Detaining my partner: a failed attempt at intimidation
Autor: Felipe Prado | Publicado: 2013-08-18T15:05:00-07:00

The detention of my partner, David Miranda, by UK authorities will have the opposite effect of the one intended


         
         
    
     
At 6:30 am this morning my time - 5:30 am on the East Coast of 
the US - I received a telephone call from someone who identified himself
 as a "security official at Heathrow airport." He told me that my 
partner, David Miranda, had been "detained" at the London airport "under
 Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act of 2000." 

David had spent the 
last week in Berlin, where he stayed with Laura Poitras, the US 
filmmaker who has worked with me extensively on the NSA
 stories. A Brazilian citizen, he was returning to our home in Rio de 
Janeiro this morning on British Airways, flying first to London and then
 on to Rio. When he arrived in London this morning, he was detained.

At
 the time the "security official" called me, David had been detained for
 3 hours. The security official told me that they had the right to 
detain him for up to 9 hours in order to question him, at which point 
they could either arrest and charge him or ask a court to extend the 
question time.  The official - who refused to give his name but would 
only identify himself by his number: 203654 - said David was not allowed
 to have a lawyer present, nor would they allow me to talk to him.

I
 immediately contacted the Guardian, which sent lawyers to the airport, 
as well various Brazilian officials I know. Within the hour, several 
senior Brazilian officials were engaged and expressing indignation over 
what was being done. The Guardian has the full story here.
Despite
 all that, five more hours went by and neither the Guardian's lawyers 
nor Brazilian officials, including the Ambassador to the UK in London, 
were able to obtain any information about David. We spent most of that 
time contemplating the charges he would likely face once the 9-hour 
period elapsed.

According to a document
 published by the UK government about Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act, 
"fewer than 3 people in every 10,000 are examined as they pass through 
UK borders" (David was not entering the UK but only transiting through 
to Rio). Moreover, "most examinations, over 97%, last under an hour." An
 appendix to that document states that only .06% of all people detained 
are kept for more than 6 hours.

The stated purpose of this law, as the name suggests, is to question people about terrorism.
 The detention power, claims the UK government, is used "to determine 
whether that person is or has been involved in the commission, 
preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism."
But they 
obviously had zero suspicion that David was associated with a terrorist 
organization or involved in any terrorist plot. Instead, they spent 
their time interrogating him about the NSA reporting which Laura 
Poitras, the Guardian and I are doing, as well the content of the 
electronic products he was carrying. They completely abused their own 
terrorism law for reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with 
terrorism: a potent reminder of how often governments lie when they 
claim that they need powers to stop "the terrorists", and how dangerous 
it is to vest unchecked power with political officials in its name.

Worse,
 they kept David detained right up until the last minute: for the full 9
 hours, something they very rarely do. Only at the last minute did they 
finally release him. We spent all day - as every hour passed - worried 
that he would be arrested and charged under a terrorism statute. This 
was obviously designed to send a message of intimidation to those of us 
working journalistically on reporting on the NSA and its British 
counterpart, the GCHQ. 

Before letting him go, they seized 
numerous possessions of his, including his laptop, his cellphone, 
various video game consoles, DVDs, USB sticks, and other materials. They
 did not say when they would return any of it, or if they would.

This
 is obviously a rather profound escalation of their attacks on the 
news-gathering process and journalism. It's bad enough to prosecute and 
imprison sources. It's worse still to imprison journalists who report 
the truth. But to start detaining the family members and loved ones of 
journalists is simply despotic. Even the Mafia had ethical rules against
 targeting the family members of people they felt threatened by. But the
 UK puppets and their owners in the US national security state obviously
 are unconstrained by even those minimal scruples.

If the UK and 
US governments believe that tactics like this are going to deter or 
intimidate us in any way from continuing to report aggressively on what 
these documents reveal, they are beyond deluded. If anything, it will 
have only the opposite effect: to embolden us even further. Beyond that,
 every time the US and UK governments show their true character to the 
world - when they prevent the Bolivian President's plane from flying 
safely home, when they threaten journalists with prosecution, when they 
engage in behavior like what they did today - all they do is helpfully 
underscore why it's so dangerous to allow them to exercise vast, 
unchecked spying power in the dark.
David was unable to call me 
because his phone and laptop are now with UK authorities. So I don't yet
 know what they told him. But the Guardian's lawyer was able to speak 
with him immediately upon his release, and told me that, while a bit 
distressed from the ordeal, he was in very good spirits and quite 
defiant, and he asked the lawyer to convey that defiance to me. I 
already share it, as I'm certain US and UK authorities will soon see.

Link Original: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/18/david-miranda-detained-uk-nsa