34 page ruling<\/a>, the three judges hearing the case, Lord Justice Laws, Mr. Justice Ouseley and Mr. Justice Openshaw, ruled that Miranda\u2019s detention was a \u201cproportionate measure in the circumstances,\u201d and that \u201cIts objective was not only legitimate, but very pressing.\u201d<\/p>\nAuthoring the decision, Justice Laws said, \u201cThe claimant was not a journalist; the stolen GCHQ intelligence material he was carrying was not ‘journalistic material\u2019, or if it was, only in the weakest sense.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut he was acting in support of Mr. Greenwald’s activities as a journalist. I accept that the Schedule 7 stop constituted an indirect interference with press freedom, though no such interference was asserted by the claimant at the time. In my judgement, however, it is shown by compelling evidence to have been justified.\u201d<\/p>\n
The ruling accepts the UK government\u2019s version of events without question.<\/p>\n
Laws wrote: \u201cMr. 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<\/i>.\u201d [Emphasis added].<\/p>\n
In fact, no evidence was provided to the court by Robbins to support such claims. Neither does the ruling attempt to provide any evidence, with Laws blithely declaring, \u201cIt is plainly to be inferred that in describing the actual or potential damaging effects of the dissemination of this material Mr. Robbins has been as specific as open evidence allows.\u201d<\/p>\n
The ruling further states: \u201cIt is necessary to cite some of his [Robbins\u2019] testimony, taken from his second witness statement of 24 September 2013.\u201d This submission likewise revealed no evidence supporting the government\u2019s claims.<\/p>\n
Robbins said, \u201cIt is obviously not possible in an open statement to go into detail<\/i> about the real and serious damage already caused by the disclosures based on Mr. Snowden\u2019s misappropriations, nor about what further damage may follow<\/i>.\u201d [Emphasis added].<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cHowever, given the volume of media reporting published over the past three months, and public statements from the UK and US Governments, I can say with confidence that the material seized is highly likely to describe techniques that have been crucial in life-saving counter-terrorism operations, the prevention and detection of serious crime, and other intelligence activities vital to the security of the UK<\/i>. The compromise of these methods would do serious damage to UK national security, and ultimately put lives at risk<\/i>.\u201d [Emphasis added].<\/p>\n
So threadbare was the submission cited favourably by Justice Laws that it concluded with a self-serving statement from the US Office of National Intelligence! That body includes the separate branches of the US military, the NSA, the CIA, the FBI and other agencies whose nefarious activities have been exposed by Snowden\u2019s revelations.<\/p>\n
The ruling reveals the extent to which the British state was closely monitoring the movements and communications of Miranda and Greenwald prior to the former\u2019s detention. It notes: \u201cThe Security Service\u2026 had undertaken an operation relating to Mr. Snowden. They became aware of the claimant\u2019s [Miranda] movements.\u201d<\/p>\n
The operation to detain Miranda was prepared at least three days before it was carried out. The ruling notes that Detective Superintendent Stokley of SO15, the Counter-Terrorism Command in the Metropolitan Police, was briefed about the operation by the Security Services on the morning of August 15.<\/p>\n
On August 16, the Security Service sent a note to Stokley headed \u201cNational Security Justification for proposed operational action around David MIRANDA.\u201d<\/p>\n
The text, which, as the judge noted, is redacted, stated: \u201cWe 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\u2019s possession. Open source research details the relationship between [journalist Laura] 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…\u201d<\/p>\n
In order to stop Miranda, no less than three Port Circulation Sheets (PCS), documents used to provide information to counter-terrorism police officers, were issued by the Security Service to the Metropolitan Police.<\/p>\n
The first was issued on August 16. The final PCS issued on August 17 requested that Miranda be stopped specifically on the grounds that he engaged in activity defined as \u201cterrorism\u201d. It said he was \u201cknowingly carrying material, the release of which would endanger people\u2019s lives. Additionally the disclosure, or threat of disclosure, is designed to influence a government, and is made for the purpose of promoting a political or ideological cause. This therefore falls within the definition of terrorism and as such we request that the subject is examined under Schedule 7.<\/i>\u201d [Emphasis added].<\/p>\n
This unprecedented action was the first time Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act was applied to the possession of journalistic materials.<\/p>\n
Miranda\u2019s detention was a blatant act of political intimidation, sanctioned at the highest levels by London and Washington. Its aim was to prevent any further disclosure of the illegal surveillance operations conducted by their spying agencies, as revealed by Snowden.<\/p>\n
The persecution of and subsequent ruling against Miranda, and the ongoing operation to silence the Guardian<\/i>, are part of a larger effort by the British state to intimidate those involved in disseminating the Snowden revelations and all those opposed to the police state being built up in the UK, the US and around the world. The Guardian<\/i> has been threatened repeatedly with prosecution for supposedly endangering national security. This verdict increases the likelihood of such a prosecution being mounted.<\/p>\n
Go to Original \u2013 wsws.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In what was clearly a politically motivated judgment, the High Court in London ruled Wednesday [19 Feb 2014] that David Miranda, the partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald, was detained lawfully when he was held for nine hours last August at London\u2019s Heathrow Airport. The 28-year-old Brazilian was in transit from Germany to Brazil when he was arbitrarily detained by the Metropolitan Police.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39868\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}