
White House Had Advance Notice on Heathrow Detention - throwaway_yy2Di
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/08/19/white-house-had-advance-notice-on-heathrow-detention/?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories
======
jusben1369
Braces for the down votes but..... a) He was his partner but he was also
acting as a paid employee of the Guardian correct? I read they paid his flight
at the very least. b) Assumption by said governments would be "He's traveling
from Germany from Laura Poitras back to Greenwald in Brazil. He's very likely
carrying highly sensitive documentation from Snowden" c) The governments still
believe that is highly classified, stolen documentation. So they pull him
aside to see if they can intercept it. It's not clear if they have or not - we
do know they took a lot of his equipment.

Now I'm not _supporting_ what happened. I'm just trying to point out that
there might be a _logic_ to it and it's not the one that's making the rounds
much of today "Oh they just targeted my boyfriend to bully/humiliate us" It
sounds like to the government's he was a paid willing member potentially
carrying what they believe to be stolen sensitive material and they
intercepted him to get it back.

Just like many other efforts in this saga the outcome is another huge PR coup
for Snowden/Greenwald and yet more political pressure and controls will be
brought to bare on government secrecy.

EDIT: I'd point people to this new comment further down. Fascinating but not
surprising:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6239847](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6239847)

~~~
aspensmonster
>"...He's very likely carrying highly sensitive documentation from Snowden"

Given the extremely high profile nature of this entire scenario, I don't see
how anyone on the case could expect the probability of Greenwald using his
partner as a data mule to rank as "very likely." I'm not saying it's
impossible. Just that anyone who's been paying attention for the last decade
or so knows better than to travel with hardware across unfriendly borders like
the US or the UK. They're just going to take it anyway and then you're out
thousands of dollars of gear. Between Snowden and Greenwald and Poitras and
The Guardian and Wikileaks, I'd sincerely hope that they'd be capable of
utilizing dead drops online.

In my opinion, this "retrieving stolen property" argument is merely the
parallel construction of the actual motivation: to intimidate journalism. They
know perfectly well that the probability of Miranda carrying anything
actionable on him is minimal. But that's not the point. That's the pretext.
The point was to pressure cook him for nine hours in order to glean from him
any useful tidbit of intel, with the understanding that even if nothing comes
of it, they've sent a clear message to The Guardian that they're taking the
fight to them personally.

~~~
_djo_
I would have agreed with you before hand, but it turns out that Greenwald and
the Guardian _were_ using David Miranda as a data mule:

 _In an e-mail Monday to The Associated Press, Mr. Greenwald said that he
needed material from Ms. Poitras for articles he was working on related to the
N.S.A., and that he had things she needed. “David, since he was in Berlin,
helped with that exchange,” Mr. Greenwald wrote.

...

Mr. Miranda told reporters in Rio that he had been subjected to deep
questioning at Heathrow. “I stayed in a room, there were six different agents,
entering and leaving, who spoke with me,” he said. “They asked questions about
my whole life, about everything. They took my computer, video game, cellphone,
memory thumb drives — everything.”

Mr. Greenwald said that all of the documents encrypted on the thumb drives
came from the trove of materials provided by Mr. Snowden._

Source: [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/world/europe/britain-
detai...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/world/europe/britain-detains-the-
partner-of-glen-greenwald.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0)

And:

 _He had spent the previous week in Berlin visiting Laura Poitras, a
documentary filmmaker who has also been helping to disseminate Mr. Snowden 's
leaks, to assist Mr. Greenwald. The Guardian had paid for the trip, Mr.
Greenwald said, and Mr. Miranda was on his way home to Rio de Janeiro.

Mr. Miranda was in Berlin to deliver documents related to Mr. Greenwald's
investigation into government surveillance to Ms. Poitras, Mr. Greenwald said.
Ms. Poitras, in turn, gave Mr. Miranda different documents to pass to Mr.
Greenwald. Those documents, which were stored on encrypted thumb drives, were
confiscated by airport security, Mr. Greenwald said. All of the documents came
from the trove of materials provided to the two journalists by Mr. Snowden.
The British authorities seized all of his electronic media — including video
games, DVDs and data storage devices — and did not return them, Mr. Greenwald
said._

Source: [http://theweek.com/article/index/248385/the-miranda-
mess](http://theweek.com/article/index/248385/the-miranda-mess)

Having read that, I now believe the British were justified in detaining
Miranda, though doing so for 9 hours was clearly excessive. What on earth was
Greenwald thinking though letting his spouse, who lacks any kind of
journalistic privilege, travel through the UK while carrying classified leaked
NSA and GCHQ documents? It was foolish at best.

~~~
rmk2
> Having read that, I now believe the British were justified in detaining
> Miranda, though doing so for 9 hours was clearly excessive.

Much of the controvery kicked off by this is that they used rights that are
supposed to be used _purely_ for direct terrorism-related investigations. As
one of the Guardian articles so succinctly put it, this is _absolutely
unacceptable_ , unless somebody actually and officially declares journalism
terrorism.

~~~
_djo_
I agree, it was an abuse of law. But stopping and detaining him temporarily
seems justifiable, especially as he is not a journalist, doesn't enjoy any
protections other than the ones any normal travellers get and was carrying
some of the leaked NSA docs.

In that light using the terrorism law and holding him for 9 hours was a brain
dead move as well.

~~~
malandrew
He was acting on behalf of a bona fide investigative journalist and his
journey was paid for by The Guardian. That should be enough to afford him the
same protection as a journalist.

What if he had not been the partner of GG, but instead just your average joe
paid courier being paid for the delivery of primary source evidence to be used
by the staff of the news organization? Would the contents of the package not
enjoy the same protection that it would were it being carried by one of the
new organization's journalists?

------
jostmey
I don't know what is more shocking to me! That the British interrogated this
man for nine hours and then _STOLE_ his property, or that the British security
forces were actually efficient enough to identify this man at the airport and
then detain him.

~~~
joezydeco
Miranda was flying from Berlin to Rio de Janeiro with a change of planes in
London.

Since you pretty much can't fly under an alias these days, it was probably
pretty easy to identify him as he arrived from Berlin. The UK knew the exact
seat he was sitting in.

~~~
jostmey
Yes, but first someone in the British government had to have put this man on a
list. Some government official consciously come up with a list of names of
people to go after.

~~~
grey-area
It probably wasn't a UK list, might well just be a US one, but it's
interesting that we have no idea what lists there are of people of interest,
who makes them, or how people end up on the lists or are taken off them (if
they ever are). See Laura Poitras being stopped and searched in Sarajevo based
on a US watch list for example:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/magazine/laura-poitras-
sno...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/magazine/laura-poitras-
snowden.html?pagewanted=all)

Apparently she is a high priority terrorism suspect as well.

------
mjolk
How would that notification go?

"Hey guys, we're going to bully the boyfriend of a reporter for you. High
five?"

~~~
tootie
Whole thing makes no sense. Unless they are planning on going full retard and
abducting/killing/imprisoning someone, then minor harassment just makes you
look like assholes. Impotent assholes at that. Cameron is bad, but he isn't
Putin. Greenwald knows his threats are idle. Obama has been playing it cool
and making some token concessions which is a much more media-savvy approach.

~~~
bowlofpetunias
It seems very much like they stopped caring about how it looks. Pretty much
around the time the revoked Snowden's passport.

We're through the looking glass now. Our governments (no Western government is
exempt here) are operating in a way that closely resembles the regimes of the
former Eastern Bloc, _and they are making no attempts to hide it anymore_.
That's the scary part.

Revoking a citizens passport? Blocking attempts to seek asylum? Forcing down a
plane of a foreign, democratically elected leader of a country? Detaining the
boyfriend of a reporter under false pretenses? None of this is happening in
secret anymore. And it's no longer "them", the anonymous evil "terrorists",
the "enemy combatants" that cannot be fought by conventional means. They've
turned on _us_ now.

I wouldn't be too sure anymore they aren't planning to go "full retard". They
obviously have no shame, and no fear of consequences.

~~~
tootie
It doesn't closely resemble the former Eastern Bloc at all.

------
mrt0mat0
Seriously though, his name is Miranda. Nobody see's the irony?

~~~
alan_cx
There is both a British and US amusement/irony there.

~~~
nakedrobot2
What is the British one?

(for those who don't know, the USA one is the "Miranda rights" read to anyone
who is arrested)

~~~
Osmium
At a guess, I'd go with:

    
    
      "O, wonder!  
      How many goodly creatures are there here!  
      How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,  
      That has such people in't!"
    
      - Miranda (Act V, Scene I, The Tempest)
    

But that's possibly a bit of a stretch here.

------
RexRollman
This whole situation is disgusting and both the US and UK are complicite in
this.

~~~
hyperventilator
Which countries are not complicit?

~~~
fleitz
Russia?

~~~
hyperventilator
Even Russia, who is more than happy to see the West twist in the wind, has
said Snowden should stop leaking state secrets, presumably because they also
don't want their secrets leaked.

~~~
vidarh
No, they said he should not "harm the US" if he was to get asylum.

As Snowden had already handed his documents to others, presumably Russian
authorities knew full well that making that promise would be easy for Snowden
and would not make any difference, and it made it easier for Russia to appear
to be taking the high road.

------
samstave
That's because they likely "requested" it.

~~~
gavinlynch
bingo

------
djf1
transcript of the daily news briefing:
[http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/08/19/transcript-white-
ho...](http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/08/19/transcript-white-house-
comments-on-heathrow-detention/)

~~~
Moral_
Some of those reporters are very quick on their feet regarding the wording of
their questions.

------
asaarinen
After the incident they are shrugging it off. My guess is that they were
trying their luck; had they found anything on his laptop which they could use
against him - like any of the leaked documents - who knows where he would be
detained right now.

~~~
rhizome
My guess is that it was like the bully who shoulder-checks you when you're
walking by them in the hallway, and who just keeps on walking.

~~~
moutarde
I think it's like a teacher checking your bag (under the pretence of "finding
drugs") in order to confiscate your camera that contains incriminating
pictures of them.

~~~
rhizome
I think it's more aggressive and invasive than that. Maybe if the pictures
were of the superintendent and their paramour. Maybe.

