Not often I get the chance to accuse Greenwald & Co of flat-out lying, but this seems like a good time to start. I think all the mirage of persecution against Greenwald & Co is faked. But at the time, the real purpose of the whole thing was to capture Assange, and I cannot be bothered to find all the material to prove that – RB
British Court Rules Terrorism Act Violates Fundamental Rights of Free Press
Ryan Gallagher, The Intercept, Jan 19 2016
A British appeals court has ruled that the UK’s broad counter-terrorism laws breach fundamental rights in a case involving the seizure of encrypted documents from David Miranda at a London airport in 2013. Miranda was detained and interrogated for nine hours at Heathrow Airport in Aug 2013 while he was assisting Greenwald’s reporting on Edward Snowden. Last year, the High Court in London dismissed a legal challenge brought by Miranda over the case on the grounds that it reasonably regarded his actions as “terrorism” as defined by the law. However, that decision was partially overturned Tuesday by the Court of Appeal in a ruling that will be viewed as a major victory for press freedom campaigners. The ruling finds that the police followed the law when detaining Miranda under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act. However, it asserts that the statute itself “is not subject to adequate safeguards against its arbitrary exercise,” and is “incompatible” with Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which provides the right to “receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.” The Court of Appeal’s most senior judge, a man referred to as ‘Lord’ Dyson MR ‘master of the rolls’ because as you know we are absolute suckers for everyone’s fucking titles, stated in the ruling that he accepted there were already some “constraints on the exercise of the power” but he believed that these “do not afford effective protection of journalists’ Article 10 rights.” He added:
The central concern is that disclosure of journalistic material (whether or not it involves the identification of a journalist’s source) undermines the confidentiality that is inherent in such material and which is necessary to avoid the chilling effect of disclosure and to protect Article 10 rights. If journalists and their sources can have no expectation of confidentiality, they may decide against providing information on sensitive matters of public interest. That is why the confidentiality of such information is so important.
Miranda’s appeal was supported by a press freedom litigation fund established by First Look Media, the Intercept’s parent company. It was also supported by the rights groups Liberty, Article 19, English PEN (PEN is one of those entities like ORT with a stupid fucking acronym that stands for fuck knows what – RB), and the Media Defense Initiative. The latter three organizations argued in a joint submission to the court (for some reason, her link goes to the google cache copy – RB):
(The treatment of Miranda) raised very serious concerns about the adequacy of the safeguards available in the UK for those undertaking, or assisting in, journalist work in the public interest, or their sources.
Miranda, a Brazilian national, was detained in London at the height of the international fallout from the Snowden revelations, which featured major disclosures about British mass surveillance programs. At the time of his Aug 2013 detention, Miranda was transporting a batch of the Snowden documents from Laura Poitras in Berlin to Greenwald in Rio de Janeiro. Poitras had been working on stories sourced from the Snowden material with the NYT and Der Spiegel, while Greenwald was reporting for the Graun, which had paid for Miranda’s trip. Greenwald left the Graun in Oct 2013 to co-found The Intercept with Poitras. Shortly after Miranda was detained, British authorities claimed that encrypted material seized from him included 58,000 “highly classified” British documents derived from the Snowden leaks, 75 of which they said they had “reconstructed” and been able to decrypt and view. The seizure of the documents led to the London police counter-terrorism division launching a criminal investigation that focused in part on journalists who had handled the files. The probe (Operation Curable) remained ongoing as recently as Nov 2015, the Intercept has previously reported. To justify their seizure of the documents, British authorities had argued that publication of the Snowden files was itself a terrorist act. A memo circulated by security services prior to Miranda’s detention asserted:
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.
This position was seemingly accepted by the High Court in Feb 2014, which ruled in favour of the government in a ruling staunchly criticized by press freedom groups such as Reporters without Borders. It also appeared to concern the British government’s independent reviewer of terrorism laws, David Anderson, who warned in a Jul 2014 report:
The writing of a book, an article or a blog may therefore amount to terrorism.
The appeals court’s judgment appears to overturn this aspect of the High Court’s earlier ruling, significantly reining in its conflation of journalism with terrorism. It makes clear that under the European Convention on Human Rights, journalists are entitled to legal protections and should not be subjected to arbitrary stops and searches under counter-terrorism laws. The law used to detain Miranda will now have to be changed so that journalists are better protected in the future. Kate Goold, a lawyer for the London firm Bindmans who represented Miranda in the case, said:
(Tuesday’s ruling) emphasizes the importance of interpreting terrorism with its ordinary natural meaning to ensure that legitimate public interest journalism is not stifled through the use of draconian powers. The notion of a journalist becoming an ‘accidental terrorist’ has been wholeheartedly rejected. We welcome this court’s principled and decisive ruling that Schedule 7 needs to come in line with other legislation to ensure that the seizure of journalistic material is protected by judicial safeguards.
Miranda tweeted:
The British government could attempt to launch a challenge against the Court of Appeal’s ruling with Britains’s Supreme Court. It was not immediately clear whether it intends to pursue the case further. A spox for the Home Office insisted in a statement Tuesday that the appeals court’s ruling regarding Miranda’s detention “supports the action taken by police to protect national security.” The spox said:
We also note the court’s decision that Schedule 7, as in force at the time of this incident, did not provide sufficient protection against the examination of journalistic material. The government is constantly working to ensure our counter-terrorism powers are both effective and fair. That is why in 2015 we changed the Code of Practice for examining officers to instruct them not to examine journalistic material at all. This goes above and beyond the court’s recommendations in this case.
Niqnaq 