

UK Court: David Miranda Detention Legal Under Terrorism Law - zorked
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/02/19/uk-court-david-miranda-detention-legal-terrorism-law/

======
d0
My father, an East German now living in the UK, was saying the other day that
he sees parallels between the rise of the Stasi in the 1950's onwards and the
UK government's behaviour over the last two decades. I'm inclined to believe
him.

The legal system was pretty much the first thing to fall there as well as the
criminalisation of literally everything. We have so much legislation now that
deals with criminalising people that people don't have a chance if they get in
trouble even for something trivial.

~~~
cmdkeen
There's a difference between "seeing parallels" and the UK being anywhere
close to East Germany.

Miranda was carrying classified files relating to UK intelligence gathering
out of the country. You would have been stopped at the border for that at any
point in the last 100 years. Almost any country in the world would do that.

I would question how many would then have a court system of the calibre of
England and Wales' to allow the individual to appeal against it. The courts
have repeatedly struck down bits of government anti-terror legislation, S44
being the most notorious.

~~~
belorn
Since when has the UK started to classify files of other intelligent services?

Beyond being a bit bureaucratic to classify files of other nations, but what
does it mean if Sweden classify files created and kept the Norway government.
Can it be used to jail Norwegian citizens if they travel to or from Sweden?

~~~
gadders
If you read the actual court judgement (which I would recommend everyone to
do, normally very interesting and shows the depth to which these things are
considered) you will see:

Mr Oliver Robbins, Deputy National Security Adviser for Intelligence, Security
and Resilience in the Cabinet Office, indicates in his first witness statement
(paragraph 6) that the encrypted data contained in the external hard drive
taken from the claimant contains approximately 58,000 highly classified UK
intelligence documents. Many are classified SECRET or TOP SECRET. Mr Robbins
states that release or compromise of such data would be likely to cause very
great damage to security interests and possible loss of life.

~~~
belorn
So the US documents are now suddenly UK documents?

I call copyright infringement on grand scale. Authors' rights are
internationally protected by the Berne Convention for the Protection of
Literary and Artistic Works. If the UK is claiming authorship of documents
created by US citizen, the UK is either commit a crime or breaching
international treaties.

~~~
DannyBee
Just to point out: If they were created by the US government , they would
normally be automatically dedicated to public domain, so there would be
nothing for the UK to infringe.

There are weird exceptions here, and i can't remember which agencies fall into
them.

~~~
belorn
Authors moral rights are a bit more complicated, and I do not know how the UK
deal with it. It is uncertain if I can in UK law take Shakespeare works and
publish it as if I was the original author.

It is also uncertain if you can transfer moral rights. As I understand it, it
is a legal gray zone to claim someone else wrote a copyrighted work.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
> _I can in UK law take Shakespeare works and publish it as if I was the
> original author_ //

It's fraud -
[http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/35/section/2](http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/35/section/2),
cf. Section 2(1)(b)(i).

------
einhverfr
To be honest though, the UK has been beyond laughable for a few years on this
now.

During the great Icelandic banking crisis, the UK government used anti-
terrorism laws to seize assets held by Icelandic banks. I quipped at the time
that maybe they were worried about the assets being used to buy lumber for
longships from Norway and wealthy bankers going a-Viking again. They might
furthermore give the folks up in Orkney ideas and what then? Lose Caithness
and Sutherland? That's an existential threat there....

If it was legal to use anti-terrorism laws in that case against a foreign
entity far removed from any real terrorist activity (moreso than, say, the
British-owned HSBC), then it is hard to see how antiterrorism laws wouldn't be
perfectly legal here or anywhere else. Maybe they can start arresting people
for drinking tea suspiciously.

~~~
celticninja
Ant-terrorism laws have been used by local councils to spy on parents to make
sure they lived at addresses they say they lived at for the purpose of primary
school (5-10years of age) applications.

Anti-terror laws have been used way beyond their original intentions for a
long time in the UK. In this case the original proponent of the legislation
has come out and said excactly that.

Will it change anything? Nope.

~~~
matthewmacleod
I dispute that RIPA is actually an "anti-terror" law in any way aside from
popular description.

~~~
iamwithnail
I concur. RIPA was _not_ about terror, especially when it was passed. It's a
generally applicable law that's been mis-used in the name of 'security' and
'safety', in the same way that stop and search from PACE is.

------
k-mcgrady
>> "According to documents made public during Miranda’s civil suit, police
determined that he was subject to the anti-terror law because he was[...]
promoting a “political or ideological cause.”"

I understand they had other 'terrorism' related reasons for detaining him
(which I don't agree with), but the fact that someone can be detained simply
for promoting a political or ideological cause is a disgrace. I'm sure it's
there to stop extremist preachers but it's way to broad and sounds like it
could be used to stop a hell of a lot of non-terrorists.

~~~
spindritf
So harassing and silencing "extremist" preachers would be... fine? Is this OK?

 _A Christian street preacher was arrested and locked in a cell for telling a
passer-by that homosexuality is a sin in the eyes of God._ [1]

Is the law too broad only when it hits someone whose cause you care about?

And how do we decide which opinions are "extremist" or may serve as
justification for detention? Hey, maybe we could have courts rule on that.

[1]
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/7668448/Christian-p...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/7668448/Christian-
preacher-arrested-for-saying-homosexuality-is-a-sin.html)

~~~
andyjohnson0
According to the article you cited, he was arrested for causing "harassment,
alarm or distress" to a passer-by, who complained to a nearby police officer.
He wasn't arrested for simply stating an opinion.

~~~
girvo
Have you ever been arrested? The charges you end up with often have little to
do with reality. I despise people like the one we are discussing, but your
post isn't convincing evidence that he was doing more, to be honest.

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andyjohnson0
The full text of the judgement is at [1]. An interesting read.

Apart from the political and human-rights implications, what I find most
interesting is how the police knew what Miranda was actually carrying.
Paragraph 11 of the judgement quotes a police document (written before
Minranda was stopped) justifying his detention:

 _" We strongly assess that MIRANDA is carrying items which will assist in
GREENWALD releasing more of the NSA and GCHQ material we judge to be in
GREENWALD’s possession. Open source research details the relationship between
POITRAS, GREENWALD and SNOWDEN which corroborates our assessment as to the
likelihood that GREENWALD has access to the protectively marked material
SNOWDEN possesses. Our main objectives against David MIRANDA are to understand
the nature of any material he is carrying, mitigate the risks to national
security that this material poses..."_

Which reads like supposition to me. Based on open source research? Please.

Later, in paragraph 13:

 _" The claimant’s hand luggage was examined, and items retained which as I
have said included encrypted storage devices. Mr Oliver Robbins, Deputy
National Security Adviser for Intelligence, Security and Resilience in the
Cabinet Office, indicates in his first witness statement (paragraph 6) that
the encrypted data contained in the external hard drive taken from the
claimant contains approximately 58,000 highly classified UK intelligence
documents."_

Which is a very definite statement. Either it's based on guesswork, in which
case the best that could be said is that it is merely an opinion, or else they
broke the encryption (TrueCrypt?). I can't find anything in the facts section
of the judgement to indicate that Miranda disclosed what he was carrying, or
surrendered passwords.

[1]
[http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/Resources/JCO/Documents/Judgment...](http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/Resources/JCO/Documents/Judgments/miranda-
v-sofshd.pdf) [PDF]

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skywhopper
What depresses me is the court's acceptance that this involved "'very
pressing' issues of national security". The US courts are also far too cowed
by executive assertions of "national security". As if there were a clear,
bright line of demarcation between everyday ho-hum government data and secrets
so critical that their revelation poses an existential danger to civilization
itself.

In fact, none of the data released by Snowden is a danger to national security
in any sense. The identity of spies has not been released. No passcodes to
nuclear weapons have been revealed.

The courts ought to take responsibility to assess the legitimacy of executive
privilege claims and make judgments based on the actual content being
protected. But for whatever reason, they are afraid to do so.

~~~
timthorn
That the identity of spies has not been released does not mean that that
information was not in the files carried by Miranda.

------
chrisreichel
Basically the anti-terrorism laws are the contemporary inquisition. You can
use for anything in order to obtain any outcome.

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JulianMorrison
Colour me unsurprised - the courts have long shown that if political
embarrassment is an issue, they are completely supine.

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mavdi
Chips are down. Western nations have realised democracy is expensive. Instead
of China turning more democratic, to compete, they have turned into China.

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rmc
_the UK has historically been an outlier when it comes to both press freedoms
and anti-terror policies._

Yup. Don't forget Northern Ireland. They went heavy handed there. Did it work?
Nope.

~~~
blibble
did I miss something or is Northern Ireland still part of the Union?

~~~
rmc
Northern Ireland is still part of the UK. I meant that the heavy handed
approach didn't work, and was abandoned by the UK Gov (and the IRA et al.).
Instead _all sides_ sat down at the table and came to a (more) peaceful
solution.

~~~
xbadxapple
Heavy handed approach is seldom adequate, especially in situations with
separatist sentiment. Retribution is an invisible and hard-hitting enemy in
the long run, and going all guns blazing is a guarantee to breed one.

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ris
Well, this is pretty good proof that the "terrorism law" is wrongly formulated
then, isn't it?

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orblivion
Does anybody know why they didn't just use PGP over the internet like Snowden
supposedly did? He could have been caught holding onto a piece of paper with a
40 character fingerprint instead.

~~~
atmosx
Are we sure that there were actual documents there? I thought that the UK
authorities were _under the impression_ that _he might_ have GQHC (or whatever
it is called) documents on his laptop.

~~~
GotAnyMegadeth
GCHQ. It was only a Google away...

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moron4hire
Oh, well if it was legal, then it's all okay, right? I mean, of course the law
is always right. The law is always right, right? Right?!

Oh god, the world is coming apart at the seams.

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f_salmon
> David Miranda Detention Legal Under Terrorism Law

Nowadays, everything is "terrorism". It's funny, because before Bush, nobody
knew that word. Nobody ever talked about such a thing. It was something that
was talked about maybe once in every 5 years. Nowadays, you can't read the
news 1 single day without something being labeled "terrorism". Yesterday, it
was the Ukrainian gov't calling the people in the tents "terrorists".

It's become really easy to strike people down.

~~~
hahainternet
> Nowadays, everything is "terrorism". It's funny, because before Bush, nobody
> knew that word. Nobody ever talked about such a thing

Are you shitting me? Do you perhaps not realise the UK was bombed by the IRA
for many many years? That 5 letter bombs were sent only the other week?

Oh right, Americans didn't talk about terrorism, therefore it didn't exist.

Gotcha.

~~~
d0
Actually as a resident of the UK, it was a "meh" thing. The word terrorist was
still an extreme word used in rare circumstances even back in the height of
the bombings.

And no one really actually cared about it that much.

Now it's a label for every crime. "The defendant is a terrorist unit proven
otherwise".

~~~
vidarh
I loved to London in 2000. I just realised _today_ that there were at least 5
bombings and one rocket propelled grenade fired at Mi6 headquarters in the two
first years I lived here - I only remember two (the car bomb outside BBC
offices and the Ealing bomb where they'd phoned in a misleading warning naming
a street that doesn't exist).

The rest apparently got so little media attention that I either didn't notice
them or have forgotten all about it.

Of course that was well past the peak of the bombings, but it seems like a
good illustration of how much of a "meh" thing it actually was.

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lotsofmangos
We have form on this. We also used terror laws against the Icelandic
government during the banking crash -
[http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aXjIA...](http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aXjIA5NzyM5c)

