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.
