) Sure, but for that they didn't need to seize them, they could have copied them. I take it that Greenwald et al are smart enough to use an encrypted dead drop on the net rather than to hand-carry unencrypted bits with the keys in the head or the possession of the carrier.
From the government perspective I can see only bad stuff coming from this, it is a very clear abuse of the law, it will take a lot of tapdancing to explain this one away as a rogue employee.
I guess they estimated that there won't be many occasions where they'd have to explain that at all. When the Bolivian president's plane was already taken down, who's gonna react about the "ordinary Brazilian guy" kept on the customs?
Moreover, TSA already prepared the people to be numb about the inconveniences at the airports. It became hard to make news about that.
Of course I can't possibly know but I agree with @acqq I think the effect of surprise worked and it was all about that in order to grab the hard drive for current and past files and his contact list on his phone. I think that if he was really prepared and if he was expecting such a move he would have tried to avoid Heathrow.
I was thinking about this today--whether or not this was a smart move for the government.
On one hand, it's obvious that bullying the partner of a famous journalist is going to get negative media attention.
On the other hand, maybe that's exactly what they want. Maybe they know these laws aren't going anywhere anytime soon, and that sort of media attention ensures that generations will know what happens when they start asking the wrong questions. "Hey kids, just look at what will happen to your family if you start questioning the laws we make to protect you."
Would Greenwald have done a better service if he hadn't told the world what happened to his partner? I don't know--but maybe.
Making an example of a family member is crass to put it mildly, we have a basic principle in law that collective punishment is right out. So we don't punish you for your brothers crimes and so on. To punish a partner for some perceived slight when the principal agent is not charged with anything is something that I have a hard time imagining even today, in a former Soviet Union or affiliated country I could see something like that happen but this being the partner of a member of the press it seems like a spectacularly bad move.
Greenwald has basically been provoked into doing as much damage as he can do, likely he'll reveal more rather than less now. They have taken the gloves off against the one party that was still showing some restraint here.
Greenwald has been doing this for years. His prose is always over the top, but the man is really savvy (courtroom experience, maybe). I'm going to count myself very surprised indeed if this can provoke him into doing even the smallest detail differently than he intended.
If anything, he's chuckling that he managed to provoke them to this kind of outrageous action. Rubbing his hands with glee. (Shades of "You want the truth? You can't handle the truth!")
My hope is that Greenwald is not that easily provoked into making this a personal affair between himself and some government. That's part of what weakened Julian Assange's position, and I'm pretty sure Greenwald is aware of that.
> Would Greenwald have done a better service if he hadn't told the world what happened to his partner? I don't know--but maybe.
Definitely not. And in the end, nothing happened to his partner. His rights were violated, for sure -- but then ask other Brazilians for their experiences in the transit zone of London Heathrow. It's a pretty much lawless zone if you happen to hold the wrong passport.
So, no. More people than you think will be able to relate to this.
Given the political nature of the detention, I suspect that the action would be known about at cabinet level. It is difficult to work out if this was primarily driven by the Home Office, the Foreign Office, or the Department of Transport, given that they all have a role in border security - but the action was almost certainly proposed by a civil servant at one of these institutions - possibly acting on a request from the security services.
Given that David Miranda was transiting through the country, I would guess that the request originated from MI6, which would mean that the request was routed through the FCO, which would put William Hague in the hot-seat.
Helpfully, the Guardian has a list of senior civil servants here (although it is quite out of date):
We could probably make some guesses as to which roles were involved in the decision. (Note: Civil servants only stay in a role for a limited period of time, so it is probable that the individuals named in the above list have moved on to new roles by now, and are not involved).
Considering that the US was given the heads up, I would guess that the order came from Cabinet level, possibly given the nod by William Hague. Now, I have met him, and he is (or appears to be) a very smart guy indeed.
Speculating for a moment that he did give the OK to this, then I do not doubt that he did it with his eyes wide open. He would have known exactly what the PR repercussions were. There must have been a very good reason for him to want to stop Mr. Miranda - which means that it is unlikely to be simple intimidation. (Not the sort of thing that I can imagine your typical Whitehall civil servant stooping to in any case).
My guess is that it was believed that he was carrying a copy of Snowden's cache of documents, and the UK badly wanted to get their hands on a copy. Which is fascinating, if true, because it means that they still do not know what documents he has....
> I wonder from how high up this order came. After all, it's not like Greenwald is going to take this lying down and that's something that they could predict quite accurately ahead of time. To abuse these powers on the partner of the journalist that is reporting the abuses is the worst tactical mistake made by any government to date, short of the diversion of a diplomats plane.
They are MUCH cleverer than this, it is likely to have been a deliberate provocation to try and get Greenwald to do something rash. It is also a sign that the gloves may be coming off.
I doubt very much if the police would do this off their own bat. What motive would they have to do so?
So it must have come at least from the Foreign Secretary, but more probably the Prime Minister.
The UK government is currently a coalition. The minor partner, the Liberal Democrats, tend to take a slightly more pro civil liberties line than the two big parties. Did they know about this beforehand? Will they kick up a fuss about it? (I suspect not, their leader is a spineless idiot).
Well one motive that the police might have is if they have gone a bit rogue and want to hide that fact from their political masters, but feel that they are at risk of being exposed by Snowden / Greenwald. I'm not saying that this is the case, just that I find it every bit as plausible as the politicians getting all Machiavellian (most politicians just aren't clever enough to get away with that sort of thing).
What would you do if you were the head of the spy agency, and you think that Greenwald has information showing that you are spying on your own politicians?
> Well one motive that the police might have is if they have gone a bit rogue and want to hide that fact from their political masters, but feel that they are at risk of being exposed by Snowden / Greenwald.
Maybe. But if you've dug yourself into a hole, doesn't it make sense to stop digging?
> What would you do if you were the head of the spy agency, and you think that Greenwald has information showing that you are spying on your own politicians?
They have several options:
(1) Point out to the politicians that they agreed to it (which they probably did, if only passively)
(2) Kill Greenwald. Unlikely to work since Snowden has probably spread any documents widely around by now.
(3) Threaten Greenwald. Less publically than what they did.
(4) Use the information on the politicians to blackmail them into keeping quiet.
(5) Suggest to the politicians that the policy, though done for the right reasons (defence against terrorism, keeping in with the Americans, blah blah blah) may have gone too far and should now be looked into.
I can't decide if it is scarier if it came from high-up in the government or not.
If it did, then clearly people in positions of power are happy to abuse them to hold that power.
If it did not, then it implies there is a whole shadow power structure so confident of their position that they are happy to do something like this knowing full well it would get publicity.
If you read the Wikipedia article[0] on the ‘Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001’, you will notice that it is not restricted and applicable to areas other than terrorism – serious economic damage to the UK being one of them. So there is at least some slight hyperbole in calling it a ‘post-9/11 terrorism act’, even though its passage was clearly motivated by 9/11.
As an aside, what exactly is wrong with freezing the assets of a company that does not appear to plan to meet its liabilities?
I disagree. These are exceptional powers (they deliberately negate several important rights like the right to know the charges against you and have a lawyer present), and if they are being misused, they should be taken away.
They are justified to the population on the basis of extreme measures for extreme opponents - if that is shown to be a smokescreen and the security services to be inveterate liars, I think the population will be far less inclined to accept any calls for special terror laws.
The war on terror as an excuse just became rather more transparent.
> This is a great example of why we should treat terrorism like any other crime
Perhaps it is, but the American people don't seem to want that. Kerry voiced a similar opinion in 2004 and Bush took great advantage by pointing that out. Popular opinion appeared to be on Bush's side i.e. that terrorism is not a law enforcement matter:
to see how bad thing is, because its was the UK government abusing its use of force to a brazillian citizen.. so.. the point remains.. things are very much out of control just because a bunch of red necks dont understand what civil rights is, and became puppets of a terrible president..
if you guys did want to burn your constitutional rights, what the rest of the world got to do with it?! we value civil liberties, civil rights and freedom..
i know half north-america also do.. but you must put these guys under control, at least until their IQ raise a little bit, so they cannot push the buttons if your country machinery..
but anyway, now it was also the UK.. we could see this one comming from the US, but UK? as sex pistols would say: nevermind the bollocks
All of our contries has its own bad apples, but its a pretty bad thing when they are running our governments.. shame on you UK!
I hate the governments expanded terrorism powers too, but the "we should treat it as a crime" policy is either a naive statement or one where it's non-obvious how to go about it. The criminal justice system is used to punish criminals and through that deter crime. This has little effect on a suicide bomber (nor does the ability to detain people for 9 hours for that matter).
At the same time, treating terrorism prevention as a police mater appears to militarize the police.
Ok, but the leadership class is usually in a foreign country. Historically, hostile foreign countries or ones where you can't trust the local government. So to get people in those countries, you need a militarized police force. We could have sent in police to arrest OBL in Pakistan, but they would have looked a lot like seal team 6 ( or maybe we could have had the Pakistanis do it, but that doesn't work in all cases. For example, the Taliban in 2001 would not have helped us)
Also, the leadership may not care about their consequences too much either, other than preferably living to fight another day.
The very fundamental underlying premise of the entire US constitution is the idea that government power should always be carefully limited and extremely well checked. It's shocking how far we've drifted from that ideal.
Unchecked power in the hands of folks with good intention can sometimes be used to great affect to achieve good ends but almost inevitably such powers fall into the hands of folks who would abuse them. More so, even people operating under what they consider to be good intentions can lead to tragedies of unimaginable proportions.
I think the officials who do things like this should be prosecuted under the same terrorism laws they're supposed to be enforicing. This is clearly an act of terrorism on the part of the NSA and GCHQ.
At 6:30 am this morning my time - 5:30 am on the East Coast of the US - I received a telephone call from someone who identified himself as a "security official at Heathrow airport." He told me that my partner, David Miranda, had been "detained" at the London airport "under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act of 2000."
David had spent the last week in Berlin, where he stayed with Laura Poitras, the US filmmaker who has worked with me extensively on the NSA stories. A Brazilian citizen, he was returning to our home in Rio de Janeiro this morning on British Airways, flying first to London and then on to Rio. When he arrived in London this morning, he was detained.
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 Sicilian Mafia are pretty vile human beings, by and large.
Compare and contrast "detained 9 hours", which is a big violation of civil liberties on behalf of a government, with "dissolved an innocent child in acid", which is just sickening and inhuman.
On the US's murderous sanctions against Iraq (and nuking Japan, for that matter):
Lesley Stahl: "We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?"
Dissidents (those who Greenwald praises) point out that international politics runs on the mafia model. (Keeping in mind that the mafia is small and nation-states are large. https://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/11/03-2)
Inane comments like this are one of the many reasons why political discussions on HN are so bad.
The thinking that most politicians are just like people who would take a 12 year old boy and dump him in a vat of acid after strangling him is shallow and devoid of any depth of thinking on how different organizations operate.
States do dirty things, and so do individuals, and so do organizations on various levels. But there's a lot of differences in incentives, capabilities, tradeoffs, calculations and so on between them all. If you are really interested in understanding the world, rather than making the point that THE GUBERMENT IS EEEVIL, thinking about some of these differences would behoove you.
So: are you genuinely so poorly informed that you see no difference, or are you completely blinded by your libertarian propaganda as to not see any difference?
I live in Italy, and like many people, I intensely dislike Berlusconi. But, you know what? I'd prefer him 10 times - 100 times - to the sort of people who run actual Mafias.
Interestingly, the US apparently reconstituted the Mafia (which had been destroyed by Mussolini) to undermine WWII resistance, labor unions and leftist movements. The stuff they don't teach in school...
Yes, not many fascist leaders from Italy were ever prosecuted for their crimes post war. Caused quite a stir in places like Yugoslavia. Britain was initially trying to be helpful but they were losing support from the locals (Italians) and then USA told them to back off.
The same thing happened in Germany. The top level guys were tried at Nuremberg, but Nazi 'middle management' ruled West Germany for decades after the war. This, in turn, was an important motivation for the formation of the Rote Armee Fraktion.
Western liberal democracy often forgets (or pretends to forget) that history is a thing, and that people have memoeries. There are many more instances where Western foreign policy (often initiated by the US, supported by Europe) was beneficial to us in the short term, while having negative long term consequences. The CIA calls it 'blowback'. The last century in the Middle East and South and Central America is riddled with it. And then people turn around and ask 'why do they hate us?'.
For example seeing the people in Egypt now (VICE documentary), both camps, whether the secular camp/army or Muslim Brotherhood were blaming Obama for the current situation.
On a similar note, hats off to Russia, that, even though is supporting the Assad regime in Syria and beyond, never gets such a strong backlash or blowback as you say. Or maybe the fights in Caucasus are underreported.
"It's complicated". He's a fairly rotten guy in many ways; in all likelihood he's made deals with them, but isn't at all involved in their actual operations.
By a former corespondent for The Economist in Italy.
I don't really think the Mafia was an integral component of his success though - in some ways that's an easy out for people looking for someone to blame for the whole Berlusconi phenomenon.
The mere fact that it's becoming possible to make comparisons between a Western government and a criminal organisation, even if it's just to get a message across, is worse enough on its own.
While obviously, mafias and governments work on the same problem: How to govern, how to stay in power.
Of course, a government has the power to brand a mafia as a criminal organization, but the line between legal and criminal can be very blurry, and often quite arbitrary.
If you just go, historically, by the score of committed crimes, then whatever metric you choose, governments and their agencies will beat criminal organizations by a huge margin.
> While obviously, mafias and governments work on the same problem
Bullshit.
You'd do well to read more about the Mafia and how it affects places where it's strong. They are badly governed, and generally not good places to live or do business as an honest person.
Denmark has a strong government that is quite involved in its citizens lives, but the number of them that end up dead, tortured, with their lives ruined, and so on is minimal compared to people in Sicily, Calabria, Campania, or other areas in southern Italy dominated by Mafias. And the standard of living is far higher. People are happier; with the possible exception of the climate, which is not really something either Mafias or anyone else can change on a local level unless you read some of the wackier subreddits.
Mafias are nothing like western democracies. If you're going to compare them with governments, compare them with feudal, tribal systems where family and personal loyalty is everything, and the rule of law counts for nothing.
To equate even something so abhorrent as fascist Italy to the Mafia is to have a gross and severe misunderstanding of history. They are both bad, but very different.
The Mafia is a real thing here in Italy, not just some abstract talking point for your libertarian ranting.
Trust me, I know such places, and I have no romantic notion of the Mafia. But I think there's a way to compare things that doesn't equate them. Same for the Greenwald quote in the grand-grand-grand-...-parent.
The quote only serves to show that the person in question knows little to nothing about actual mafias. Or - more likely - was understandably caught up in the heat of the moment and didn't research what he was writing. He's wrong, but I'd certainly cut him some slack.
This sort of thing is why I have a hard time taking Glenn Greenwald at face value. He's a well-educated person who clearly knows that such statements are nonsense.
If I went out and suggested that the families of the politicians who did this should be kidnapped, held by force for hours without any contact with the outside world, and have all their possessions stolen, I'd be rightly condemned all around. Hell, even if I suggested one of the politicians who conceived this should be abducted by goons and abused for hours on end, I'd probably be indicted under some terrorist act or another.
And perhaps I should be: it's a deep depravity what happened here, and I'm deeply ashamed it happens anywhere, let alone in the Western world. Soon we won't be able to hold ourselves up as beacons of freedom to those in savage, barbaric places like China where all Internet usage is surveilled or Russia where you can be targeted for being gay or being a member of the press who has printed stories critical of the State.
> It looks like the act of printing stories critical of the state is already being punished
I've just finished reading a pamphlet written ~370 years ago, in 1644, called "Compassionate Samaritan", authored by a very interesting character named William Walwyn, where he had this to say about the religious establishment of his time:
> There they brand men with the name of heretics, and fasten what errors they think are most hateful to the people upon those men they purpose to make odious. There they confute all opinions, and boldly they may do it, for as much as no liberty of reply or vindication in public is allowed to any, though never so much scandalized by them. And that men may not vindicate themselves by writing, their next interest is to be masters of the press, of which they are lately become by an ordinance for licensing books; which, being intended by the Parliament for a good and necessary end, namely the prohibition of all books dangerous or scandalous to the state, is become by means of the licensers, who are divines and intend their own interest, most serviceable to themselves in the stopping of honest men's writings, that nothing may come to the world's view but what they please - unless men will run the hazard of imprisonment, as I now do. So that in public they may speak what they will, write what they will, they may abuse whom they will, and nothing can be said against them. Well may they presume of making themselves masters of the people, having these foundations laid, and the people generally willing to believe they are good.
Now, anyone can replace "the divines" from the (very long) quote with the current establishment and the "heretics" and "honest men" with, well, the few honest men of our times.
There is a reason why that proverb about studying history and repeating it exists. Too bad not many people like to study history, it is not like we haven't been here before.
About two or three years ago I was taken aside when boarding a plane at a London airport back to Belfast by a policeman and held under their terrorism legislation. Being heavily hungover from a night spent funding London's publicans, and a little nervous about flying, I just wanted to board the plane and go home.
Nevertheless, I was questioned by the queue as others boarded the plane, casting nasty looks my way. The cop asked some pretty insulting, at times ignorant, questions. I guess to see if I harboured any anti-British/anti-state/anti-cop feelings. I got the impression if I lost my cool I'd be spending a lot longer in that airport.
I didn't know my rights, that's my fault. Nor did I want to escalate a situation where the odds were stacked against me. I did feel pretty disgusted though, given that I'd done nothing wrong. Even now I feel like I shouldn't share this kind of thing online lest the wrong person read it. I found myself asking; why me? Was it something I said on Twitter or Facebook? Did I just look at him the wrong way without realising?
Luckily he let me go after some thorough questioning and the plane waited for me (although finding my seat was basically a walk of shame). They probably do this day and daily to all kinds of people. And most would never talk about it for fear of receiving worse down the line.
That's one of the worst parts of abuses of power; the people not being abused very quickly start to blame the victims of abuse. "You must be a bad person if they're talking to you," onlookers might be thinking to themselves.
In this thread a man being detained for 9 hours has been compared as worse than mafia members murdering people, now apparently the look on the faces of hte officers is a serious abuse too.
This whole thread has destroyed any credibility HN had.
Well... It'd be hard to get much whiter than me! I guess that's my point though, that maybe this guy wasn't targeted but merely a victim of what happens every day. Being associated with the Guardian he'd have known his rights and might've had the confidence to demand them. Not sure which is worse, though.
> Miranda was then released without charge, but officials confiscated electronics equipment including his mobile phone, laptop, camera, memory sticks, DVDs and games consoles.
Thievery and intimidation are good indicators of who and what we're dealing with.
That's not even coherent with the government's story. Or are you really claiming that he was detained and had thousands of dollars of equipment confiscated because Greenwald downloaded some Kylie Minogue MP3s?
As bad as things are in America vis-a-vis the surveillance state, I've always thought that England is actually worse. I guess it explains why they have such a rich history of dystopian thought. When I saw the "Secure beneath the watchful eyes" poster [1] I couldn't believe it wasn't satire.
One the subject of "I can't believe it's not satire". I have always found the "If You See Something, Say Something"[1] videos both humorous and terrifying.
People did not catch that joke. I think the issue was that you didn't go far enough. The internet has people who would say something like that and mean it. It wasn't absurd enough to be dismissed.
Rather than fascism per-se, actions like holding people without charge, perusing their personal belongings and papers without due process, and threatening families or associates, are the marks of totalitarianism. It exists on both the right and left ends of the political spectrum.
I'm shocked that police actually have the power to hold you for nine hours, refuse you a lawyer and that you are not allowed to refuse to answer questioning.
Edit: shocked is probably the wrong word it's hard to get surprised by this stuff anymore.
It seems odd that they removed property of a journalist. I was under the impression that journalists (and their materials) had special protections under English law.
Greenwald posted an open letter and from what he says in that it doesn't seem his partner is a journalist. He was however questioned extensively on Greenwald and his reporting for The guardian.
I'm shocked that police actually have the power to hold you for nine hours, refuse you a lawyer and that you are not allowed to refuse to answer questioning.
You haven't read up much history of Northern Ireland? There is a lots of examples of the UK and anti-terrorism laws. Imprisonment without trial, etc.
Then how can you make out that you're shocked by this? People who are arrested on suspicion of terrorism in the UK can be held for 28 days with out charge. From the 70s onward, anyone arrested in relation to Northern Irish terrorism could be held for 48 hours without charge. Holding someone incommunicado for up to 9 hours sounds like a distinct improvement by UK standards, sad to say.
>> "anyone arrested in relation to Northern Irish terrorism could be held for 48 hours without charge"
This I understand due to the threat level here. Bombs are discovered on a regular basis (I've linked to just one example[1] but if you take a look through the news in the last 2 months you'll find more) and the threat of terrorism is real.
You don't have to explain that to me. I'm from Ireland, I used to live in London, and I've seen bombs go off myself, so I'm quite aware of the risks to the public. What I'm saying is that it's disingenuous of you to express surprise about the existence of such laws.
This isn't new. The UK has long had wide-ranging anti-terrorism powers because the IRA were running bombing campaigns in (mostly) London from the late 60s to the late 90s. And every country has different rules for ports/airports, for the same reason they have customs posts there.
The 2000 act listed the IRA as a proscribed group but it wasn't the focus of the legislation.
There were major changes to "terrorism" legislation between 2000-2010. The 2001 and later acts/modifications were more a result of 9/11, 7/7 and the "war on terror" (and the UK being Bush's little bitch).
>Schedule 7 is the law that allows the police to detain anyone at the UK borders without any requirement to show probable cause and hold them for up to nine hours, without seeking further justification. The detainee must respond to any questions, regardless of whether a lawyer is present. No lawyer is provided automatically.
>It is a criminal offence for the detainee to refuse to answer questions -- regardless of the grounds for that refusal or otherwise fully cooperate with the police.
Responding to the question and answering the question are two different things. Explicitly refusing to answer the question is an especially bad way to dodge a law punishing you for... refusing to answer the question.
My god. The responses are basically saying that they agree with the government kidnapping and robbing the family of a journalist in retaliation for the journalist's legal news coverage.
Combine those responses with Michael Grunwald's "I can't wait to write a defense of the drone strike that takes out Julian Assange" and we can see the lines being drawn right before our eyes.
This is crime. The people who authorized this should be put in jail and the officers present should at least be fired.
It should not be allowed that power is so easily abused, nor should written laws be so easily twisted without fear of consequence.
I believe a civil disruption of the airport specifically targeting the security apparatus would be an appropriate response.
To the cynics, yes, I am idealistic and, yes I'm pretty much just venting, but damn, this is just going too far. Suggestions for constructive frustration welcome.
As Greenwald's response[0] suggests, it seems the only obvious way to cause any type of change (from small to moderate), seems to speak in terms of 'mafia', 'fascism', and 'police state'.
Allow me to take John Stuart Mill out of context momentarily, because he was speaking with regard to Irish-English relationship (territory disputes between the two countries). But it summarises Mill's thought on why radical and extreme thought is useful: it helps bring small to moderate change because it incites dialogue. Unfortunately, this seems to be where we are at now.
"...I well knew that to propose something which would be called extreme was the true way not to impede but to facilitate a more moderate experiment. [...] To induce them to approve of any change it is necessary that they should look upon it as a middle course: they think every proposal extreme and violent unless they hear of some other proposal going still farther, upon which their antipathy to extreme views may discharge itself".[1]
Being modest in an argument never convinces anyone of anything. However, if you appear to be seriously pissed and offended, then people tend to think for a moment about it.
Why are they so angry? There must be a good reason.
Why do people think the security state is being rammed through with such a sense of urgency right now? Are they expecting something? A war? An economic crisis? Ecological meltdown? Invasion from outer space?
I ask because I get the impression that there is a top-down (from the executive branch) full-court-press on this, and that the gloves are coming off. That leads me to wonder if there's something driving this, some sense of urgency.
I think Charles Stross said it best[1], what we have now is effectively the ancien regime pre-revolutionary state; that MUST retain absolute control, lest the natural order be shattered irretrievably.
In effect, the guardians of the status quo are in full panic mode and are not necessarily reacting rationally.
This is why this incident should be investigated by ( on the UK side ) a parliamentary commission, and ( on the US side ) by an independent congressional commission.
It is not pushed with especial sense of urgency, there were the crypto wars in the nineties for example[1]. On the other hand, if there is a special sense of urgency then it is probably more future shock than anything concrete. From the perspective of the old mans with pencils, suddenly you get all these leaks and you get all this computer stuff they do not really understand. So they err on the side of heavy handed security, because they do no longer trust their model of the world.
I suspect it is actually quite straightforward. After 9/11, security services were given free reign to do whatever they thought necessary to prevent a similar atrocity. Many laws were passed that would never have been considered if 9/11 had not occurred. I don't believe most politicians were taking advantage of the situation, rather they were threatened and scared by what happened and over-reacted.
The recent PRISM scandal has exposed the results of this short-term and irrational behaviour, and now the UK and US governments are embarrassed and angry. Either they regret their surveillance of their own citizens, or else they still believe in it and are angry at the revelation. So rather than repair the situation, they're making it worse.
The final component is that extraordinary powers will always be abused, eventually. And this is probably what we have seen here.
I don't believe in any huge conspiracy, just a political elite that is often incompetent, and (particularly in the UK) stuck in the past.
It now feels impossible to criticise other countries for their appalling human rights records. We don't respect democracy or freedom, so how can we ever argue in its defence? The Western powers should be the torchbearers for democracy, not those trampling on it.
I think the solution is more whistle-blowing until we achieve sufficient transparency from the states involved and ethical behaviour from the security services. The EU is also already doing a great job of criticising the US and UK, and hopefully that political pressure will pay off. A change of government on both sides of the atlantic (don't hold you breath in the UK) would also provide an opportunity for progress.
9/11 and the lack of civilian resistance to a lot of the government actions which followed has (IMHO) shown that they can push the envelope and encounter no outcry. 'They' have continued the push ever since.
I would love to be corrected on this, but I can't think of another modern era when so much obvious, unscrupulous actions were taken by authorities and yet no grand resistance was put up.
I happened to be a fairly conservative high schooler after September 11th, living in NJ suburb. 9/11 happened in my time there. I saw smoke from the city, not quite the buildings themselves, and classmates lossed parents. We were all militant after that, and someone needed to burn.
No matter how conservative my friends and I were, we saw not so long after those days Farenheit 9/11, the then controversial 9/11 documentary. No matter how hard-core Republican I was then (spending time in the Arab world later had me quickly outgrow that), I was appalled by the admission of lifer Congressman, scumbag Charles Rangel (NY - D) in his interview in the movie. He said no one he knew read the Patriot Act, not a single one, him included. No one would say no at the time to such legislation. Even as a sophomore I was appalled and said in the first real interest in non-partisan politics, we should have people removed for such incompetence.
As I said I was a sophomore then, and discovered subsequently how very sophmoric I was. Nothing is more self-serving than govt in crisis, in the alia acta est way. That was the beginning of my disbelief in my government, then all government more as each year passes. Fuck them all.
If you were one of those people who still -- after all this time -- says things like, "it's OK, [insert law] is only for acts of terrorism", now would be a good time to reconsider that.
Or issues of national security or state emergencies or...
It's mission creep. Law enforcement will always demand more power in pursuit of what they see as their goal of stopping the bad guys. Trampling all over innocent peoples' civil liberties is unfortunate to them, but they will never cease their pursuit for more power. Have you heard Ray Kelly's argument in defense of stop-and-frisk? "We do this to protect minorities! It's for their own good!" without any mention or even a passing courtesy to said minority's civil rights.
Actually, I can think of one area that probably won't be receiving all the extra scrutiny that the rest of us have been enjoying in new found police state, and that's Wall Street. Someone's gotta pay for all those toys cops have been buying lately.
I apologise for my country's idiotic and rude behaviour. I will make sure that I vote for none of the political parties that currently run the country, nor the previous one, as none of them can be trusted.
Again, sorry. Our country is being run by fuckwits. We keep voting for different parties but it doesn't seem to make a difference.... Hang on a sec....
So many countries have "Detain first, something-something later" policies that it's easier to make a list of the ones who don't. Like Japan, for example, allows suspects to be arrested and detained for 20+ days without being charge
This and the fact that Obama is constantly being caught in lies says to me that the U.S. government has no clue what information Edward Snowden has passed off to Greenwald.
This is a really interesting bit of speculation. Obama's consistently "just off" statements (i.e. saying an executive order that hadn't been implemented yet would have protected Snowden) make me think that Obama & his advisers doesn't have a good handle on what the NSA is doing and how the law applies to the "secret state." One could say that "Obama is lying," which may be perfectly true, but it could also be that the politicians are genuinely uninformed and/or think protections exist that don't.
I could see this being the case because politicians train to talk about health care and the economy, while the details of NSA programs are rarely discussed and so politicians have little incentive to be up on the facts.
There's no way Obama didn't know. Remember that Obama just appointed James Clapper, who was caught lying to Congress about there being dragnet surveillance on the American people, to a committee to investigate the NSA and make sure these programs are in check. If he didn't know, it seems like he would be rather pissed at Clapper and reluctant to let him investigate his own agency.
I don't think it even has to be that extreme. When one starts out as a politician, even small-potatoes stuff like inflated tax exemptions would be enough to influence the ambitious. Later, once one is president, they have recordings of all the noxious shit you've done at their command. This is basic spy agency tactics.
It's quite probable that Obama knows about shit the various agencies have done that would make GG's hair curl. It's also quite probable they've done much worse shit that he doesn't know about.
As I understand it, UK and USA spying are part of a well-connected system also including Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. I'm not sure there are relevant distinctions to be made here in terms of spying.
k-mcgrady wasn't making distinctions about spying, he was making distinctions about who decided to detain someone in a British airport - the fact that the UK has been affected by the NSA leaks means they have as much motivation here as the US does.
Canada's RCMP spied on Amnesty, the Anglican Church and the Raging Grannies. Our secret services gave their American counterparts information that led to torture of Canadian citizens and others.
You think we're not part of this totalitarian movement?
more of this : "But the last thing it will do is intimidate or deter us in any way from doing our job as journalists. Quite the contrary: it will only embolden us more to continue to report aggressively."
less of this: "ohh noo.. Should I write my opinion on the internet? What if the NSA is watching????! Will I be put on the...the. the list???"
No, we aren't powerless. That's why these people are so relentless in their intimidation and pursuit of more power. If they thought we were powerless, they wouldn't bother. They are afraid, and they should be. The tide can turn quickly.
I don't think the ability to dispense fear and intimidation around the world at will is a show of fear.
Our biggest hope is this becomes a national issue for the next election so we at least have the opportunity to elect the leader who respects our constitutional rights the most.
I think that a candidate who was not afraid to make the "security state" a campaign issue, and the massive government encroachment in so many other aspects of our lives, and was able to explain the issues and his or her positions without sounding like he was regurgitating focus-group tested talking points, would do quite well in the current climate.
Or it may be that the average person still doesn't care. People who really don't care don't vote though, so all you really have to do is reach the people who are in any way paying attention.
So voting for a politician that takes advantage of a strategic opening by promising things he/she likely has no intention whatsoever of following through on is going to fix the police state? I mean, the administration's positions throughout this entire NSA scandal have been diametrically opposed to promises and assurances that Obama made while campaigning. Until you solve the problem of politician trustworthiness, then you have no hope of fixing systemic problems stemming from lack of trustworthiness among government officials. And make no mistake, you have to trust a politician that promises in his campaign to limit his own power.
Perhaps structural changes in the way politicians are elected and retain office would have some positive long term effects. I imagine if it was possible to hold a direct-vote referendum on the current sitting president mid-term would hold their feet to the fire at least a little bit. Also, prohibiting advertising by political campaigns (TV, print, all of it) coupled with state-sponsored, mandetory debates between presidential candidates might force a real debate about real issues.
And assuming we agreed that those changes would be beneficial to the political system, how might we go about achieving those reforms?
Well, that's the big question isn't it? Perhaps Larry Lessig will make end roads on the campaign finance issue, though I'm not holding my breath. The thing is that basically these sort of structural reforms will be difficult to institute without a broad movement that replaces scads of incumbents with independents unified on these issues. The current campaign finance rules heavily favor incumbents (aka current legislators), and so narrow, lukewarm political sentiment will yield nothing but lip service. I mean, it's hard to get incumbents to put that ladder back down after they've intentionally pulled it up behind them. It's a difficult problem, and I'm pessimistic on the prospect of it being solved when so few people seem to have the attention span to even see the problem. It's much easier to get outraged at narrow concrete issues than weightier abstract issues like campaign finance.
As I've said before, you won't see any review of this until after troops are fully withdrawn from Afghanistan, at which point a review of the AUMF and Patriot act become far more likely.
we are in a serious democracy crisys right now all over the world, because the politics doesnt represent us anymore.. not now.. and dont thinks things changes that much only by "voting the other guy".
if people dont really pressure for a immediate change in laws, its a illusion that by exchanging parties in power they will change their behavior..
they had made us believe there were only 3 powers in democracy.. but the truth is there are only 1 real power.. and thats the one that comes from the people.. the other 3 ones, are just institutionalized..
its in times like these, people must show this power in action in a way that make the institutions fear the people power..
they made it in the french revolution, they made it in the arab spring.. they are making it here in brazil..
in brazil now they are just listening, and doing what they are told to.. dont know what will become of all of this.. but it is working..
people must stand.. its the only way against distopic and schizophrenic governments
Maybe it can still turn, but definitely not quickly. It will take a huge amount of effort and blood to take the power away from the sociopath banksters and their puppet politicians, military and media.
IMHO it is very unlikely as very few people in the developed countries today care about political power and modern weapons, like drones and PRISM, are very anti-democratic in nature.
It's easy to come up with a monocausal explanation of all that's wrong in today's society. But that doesn't correspond to reality, and propagating it does nothing but encourage people to build strategies on false premises.
Those "sociopath banksters" might have a long list of sins and villainies, but that doesn't mean that they're the ones at fault here. Oppression is a system, not a rational order directed by a single person or group. I would not be surprised if a poll of your "banksters" revealed a far higher level of personal support for civil liberties than the average citizen. There's no reason to suppose that they want or have any interest in living in a world where the State can seize and steal the property of someone with no trial or opportunity for appeal.
At least history shows us that all totalitarian governments have indeed been stopped at some point. However, history also tells us they really don't like speedbumps on their route to getting to that point.
I'm curious exactly what you have to do in transit through the UK if detained and questioned. I'd presumably identify myself, and comply politely for a few minutes, but once it became pretty clear I was going to miss my flight, I'd want to know the various options. I have zero interest in being in the UK if in transit, so "we're going to send you back to Germany" "do it, then" is fine. Or, "you're an asshole, we're going to put you on the next flight to Brazil and never let you enter the UK" is also fine. The risk would be that "actively non-cooperative" is a sign of "is a terrorist" and then you get the free flight to Cuba.
It seems obvious that a targeted person should travel with a lot of older/disposable devices full of lightly encrypted but legal "NSFL" material, like medical/battlefield/surgery photos or, depending on the country, various types of legal porn. Or perhaps Slavoj Zizek books sans title information.
Try asserting any right to silence at the US border — you won't get far. If you are not a US national, I'd expect you to be refused entry (and as one is required to complete an ETSA prior to arrival, one is required to sign away any right to appeal of the decision of the border control staff).
Oh, I'm totally fine with people who are non-cooperative and non-citizens being denied entry. I'm a US Citizen, so I have an absolute right to re-enter the US without answering any questions (they do have a right to make sure I'm who I say I am, and that I'm not carrying any prohibited things in contravention of customs regulations, but that's it).
I'm not sure how it works for transit. Also, if I were not a US citizen (and, even as a US citizen), I'd avoid the US as a transit country if at all possible -- lack of sterile transit makes it a pain due to waiting and scheduling even if you're a citizen, and if you're not visa waiver, it's horrible.
The UK does sterile transit, so most travelers shouldn't even have to touch security/immigration/customs if they're in transit only, which is what confuses me about this story.
If you're entering the EU or a Schengen-signatory, even for a transit flight, you are required to pass through security (all passengers on any flight departing within the EU must have passed through EU-legislated security, to avoid the case where their incoming security has been lax). Some places include more (the UK requires security for /all/ passengers arrival on an international flight, regardless of the EU).
What one doesn't have to do is pass through border control or customs (unless one is transferring onto a domestic flight, then quite where you clear border control and customs varies from place to place — in the UK you clear the border at the port of entry and customs upon arrival at your final destination).
Also — just to note, I can't imagine anyone ever being actually arrested under the no-right-to-silence clause (and if they did, I expect it'd just get take to the ECHR and thrown out) except potentially for UK citizens/subjects/nationals/whatever-other-categories-there-are-that-I-always-forget (for whom entry cannot be refused).
If what you mean by not being sure how it works for transit is how it works in the US — you must posses a valid visa (probably a transit visa) or not need a visa (VWP, citizenship, etc.) for entry into the US, regardless of your further destination. Sadly, for many of us from Europe, many flights to South America require pre-approval from the US, because you cross US airspace, even though you never land.
I dislike the uk for purely practical reasons (expensive and wages aren't higher to compensate outside finance, not actually different enough from the US to be interesting to me). I knew about RIP but not about the border detention issue. My international flights tend to be nonstop or via very particular airports due to weapons laws (when I was flying to Iraq often), or to Asia, not Europe. I'd also probably not go via the UK due to frequent flyer status on Star Alliance which doesn't use London as a hub for flights to continental Europe as much.
You're best off to go through either Schiphol, Paris or Frankfurt (in that order). Paris has really good connections to Latin America as well (direct flights), Schiphol not as many but quite a few.
As a Star Alliance person, it's almost always Frankfurt. LH Senator made it a whole lot better, too.
AF had a cool "Petroleum Club" program, too, which let anyone marginally affiliated with the oil industry get free lounge access and other benefits.
I'd still almost always prefer making my connection within the US and flying nonstop from the US to my final European destination. I generally only fly ex-SFO, JFK, IAD so there's generally a non-stop flight anyway.
I find this so hard to deal with. There's party of me screaming at the screen saying what is happening is so so so wrong more, but another part of me fears for my family. The fact I fear for my family feels like my head is above the parapet. The problem more than anything is that nobody around me seems to be that bothered about this. WTF do I do?
For me the most absurd thing is that all this erosion of peoples rights and several wars have been justified by the threat of terrorism.
I'm not going to even bother finding some statistics to post right now but the actual threat of terrorism is vanishingly small. For example in 2012, more Americans died crushed by their TVs or furniture than from terrorism.
Be careful with this kind of argument. Among the reasons that we object to the treatment of Mr. Miranda et. al. is that it can cause a chilling effect, similar to what terrorism does.
Are you prepared to argue that the threat of home furniture will ever cause a chilling effect?
Yes, I agree there is a difference between an accident and an attack.
The main point I'm making is the organisations involved are clearly using terrorism as a pretext, greatly inflating its media presence.
If the US for example really wanted to reduce terrorism things like better universal education and social welfare would probably really be effective as the vast majority of the US' terrorism is internal. (Killing of abortion clinic doctors and so forth)
I think this is a terrible mistake but I do wish he'd stop referring to himself as a journalist. He's a political protagonist using his platform for change. Journalist's don't "aggressively" report on stories. It matters because GG is now so tightly integrated into this story that we need to view his comments not as those of an impartial reporter.
I doubt they think they can intimidate him. They probably are hoping they can get their hands on as yet unreleased docs to stop them being published. Either way it's a real mistake.
One of the functions of a free press (journalists) is exactly to aggressively report on the malintent of bureaucrats and the maladministration of government power. Actual journalism is and always has been a form of dissent.
"He said he would respond by writing reports "much more aggressively than before" and would publish "many more documents".
"I have lots of documents about the way the secret services operate in England. Now my focus will be there as well," he added.
"I think they are going to regret what they did."
- Does it sound like he is now reporting impartially or is he clearly a participant in the game with revenge on his mind?
"Reuters is the absolute worst at tearing comments out of context for sensationalizing headlines. The paraphrase:
Q: Will the UK's detention of your partner deter your future reporting?
A: Absolutely not. If anything, it will do the opposite. It will embolden me: I have many more documents to report on, including ones about the UK, where I'll now focus more. I will be more aggressive, not less, in reporting.
Q: What effect do you think they'll be of the UK's detention of your partner?
A: When they do things like this, they show the world their real character. It'll backfire. I think they'll come to regret it.
REUTERS: HE VOWS TO PUBLISH DOCUMENTS ABOUT UK AFTER DETENTION, SAYS THEY WILL BE SORRY!!!"
As a U.S. citizen, I am more and more surprised that we aren't subject to a world wide trade embargo... We're as reliant on food grown in south/central america as in our own country, or others are reliant on us. As for tech, if China/Taiwan/Japan closed off all sales, the public would show significant outrage.
I don't think most people in this country will care until they can't buy a new iPhone 6, or Galaxy S 5... What I am really surprised by is how many other countries have tolerated this so far.
I've got a big moral problem with a country interrogating a non-citizen and not allowing an attorney to be present or consulted.
More than a few years ago, I had key evidence about a felony and therefore had good reason to cooperate with the investigating officers. The initial questions were simple, factual, and related to the felony. But then the questions changed. At a certain point the questions became almost accusatory, at which point I started to ask WTF. It was then - and only then - that I was told I was a suspect and read my Miranda Rights. As knowledgeable as I was about my rights in my own country, all this still left dumbfounded. (It turned out the suspect in the felony had subsequently accused me and a colleague of a different felony. For months we were still suspects, had our own rights limited and were interrogated frequently. Thankfully, evidence came to light several months later that firmly cleared me and my colleague.)
I can not imagine being in a foreign country and going through a comparable situation. Beyond the right and wrong of David Miranda being interrogated, I've got a huge moral problem with any country interrogating a non-citizen without legal counsel.
Shades of Joseph Wilson. There will be some serious fall out from this, I wonder what they were thinking when they pulled this stunt, Greenwald is not going to be intimidated.
This is probably the worst idea I've read on HN this week.
It's not just legally and politically impossible, it wouldn't solve the problem, it would have dire economic consequences, it would be grossly disproportionate and unfair and these kind of petty attempts at disciplining sovereign nations would only serve to politically destabilise Europe.
Nah, it is actually a pretty good idea. It's high time for the EU to actually take a stance on civil liberties, human rights and the abolishment of these ‘anti-terrorism acts’. This will be a lot harder if there are people at the table working on their application as the 51st state.
Furthermore, by cutting ties with the UK, both its financial and economical situation will be worsened, making for a loss of importance until it’s only an annoying island off the coast of France rather than the first waypoint to Canada or (in this case) Brazil.
There is an a European body dedicated to civil liberties and human rights, and it isn't the EU.
It's the Council of Europe, which is the body which coordinated the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) and runs the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).
The only human rights cases that come before the EU courts (the CJEU) are only those within its jurisdiction. Which means: either reviewing acts of EU institutions (e.g. as in Kadi, which was reviewing regulations by the EC implementing a UN Security Council directive), or reviewing EU laws, or reviewing acts of member states implementing EU laws.
So: while the EU does have a charter of fundamental rights (the CFREU) - and is itself soon going to be a signatory to the ECHR - you can only sue the government in the CJEU for violating it when they're implementing EU law. (Especially for the UK and Poland, who have a pointless clause which restates this just for them because they're special snowflakes).
The Terrorism Act 2000 is not an EU law.
So: this is outside the scope of the EU's jurisdiction. The appropriate international court to take this to is the ECtHR.
As for kicking the UK out of the Council of Europe, that's something that can and should happen if, and only if, someone brings this to the the ECtHR, they rule against the UK, and the UK refuses to bring UK law into compliance. Trying to short-circuit that and kick the UK out without that legal process would do nothing except damage the reputation of the Council of Europe for rule of law.
While you are of course right that, from a legal perspective, the ECtHR is the body responsible for (most cases) of human rights abuse, and that it is not part of the EU per se, I did not mean to say that the current case should be brought in front of an EU court.
What I did mean to say was that the EU as a whole should (politically) take a strong stance on such issues, implement appropriate, EU-wide legislation to protect the privacy of European citizens from their own and third party governments as well as private companies and enforce corresponding standards in international trade – i.e., I was referring to a political process that I would like to take place (within the EU), not a judicial lawsuit in front of the appropriate court of law.
Regarding your last paragraph: The Treaty of Lisbon does contain an exit clause[0], which either requires the agreement on a withdrawal treaty or a period of two years from the notification of the intention to secede. This means that, within the current legal framework, it is possible
a) for the UK to declare its intention to leave and just do so in roughly 2015.
b) for the UK to declare its intention to leave, agree on an appropriate treaty and then leave as soon as possible.
c) for the other member states to leave (in 2015) and – in parts – form an appropriate core union which is made clear to be more than a free trade zone.
Naturally, the last option is rather unlikely to occur any time soon, but it would be legally possible and certainly not damage the reputation of the Council of Europe (at least not more than Russia’s prolonged membership therein).
Then they should have voted for a different government.
Sorry, but “there are people in a country with a democratic government that don’t deserve what their government brought upon them” is not a particularly good reason – and even then, I don’t think it’d hurt to allow immigration into Europe for a while, so there’s even a perspective for those that “really don’t deserve” the results of their (in)action.
The people voted for law makers that made a) easily abused laws (such as this one) and b) laws that inherently invade the privacy of their fellow European citizens. They furthermore voted for law makers that (apparently) did not include any precautions to punish those that abuse the previously-made laws.
At some point you have to draw a line in the sand, no matter the cost. (The consequences of not drawing a line, might be far more costly, not economically per se.)
I'd say it's because the submitter for the linked submission, with username cransa (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cransa), is only 17 hours old, while the submitter of the active link is m1 (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=m1), a user for 2 years. It is interesting that m1 hasn't commented on any submissions in months, and this submission is one of only two in his history. If he's been active recently, he's only been lurking. Of course, it shouldn't matter how old the user is or what their activity history looks like, so long as the submission isn't spam. The deaded submission clearly isn't spam and cransa's comments aren't spammy either (and that dead link is his only submission to boot), but this isn't the first time the mods have decided to give preference to links submitted by older users (edit: as well giving preference to other users with no discernible rationale for doing so). As well, in my own observations, it appears that there is a upvote/comment threshold that once crossed means the rising submission is liable to get killed. That is, if a rising submission has ~10-20 upvotes but no comments, it seems at greater risk of being deaded. And of course there's the auto-hellban for new users that decide to jump into active discussions, regardless of their comments' content. I think that's a more insidious action than any of the preceding.
tl;dr: Mods = Gods
(I don't know if qubitsam deleted the comment of his own accord. But assuming he didn't: Please, dear gods/mods, consider not deleting this one too.)
I will be writing to my MP about this disgraceful incident. I will be encouraging others to do the same. In fact I will door step them at their surgery and let them know that this is a line that's been massively overstepped.
I stopped reading when he implied that the US was behind it. GB is a sovereign country, and still a democracy. If you don't like the fascist laws people are voting for, stop voting for them. If you blame some outside party, you're just passing the buck and making excuses why you can't convince people to grow a spine and stop voting for the status quo -- "oh, my people would never put up with this, but the big bad USA is forcing us to". If your politicians have signed you up to be the enforcers for a little mafia protection racket, maybe they shouldn't be in office.
Disclaimer: This is largely speculative and WHOLLY me playing devil's advocate. I do not condone this sort of behaviour by my government.
Could the case be made that journalists are legitimate targets for investigation following on from Manning and Snowdon? My focus here is less on terrorism and more towards counter-intelligence. Were I a rival nation-state I would see an intelligence-gathering opportunity in what's happened: Rather than bribing/coercing people into become informants, there is now the option to invite them to 'blow the whistle' by posing as a journalist.
If you believe that the security interests of the state should always take precedent, then this argument could be made. However, this is of course a totalitarian position.
I agree with what you're saying, but these were anti-terrorism laws. I see how you can play devil's advocate and make an argument of legitimacy as you have, but that doesn't legitimise using anti-terrorism laws for counter-intelligence.
I don’t understand why this article so carefully avoids the word “spouse”. I had no idea what kind of partner David Miranda was – business, romantic, or marriage – for most of the article. The story only hinted at the meaning in the third-to-last paragraph, about “detaining the family members and loved ones of journalists”. Was this just bad editing, or does nobody talk about “business partners” any more?
It's just a style issue. From 2004 until very recently gay couples in England could only get a 'civil partnership', not a marriage; possibly because of that 'X is Y's partner' in the UK is these days understood as meaning a romantic attachment. (The business meaning still exists, but is phrased as e.g. "X and Y are both partners at Foobar LLP" rather than "X is Y's partner").
They do it because they can and they learned that the public will scream for a few days and move on with their daily problems soon after.
It's sad, very sad. I am pessimistic and I have an impression looking at how Obama and co. are lying without any consequences, what NSA has being doing and other recent examples, that we lost that war and we have no tools to fight against it.
Not really relevant, but I am greatly amused between the current relationship that we have with our security services and the situation that Terry Gilliam portrays in his excellent film: "Brazil".
After all, when the security state starts to be driven by the profit motive, were we really so naive as to expect anything less?
Unlikely and perhaps wrong under most perspectives, but as soon as I read Greenwald's account I thought "shit, he's caught the bait". The government and those detaining his man were wholly aware of what a shitstorm this would have caused. I would have LOVED to see the alternative scenario, where Greenwald tells Miranda "Don't tell anyone else.". The police wouldn't and couldn't speak publicly, no-one gets to know about the event, the political game of those who had this brilliant idea is now in pieces.
The gov's option at that point would have been to further escalate their offensive, exposing themselves even more. Instead what we got now is a lawful, yet badly-intentioned use of the law, which is grave, but likely insufficient to warrant & spark any significant tectonic movements.
It seems to me that a good line to draw regarding overreach by the government is to determine who or what they're efforts are protecting. Terrorism laws were sold to us as necessary to protect the people. More recently, it seems that the efforts of the government has been to protect itself FROM the people.
There's no doubt "terrorism" laws are abused on a daily basis to intimidate and scare people into being good citizens, the question here is who in the chain of command and how far up the chain did the order get carried down from and why? This whole NSA, Prism stuff is getting out of hand. It's not a nice feeling living in a world where Governments are spying on their citizens and those abroad in plain sight and knowing there is nothing anyone can do about it except go off the grid completely and well, it's 2013, it's not exactly easy to do that.
I can only hope that this incident is investigated further and that we get some solid answers from those in power about why David had been detained for the legally permitted time of 9 hours without charge.
I find awesome when this kind of thing happen, It makes pretty clear how the law is manipulated to protect those in power, the fear politics is obviously a strategy to intimidate and control the masses but fortunately, with this kind of abuses, it is becoming more and more apparently.
Depending on the country some have already reached that definition. Terrorism is a nebulous enough term that it can be made to fit a large variety of entities. That's exactly why it was chosen.
Never. The word "terrorism" is a word used by the incumbent power to describe that which is "other." They get to decide who the word applies to and who it doesn't.
Pressure-intimidation tactic? Turn up the indignation up a few notches to make Greenwald trip and release more/all NSA-related information in one go, instead of the slow drip-of-death that is making them look like liars with every denial they make.
I'd guess what they were looking for was any one of the leaked top-secret NSA documents on his laptop, the hard drive of which is being analyzed as we speak...
Had they found anything during the 9 hours, I'm afraid he wouldn't be flying to Brazil - he would have been detained indefinitely as a "terror" suspect in order to intimidate Greenwald even more.
so this is one side of the story. no one knows what happened during that questioning, why amd how it started and how his partner acted.
case in point, there was this guy who stripped naked at a TSA check a while back.
you yourself can easily trigger an incident like this and escalate it.
right now there is one side of the story, reported by a deeply involved, non-objective actor. if you ask a parent about what happened to their kid in school when it was expelled you'll also get a very subjective, partisan take.
this "discussion" here smells of the reddit hivemind, quickly jumping to conclusion, throwing around terms like fascism and full of nerd bravado. nobody asks what really happened.
and to the downvoters - there are now emerging articles that Miranda was carrying classified information. so yeah, more sides to the story, but who gives a shit because fascism.
no, but if the person is not allowed to carry/possess it, he/she might be breaking laws. the term 'classified' exists for a reason.
it is all 'ifs', which is my point - not much is known, the so called fog of war is still in full effect but people around here are already jumping to conclusions.
might have been a nasty way of intimidation, might have been a security clerk reacting to standard procedure. no one here right now knows.
"Those stopped have no automatic right to legal advice and it is a criminal offence to refuse to co-operate with questioning under schedule 7, which critics say is a curtailment of the right to silence."
Disgusting. But may I dare to suggest that in his case it was extremely naïve, if not outright deliberate, to choose an airport in the UK to change planes?
They completely abused their own terrorism law for reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism: a potent reminder of how often governments lie when they claim that they need powers to stop "the terrorists", and how dangerous it is to vest unchecked power with political officials in its name. [1]
This is a great example of why we should treat terrorism like any other crime, and why the police should never be trusted with exceptional powers simply because we feel under threat. Give them the powers, and they will be misused - in this case they were used on a relative of someone nothing to do with terrorism purely for the purpose of intimidation. The security services even called Greenwald to give him the news that his partner had been detained.
[1] http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/18/david-m...