US Official Admits That UK Detention Of Glenn Greenwald's Partner Was 'To Send A Message'

from the illegal-and-obnoxious dept

Buried in a Reuters report about the UK government's ridiculous decision to force the Guardian to destroy some hard drives with Snowden-related materials, is the fact that the reporter got a US official to admit that the detention of Glenn Greenwald's partner, David Miranda, was all about "sending a message" to anyone who had the Snowden documents:

One U.S. security official told Reuters that one of the main purposes of the British government's detention and questioning of Miranda was to send a message to recipients of Snowden's materials, including the Guardian, that the British government was serious about trying to shut down the leaks.

That's what many people had assumed, but to have it admitted by an official just shows how incredibly stupid this whole thing was. The only message it sent was that the UK government has gone way overboard in abusing the law for reasons of personal thuggery, rather than any legitimate purpose. The law they used was an anti-terrorism law, and they flat out used it to intimidate the press. That's not how the government in a free country acts. The outrage over all of this (both the detention and the hard drive destruction) isn't just going to go away. These actions are, in some ways, worse than the original reports, because they confirm the petty vindictiveness of those in power against journalists doing their job in exposing the abuse of people's rights.

It's this very reason why people are so concerned about the collection of all of this data. If the government has no problem detaining people under bogus pretenses to "send a message" to journalists, while also threatening to shut down newspapers and forcing them to destroy hard drives, what else might they already be doing with all of that personal data and information they've been sucking up?

Filed Under: david miranda, detention, gchq, glenn greenwald, nsa surveillance, send a message, surveillance, terrorism