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.
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...