21-08-2013, 05:29 AM
Miranda interrogation, Guardian raid: Britain now the Iran of Europe
Posted on August 20, 2013 by admin
Britain may now be categorised as a pariah state. Over the last 24 hours it was revealed that the offices of one of the world's most respected newspapers, The Guardian, was raided by staff from GCHQ with the backing from Intelligence personnel from Whitehall, who demanded the editor destroy hard drives containing alleged files and documents pertaining to information sources by whistleblower Edward Snowden. On Sunday the partner of Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist who coordinated the Snowden stories, was seized by British Intelligence when in transit at Heathrow Airport, held for 9 hours, threatened with imprisonment and had all his electronic devices taken for examination.
So, should we expect the Ecuador Embassy to be raided next despite the diplomatic fallout and other consequences, and Assange to be taken and given up to the Americans? It's no longer unlikely. For we are now witnessing a rampant state, on collision course with well, just about everyone? These signs have been apparent for a long while, though it is only now belatedly that the media are finally waking up to this. They must act before it is too late.
Alan Rusbridger, Editor of the Guardian revealed a shocking raid on the Guardian offices in London by British Security Service operatives…
"The mood toughened just over a month ago, when I received a phone call from the centre of government telling me: "You've had your fun. Now we want the stuff back." There followed further meetings with shadowy Whitehall figures. The demand was the same: hand the Snowden material back or destroy it. I explained that we could not research and report on this subject if we complied with this request. The man from Whitehall looked mystified. "You've had your debate. There's no need to write any more."
During one of these meetings I asked directly whether the government would move to close down the Guardian's reporting through a legal route by going to court to force the surrender of the material on which we were working. The official confirmed that, in the absence of handover or destruction, this was indeed the government's intention. Prior restraint, near impossible in the US, was now explicitly and imminently on the table in the UK. But my experience over WikiLeaks the thumb drive and the first amendment had already prepared me for this moment. I explained to the man from Whitehall about the nature of international collaborations and the way in which, these days, media organisations could take advantage of the most permissive legal environments. Bluntly, we did not have to do our reporting from London. Already most of the NSA stories were being reported and edited out of New York. And had it occurred to him that Greenwald lived in Brazil?
The man was unmoved. And so one of the more bizarre moments in the Guardian's long history occurred with two GCHQ security experts overseeing the destruction of hard drives in the Guardian's basement just to make sure there was nothing in the mangled bits of metal which could possibly be of any interest to passing Chinese agents. "We can call off the black helicopters," joked one as we swept up the remains of a MacBook Pro."
It was indeed bizarre as not only did Rusbridger point out to the GCHQ spooks that copies of the files were held elsewhere in the world, but there could have been other hard drives at the Guardian offices holding the same files, and why did the spooks insist the hard drives be destroyed instead of simply confiscating them? All sounds very theatrical more about intimidation than anything.
Even The Spectator, a centre-right magazine, could not believe what happened to David Miranda, the partner of Glenn Greenwald and in an article penned by the more left-leaning Nick Cohen and scathing of the police concluded " The Miranda affair is proof, if further proof is needed, that we are now stuck in the post-Leveson world where not only journalists but their partners can be detained and questioned for hours on end. Where police officers feel no need to explain themselves to the public, in whose name they work, and whose taxes pay their salaries. The next time they try to tell you that the secrecy and attempts to silence legitimate debate are in the public interest', do not forget what they did to David Miranda, because they can do it to you too."
Or as Simon Jenkins says, in another damning article : "I hesitate to draw parallels with history, but I wonder how those now running the surveillance state and their appeasers would have behaved under the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. We hear today so many phrases we have heard before. The innocent have nothing to fear. Our critics merely comfort the enemy. You cannot be too safe. Loyalty is all. As one official said in wielding his legal stick over the Guardian: "You have had your debate. There's no need to write any more." Yes, there bloody well is."
Meanwhile the National Union of Journalist released a statement condemning the interrogation of Miranda…
The shocking detention of David Miranda for the crime of being the partner of a respected investigative journalist points to the growing abuse of so-called anti-terror laws in the UK. His detention and treatment was a gross misuse of the law and clearly linked to the work of his partner Glenn Greenwald, who revealed the extent of mass surveillance and wholesale interception of internet traffic by the US security services and its collusion with GCQH. It's rather ironic that the police's response, in turn, is to put the partner of a journalist under surveillance and detain him in this way.
Miranda had been used as a go-between by Greenwald and film-maker Laura Poitras, in Berlin, who had been working with him on the information supplied by Edward Snowden. This material has now been confiscated. Journalists no longer feel safe exchanging even encrypted messages by email and now it seems they are not safe when they resort to face-to-face meetings.
This is not an isolated problem. The NUJ believes that journalists are coming under more scrutiny and surveillance, being stopped at borders and their work interfered with, simply for doing their job. We are currently collating examples of such unacceptable interference across our membership. The treatment meted out to David Miranda is wholly unacceptable and it is time the use, or rather misuse, of terrorism legislation as a way of targeting individuals was properly and independently reviewed.
Finally, a travel warning: you may want to reconsider any travel that involves Britain, if only in transit. If you do travel there or via one of its airports, you may consider it prudent not to carry electronic devices, as they can be confiscated. Britain is now the Iran of Europe.
http://darkernet.in/miranda-interrogatio...of-europe/
Posted on August 20, 2013 by admin
Britain may now be categorised as a pariah state. Over the last 24 hours it was revealed that the offices of one of the world's most respected newspapers, The Guardian, was raided by staff from GCHQ with the backing from Intelligence personnel from Whitehall, who demanded the editor destroy hard drives containing alleged files and documents pertaining to information sources by whistleblower Edward Snowden. On Sunday the partner of Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist who coordinated the Snowden stories, was seized by British Intelligence when in transit at Heathrow Airport, held for 9 hours, threatened with imprisonment and had all his electronic devices taken for examination.
So, should we expect the Ecuador Embassy to be raided next despite the diplomatic fallout and other consequences, and Assange to be taken and given up to the Americans? It's no longer unlikely. For we are now witnessing a rampant state, on collision course with well, just about everyone? These signs have been apparent for a long while, though it is only now belatedly that the media are finally waking up to this. They must act before it is too late.
Alan Rusbridger, Editor of the Guardian revealed a shocking raid on the Guardian offices in London by British Security Service operatives…
"The mood toughened just over a month ago, when I received a phone call from the centre of government telling me: "You've had your fun. Now we want the stuff back." There followed further meetings with shadowy Whitehall figures. The demand was the same: hand the Snowden material back or destroy it. I explained that we could not research and report on this subject if we complied with this request. The man from Whitehall looked mystified. "You've had your debate. There's no need to write any more."
During one of these meetings I asked directly whether the government would move to close down the Guardian's reporting through a legal route by going to court to force the surrender of the material on which we were working. The official confirmed that, in the absence of handover or destruction, this was indeed the government's intention. Prior restraint, near impossible in the US, was now explicitly and imminently on the table in the UK. But my experience over WikiLeaks the thumb drive and the first amendment had already prepared me for this moment. I explained to the man from Whitehall about the nature of international collaborations and the way in which, these days, media organisations could take advantage of the most permissive legal environments. Bluntly, we did not have to do our reporting from London. Already most of the NSA stories were being reported and edited out of New York. And had it occurred to him that Greenwald lived in Brazil?
The man was unmoved. And so one of the more bizarre moments in the Guardian's long history occurred with two GCHQ security experts overseeing the destruction of hard drives in the Guardian's basement just to make sure there was nothing in the mangled bits of metal which could possibly be of any interest to passing Chinese agents. "We can call off the black helicopters," joked one as we swept up the remains of a MacBook Pro."
It was indeed bizarre as not only did Rusbridger point out to the GCHQ spooks that copies of the files were held elsewhere in the world, but there could have been other hard drives at the Guardian offices holding the same files, and why did the spooks insist the hard drives be destroyed instead of simply confiscating them? All sounds very theatrical more about intimidation than anything.
Even The Spectator, a centre-right magazine, could not believe what happened to David Miranda, the partner of Glenn Greenwald and in an article penned by the more left-leaning Nick Cohen and scathing of the police concluded " The Miranda affair is proof, if further proof is needed, that we are now stuck in the post-Leveson world where not only journalists but their partners can be detained and questioned for hours on end. Where police officers feel no need to explain themselves to the public, in whose name they work, and whose taxes pay their salaries. The next time they try to tell you that the secrecy and attempts to silence legitimate debate are in the public interest', do not forget what they did to David Miranda, because they can do it to you too."
Or as Simon Jenkins says, in another damning article : "I hesitate to draw parallels with history, but I wonder how those now running the surveillance state and their appeasers would have behaved under the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. We hear today so many phrases we have heard before. The innocent have nothing to fear. Our critics merely comfort the enemy. You cannot be too safe. Loyalty is all. As one official said in wielding his legal stick over the Guardian: "You have had your debate. There's no need to write any more." Yes, there bloody well is."
Meanwhile the National Union of Journalist released a statement condemning the interrogation of Miranda…
The shocking detention of David Miranda for the crime of being the partner of a respected investigative journalist points to the growing abuse of so-called anti-terror laws in the UK. His detention and treatment was a gross misuse of the law and clearly linked to the work of his partner Glenn Greenwald, who revealed the extent of mass surveillance and wholesale interception of internet traffic by the US security services and its collusion with GCQH. It's rather ironic that the police's response, in turn, is to put the partner of a journalist under surveillance and detain him in this way.
Miranda had been used as a go-between by Greenwald and film-maker Laura Poitras, in Berlin, who had been working with him on the information supplied by Edward Snowden. This material has now been confiscated. Journalists no longer feel safe exchanging even encrypted messages by email and now it seems they are not safe when they resort to face-to-face meetings.
This is not an isolated problem. The NUJ believes that journalists are coming under more scrutiny and surveillance, being stopped at borders and their work interfered with, simply for doing their job. We are currently collating examples of such unacceptable interference across our membership. The treatment meted out to David Miranda is wholly unacceptable and it is time the use, or rather misuse, of terrorism legislation as a way of targeting individuals was properly and independently reviewed.
Finally, a travel warning: you may want to reconsider any travel that involves Britain, if only in transit. If you do travel there or via one of its airports, you may consider it prudent not to carry electronic devices, as they can be confiscated. Britain is now the Iran of Europe.
http://darkernet.in/miranda-interrogatio...of-europe/
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass