The David Miranda ruling and the attack on press freedom
Julie Hyland
26 February 2014
To appreciate in full the deeply reactionary import of the
ruling that David Miranda was detained lawfully at Heathrow airport last
August, one need only cite some of the arguments marshalled by the High
Court in London.The formulations employed by Lord Justice Laws, Mr. Justice Ouseley and Mr. Justice Openshaw in their judgement last Wednesday go far beyond this one incident--itself an unprecedented assault on journalistic freedom. They point to the outlawing of any notion of a "free press." On the spurious grounds of "anti-terrorism" and "national security", no one is safe from the reach of a British state determined to cover up its crimes and legitimise those yet to come.
Miranda is the partner of Glenn Greenwald, a former Guardian journalist and close associate of National Security Agency (NSA) whistle-blower Edward Snowden. He had been in Berlin with filmmaker Laura Poitras, who collaborated with Greenwald on his disclosures of mass spying by the NSA and Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). He was en route to Brazil when he was detained by the Metropolitan Police for nine hours and his laptop, phone and encrypted storage devices were seized under the Terrorism Act 2000. (Read more)
Further coverage on NSA spying can be found here.
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