The nine hour detention of the partner of a UK journalist should be troubling for many reasons, but first and foremost because it was done using terrorism legislation.
Alex Chafey is a recent graduate, 2012 Guardian Student Columnist of the Year and writer for film blog screengoblin.wordpress.com.
The nine hour detention of the partner of a UK journalist should be troubling for many reasons, but first and foremost because it was done using terrorism legislation. This confirms the suspicions many have long held that the threat of terror is used as a thin veneer for legislation designed to silence opponents of government policy, in the US and UK alike.
This is certainly true of the two biggest US intelligence leaks in recent years, those of Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden. Manning was charged with “aiding the enemy”, a charge for which he was thankfully acquitted, but the fact the US government tried to prosecute on these grounds is very telling. They are determined to bring the fullest and most heavy handed punishment possible down on whistleblowers that cause embarrassment to the government.
The Obama administration has employed tactics that are completely unprecedented and would probably have been met with widespread outcry had they occurred under President Bush. Since taking office, Obama’s administration has used the 1917 Espionage Act, designed to bring the full force of the law against whistleblowers, seven times, including against Manning and Snowden. In the act’s 88 years before Obama took office it was used only three times. Obama has also prosecuted more whistleblowers than any of his predecessors. This is a man who values secrecy when it benefits his own interests, but not when it’s the private conversations of the public that are at stake. He sees the suppression of potentially embarrassing information as more important than truth and openness, and is prepared to pursue to the ends of the earth anybody who threatens this.
The way successive governments in the US and UK have exploited a climate of fear to impose draconian measures on people is a disgrace. In Labour’s most zealous phase of their war on liberty they tried to shove 90 days terror detention without trial through parliament. This flagship measure thankfully failed. The piece of legislation used to detain David Miranda, partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, was the 2000 Terrorism Act. Since its introduction, the act, which gave police a host of new stop-and-search and detention powers, has been used hundreds of thousands of times, including to stop and search children. The detention of Miranda is simply a high profile recent example of a law that has been repeatedly abused for more than a decade. He was detained for the maximum time allowed and had many of his belongings seized, during which time he is said to have been interrogated on the Guardian’s work on the Snowden leaks. This is quite clearly not an investigation into terrorist activity and is made more shocking for having taken place at the hands of British security services.
There’s a sinister irony to people who expose abuses of terror legislation falling victim to said legislation. The Snowden leaks rightfully informed the public about the extent of their government spying on them; something which every American has a right to know. With Miranda’s detention it’s not even the whistleblower himself, but the partner of someone involved in the leak who has been targeted. Cases like this create fear of criticising governments, foreign policy and anti-terror legislation in a way which is dangerous when these issues all require opposition to have sensible debate. They also create fear of appearing to support whistleblowers like Manning and Snowden, particularly when the US government is monitoring communications on such a large scale.
Why does a journalist’s partner have to be arrested for a media storm to happen? The last decade in the UK has seen people being banned from taking photos in train stations, hundreds of thousands of people stopped and searched using terror legislation, protest banned in Parliament Square, unprecedented airport safety measures, increases in profiling, phones and emails tapped and the shooting of an innocent man on the London underground, and these are just the stories that have made it into the public domain. Miranda’s detention looks like the latest in a long string of abuses of draconian legislation used to create a climate of fear and silence opposition, and the latest stride past the point where a line in the sand should long since have been drawn.
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18 Responses to “Opinion: Miranda’s detention is latest abuse of draconian legislation”
Alex Ross
Patronising tosser: Notice you don’t propose an alternative view – possibly because anyone below the age of 50 wouldn’t be able to comprehend its undoubted sophistication?
JR
There are two bits to this:
1 – Is the Government acting within the law in this case (if not, that is scandalous and a judicial review of Miranda’s arrest should be very difficult for the Government)
2 – If the Government is acting within the law, are people comfortable with what that means?
The upshot in either event, is the exposure of how few champions of journalistic freedom and human rights there are in our society.
The shrill protests from Civil Society groups are not good enough. The Labour Party does not have credibility here because they introduced the legislation, the Conservatives are less interested because of their press for law and order and the removal of the human rights act and the Liberal Democrats haven’t been listened to since they wasted their political capital on AV and Student Fees.
Protecting these things is not a radical idea, but I am stumped as to where a progressive defence can come from.
Jacko
Oh, the irony of the statement: ‘I notice you don’t propose an alternative view’. And it’s not patronising, it’s condescending. Deliberately so. Your use of the word patronising is incorrect. Secondly, notice how the first thing you do in your post is to use obscene language; there is no such language in mine. Thirdly, I’m not required to post an alternative view, that isn’t what my post is about and is irrelevant to my observation that most of the articles published on this site are by people barley, if at all, out of education.
Alex Ross
(1) You haven’t proposed a view on the issue at hand which I can engage with so there is no “irony” in the fact that I haven’t responded politically.
(2) As a consequence, you have failed to demonstrate why the fact that “most of the articles published on this site are by people barley, if at all, out of education” (if that is true??) is relevant to discussion of the content of this post.
(3) “Tosser” is a relatively mild form of abuse (and one I think that is warranted by your unpleasant post) so please get a life!
(4) I post under my name with a photograph attached, unlike yourself who just seems to want to abuse people anonymously.
(5) “Patronising” and “Condescending” are colloquially interchangeable.
Jacko
1. The subject of my post was clearly about the background of the contributors on the site. You didn’t engage with that subject, but were simply abusive. The irony stands.
2. The background of the writer is always relevant to the veracity of an article’s views and claims. It’s the same in science, the arts, and politics.
3. You may consider ‘tosser’ to be relatively mild. I tend to think anyone who uses words like that has a poverty of language and expression. ‘Tosser’ is generally considered vulgar and unpleasant, not a term generally used in educated circles. By contrast, there’s no unpleasant language in my post. It’s merely forthrightly expressed.
4. I assume by this you believe you have the moral highground because you call people a ‘tosser’ with your real name attached. It’s a dubious distinction.
5. Yes, they are colloquially interchangeable, but that is not the same as correct grammatical usage. An educated person appreciates this distinction.