David Cameron, UK Government Under Fire

[TampaYankee]

David Cameron, UK Government Under Fire For Aggressive Intervention In The Guardian's Reporting

The Huffington Post | By Jack Mirkinson

The political row over the British government's aggressive intervention into the Guardian's national security reporting continued on Wednesday, as it was revealed that Prime Minister David Cameron dispatched his top civil servant to demand that the paper hand over the sensitive files it had acquired from NSA leaker Edward Snowden. Moreover, one of the people responsible for the anti-terrorism law used to detain Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald's partner said the government had abused the statute.

Multiple outlets reported that Sir Jeremy Heywood had been tasked with pressuring the Guardian to either hand over the documents or destroy them if it did not want to face legal action.

"The prime minister asked [Heywood] to deal with this matter, that's true," a sourcetold Reuters.

The Guardian wound up destroying several hard drives in the presence of several members of Britain's security services, even though, as the paper's editor Alan Rusbridger pointed out, copies of the same files still exist elsewhere.

The Committee to Protect Journalists waded into the controversy in a statement, calling the destruction of the hard drives, and the detention of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald's partner David Miranda, part of a "disturbing record of official harassment of the Guardian over its coverage of the Snowden leaks."

The government also came under increased pressure over Miranda's detention, which took place under the auspices of the Terrorism Act. Miranda is set to take legal actionagainst the government over the detention, which his lawyers have called "unlawful."

Miranda got a boost on Wednesday when Lord Falconer, who served as a top legal official during Tony Blair's government and helped bring the act into law, told the BBC that it had been wrongfully used in his case.

"The powers...can only be used where the purpose of using them is to determine whether somebody is a terrorist," he said. "If you know they're not a terrorist, then you can't use these powers."

See the original article at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/21/david-cameron-guardian-jeremy-heywood_n_3789682.html?ref=topbar

[Guest hitoallusa]

I'm not sure why the British government detained Miranda when it was surely predictable to provoke Greenwald and his allies further. If they wanted to know what documents had been with Miranda at the time of his detainment then they could have taken other routes. What worries me is that other routes have failed or proved ineffective so they had no other choice but to detain Miranda to get those documents. If that is the case, Greenwald, Laura and Miranda seem to know how to exercise counter surveillance effectively. Did Snowden advised them on it? Did they obtained knowledge on counter surveillance from the documents Snowden leaked and/or other participants who are in the shadow aiding them. I doubt one can exercise such a level of counter surveillance just reading some documents. Well maybe I am a bit far fetched but there is something more to this than what meets the eye and there are people behind Greenwald who have their own agenda.

[Guest hitoallusa]

So confiscated items are allowed to be examined further by the court and a criminal investigation is launched. It gets more and more interesting and someone should write a book about it to make a movie out of this. If I were him I won't have my spouse carrying around stolen confidential documents through international airports or even get my spouse involved in any of this. Although intelligence officials sometimes travel with their spouse during their mission to look less suspicious not sure they will send their spouse away on a task alone with stolen confidential documents. I wonder why Greenwald couldn't carry out this task himself.

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/08/22/world/europe/glenn-greenwald-nsa-fallout/index.html?eref=rss_mostpopular

[Guest hitoallusa]

Bypassing electronic logs without getting caught is possible for a contractor then I bet foreign spies infiltrated in the NSA will be easily do the same thing. Anyways, it will make a great spy movie based on a true story. I hope they bring Snowden back so he can tell how he did it.

http://news.yahoo.com/snowden-suspected-bypassing-electronic-logs-134116925.html