White House Had Advance Notice on Heathrow Detention

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/08/19/white-house-had-advance-notice-on-heathrow-detention/?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories

by throwaway_yy2Di • 13 years ago

208 119 13 years ago

blogs.wsj.com

RexRollman• 13 years ago

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

hyperventilator5• 13 years ago

Which countries are not complicit?

fleitz2• 13 years ago

Russia?

alan_cx4• 13 years ago

As a Brit, I find it shameful.

Indeed, I find it hard to accept how blatant it all is, but with seemingly little public out rage. The abuse of anti terror laws to harass people who merely embarrass a so called democratic government is truly corrupt.

I mean, the police are being now asked why he was stopped under anti-terror laws, and they will abide by those self serving laws themselves by saying that they cant say why because its all top secret. Does any one really think the police will say, "we were asked to shake the guy down by the Hone Office, on behalf of Obama?" No, we'll just get the usual slight of language designed to let these people slither away. And most people will just accept it and move on.

What pains me most is that I think I find the lack of public interest singularly the most worrying aspect of this whole thing. No one really cares that much at all.

And then I think: well, if the majority want to sleep walk in to a future like and probably worse than this, well, fine. Just means an increase in hacker types buying "I told you so" t-shirts in a few years time. Oh, and a lot of pain for those caught up in the mean time. But who cares about those "terrorists", "pedophiles", "traitors", and "pirates" any way?

I dunno. I find it most frustrating.

mrt0mat0• 13 years ago

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

alan_cx4• 13 years ago

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

nakedrobot2• 13 years ago

What is the British one?

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

foobarbazqux• 13 years ago

Some people with the first name Miranda even have the last name Law, e.g. https://www.facebook.com/miranda.law.71 (public profile, you don't have to sign in)

mjolk• 13 years ago

How would that notification go?

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

saraid2162• 13 years ago

...it took me this long to realize "partner" was a personal relation, not a professional relation.

mitchty2• 13 years ago

To be honest it was confusing as hell because they said partner and his name is Miranda, more commonly a girls name. Seriously, boyfriend or husband, partner just sounds like some live in person or like you said business related.

I'm also amused by just how hard these reporters seem to even avoid pronouns or other language that would indicate his gender. Strikes me as really really odd.

niuzeta• 13 years ago

...wait, it wasn't a professional "partner"? I was under impression that the "partner" was in a professional sense throughout the article.

frank_boyd2• 13 years ago

The thing is: It doesn't matter at all. And it shouldn't. It will probably be used to create distraction etc. again.

toble• 13 years ago

In the UK, 'partner' is a spouse. You need to say 'business partner' if you want to avoid the confusion.

tootie3• 13 years ago

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.

frank_boyd2• 13 years ago

It could be they were trying to score points with the US for their "special relationship". Show commitment etc. so they continue to get funding from the US for surveillance activities (I hope you do remember that revelation, a few weeks back!).

rhizome5• 13 years ago

Every turn by the governments has been an attempt to cast the issue as a personal one by unhinged opponents. With every revelation putting the spotlight on the government and the laws and processes they have put into place, they try to turn around and say it's just some lone spy nut or whatever. Hasn't been working too well, but I suppose this gives them a minute of breathing room on the news cycle.

My sense is that if they're going after Greenwald's hubby, they don't really know what to do about all this. They certainly don't want any focus on the past, since they can't help but lie about it (and later be exposed for doing so), so this makes the story about "today." That means the governments can (finally) be the source of information in the story, rather than being wrongfooted as the subject. The western governments really don't seem to like the spotlight these days, but we'll see if they can convert this story to one favorable to them, if even for a couple of days until Greenwald/Gellman/Sanchez/etc.'s next story.

jstalin• 13 years ago

Acts like this are designed to have a psychological effect on the target. Since government can't outright just kill the guy any more, they will do everything they can to make his life miserable by doing things like this. Imagine being in Greenwald's shoes and knowing that your spouse is bearing the brunt of consequences for your actions. It would make many people rethink what they're doing.

bowlofpetunias• 13 years ago

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.

gavinlynch2• 13 years ago

"Everybody knows you never go full retard..."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAKG-kbKeIo

SAS7213• 13 years ago

I am not sure why everyone thinks this has anything to do with bullying and intimidation. Greenwald implicated his partner by saying he had considered sending STOLEN documents to him in a previous interview. Of course British authorities would detain someone who might have stolen property with national security implications.

Dosenpfand• 13 years ago

Do you have a link to said interview?

mikkom• 13 years ago

And what does that have to do with terrorism exactly?

rhizome5• 13 years ago

A green account with "SAS" in the nickname, not too clever.

homeomorphic• 13 years ago

Stolen documents? No, no. He was, at worst, carrying a copy of information someone else copied without being allowed to so.

You see, if he were carrying stolen documents, someone at Booze Hamilton would be saying "shiiit, that manilla folder with the post-it saying important stuff, don't lose got stolen!".

If someone tells you a secret, hd might be a hero or a villain... but a thief he is not!

asaarinen• 13 years ago

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.

rhizome5• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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.

jostmey2• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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.

jostmey2• 13 years ago

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.

samstave• 13 years ago

That's because they likely "requested" it.

gavinlynch2• 13 years ago

bingo

jusben136910• 13 years ago

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

Zigurd• 13 years ago

How would that logic lead to detention under an anti-terrorism law?

jusben136910• 13 years ago

It's a huge stretch of that law but not particularly new. Al Capone was finally put in jail for violations of the taxation code! It shows how creative people get when they want to get go after someone. The logic would be Snowden releases documentation that exposes methods used by the NSA to protect people from terrorism. So stopping that release reduces the chance of a terrorism attack. That would be how the mindset goes from folks who were behind targeting this detainment.

susi223• 13 years ago

Too bad Jusben1369 is getting downvoted. He made a point. It's also that the Terrorism Act of 2000 defines Terrorism very very broadly [1]

(b) the use or threat is designed to influence the government [or an international governmental organisation] or to intimidate the public or a section of the public, and

(c) the use or threat is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious [, racial] or ideological cause.

It looks like the officers in London did act according to law. If that law makes sense or not is an entirely other discussion.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_Act_2000

forgotAgain• 13 years ago

I wasn't surprised to learn that they detained him. What was surprising, and shortsighted I would think, was that they used a law meant for terrorism suspects. One could make a plausible argument that he was a courier for a spy. I don't think one could make the argument that he was a terrorist.

What's wrong here is the way a law that was sold as needed to allow for immediate response to a terrorist threat, without red tape, is used in a situation where normal law enforcement channels should have been adequate. It opens the door to "terrorist" laws being applied to the general population.

jusben136910• 13 years ago

Agreed. Without these terrorist laws they probably would have had to jump through more hoops to detain him. But detain him they would have. The fact that the Whitehouse had a heads up means this was something that was planned for quite some time.

mcantelon• 13 years ago

If they held him the maximum time they could - 9 hours - then it's likely harassment was also an aim.

acqq• 13 years ago

More probably they hoped to discover something incriminating on his computer or media during that time in order to have a clear case against him and keep him.

spdy• 13 years ago

* 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"

If i had thousands of documents on how the NSA etc. works i would never ever have anything on my laptop except pictures of my last holiday.

This incident is on the same level as grounding the presidential jet of Bolivia.

A pure and simple power play to intimidate Greenwald and his co-workers/partners. And they want to show "Look we can do with you whatever we want. Remember that !".

jacalata2• 13 years ago

Congratulations, you are smarter about documents than Greenwald and partner. Now you just have to get into a position where the next snowden knows this.

aspensmonster2• 13 years ago

"...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.

jusben136910• 13 years ago

So there's two possible reasons for them stopping him and both are kind of pathetic. One, that stopping someone for 9 hours in Heathrow really amounts to much intimidation of anything. I mean it's wrong and wrong headed but I struggle to buy that someone with half a brain thought this would be at all intimidating. I mean this is England for crying out loud. They probably spoke loudly at him and refused him tea.

So I lean toward they really wanted to see if they could find anything on him directly or indirectly that would help them get to all those documents Greenwald is now saying he'll release. But I understand that most people will chose between these two reasons and it's hard to prove one or the other.

_djo_4• 13 years ago

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...

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

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.

jlgreco3• 13 years ago

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.

Obviously stealing his shit does not take the full 9 legally allowable hours. That could not have been the only motivation.

fnordfnordfnord• 13 years ago

I'm just trying to point out that there might be a logic to it

Is there a legal justification, or is the gov't abusing its authority? Everybody knows that the gov't is embarrassed, and seeks to prevent further disclosures, does that give the gov't the right to break the law?

a) He was his partner but he was also acting as a paid employee of the Guardian correct?

I don't know.

I read they paid his flight at the very least.

So, it is not unreasonable for the Guardian to do so, since his connection to the recent Guardian stories are the reason for his detainment (even if he has no involvement).

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"

Where is the connection to terrorism?

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.

Harassment

When a politician says they need a law to detain travelers, without due process, in the name of preventing terrorism, I assume that means that the person may have involvement with an ongoing plot or operation to commit actual terrorism imminently. I am totally cool with detaining a person or persons who might be about to murder a bunch of people using a train/airplane. If wrong, the gov't ought to apologize, and make it up to them.

When the gov't detains travelers without due process, in the name of preventing terrorism, and it turns out the person has only computer files/documents/etc. and does not have any bombs, weapons, plans to hijack planes, or any connections to persons who do, and everybody knows the traveler is not a terrorist; that's an abuse of anti-terrorism laws. There are other ways for gov't to hide its shame, instead a gov't chose to shame itself further.

PS, I assume you meant "brought to bear"

jacalata2• 13 years ago

He wasn't detained until he was on the return leg of the trip being paid for by the guardian, so the detainment can't really be the reason they paid for it.

wissler3• 13 years ago

The reason to downvote you is not because your rationale is necessarily "illogical", but because 1) it's speculation, and 2) it's better to spend your speculative effort defending and supporting the good guys than the bad guys.

jusben136910• 13 years ago

I come to HN to read views that make me uncomfortable and push my pre-existing assumptions. I started off pretty negative on Snowden but have changed my views over time based on the strength of arguments I've seen here by those who think very differently from me. I'd never downvote something that was genuine and earnest no matter how disagreeable.

fleitz2• 13 years ago

What does this have to do with terrorism?

How is the release of classified US information a terrorist threat to the UK?

Keep in mind the statute is for terrorism... Not your doing things we don't like to our friends.

jeremysmyth• 13 years ago

It was also classified UK information--there's a lot of stuff about GCHQ activity and the UK's tapping of backbones in and out of British territory in Greenwald's material.

zeteo• 13 years ago

Yes, there is a logic to it. It shows very clearly that governments around the world are using anti-terrorism laws as a blank warrant to do whatever they please (particularly to foreigners). If the detention authority extends to someone who interacts with someone who interviewed someone accused of exposing an anti-terrorist program, there are very few things left outside its reach indeed.

djf1• 13 years ago

transcript of the daily news briefing: http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/08/19/transcript-white-ho...

Moral_• 13 years ago

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

White House Had Advance Notice on Heathrow Detention

Related Stories