The detention of David Miranda was an unlawful use of the Terrorism Act

We are all terrorists now. Hence why we are all spied on. Get used to it, as no one seems to care.

BTW, the solicitors dealing with this, they are same firm who embarrassed Teresa May over Abu Qatada, when she got her dates wrong and couldn't kick him out. If there is anything unlawful about this, (morality and decency well aside as they simply don't count,) they will find and prove it. For reasons I cannot go in to, I have experience of how good they are. It should also be remembered that the law in general is under attack from this government, and although it is strangely under reported, the legal profession is deeply unhappy, to say the least, with this government. For those who don't know, legal aid is being slaughtered and that will wipe out a lot of solicitors firms who defend and protect the poor from blatant abuse and injustice, who make up the vast majority of criminal cases. For some reason this government wants to sell contracts to people like haulage firms to provide legal aid to people who cant afford solicitors for a little money as possible. Legal aid is currently bad, this government want it worse. Legal defense will be based on price, conviction will end up being based on police say so, with out question. So, if you are poor you will never be able to get impartial advice, since the contracted solicitors will be working to the bare minimum clock. So, essentially, they are trying to deny justice to the majority of defendants, while relying on the lie that the majority of solicitors are rolling in unearned unjustified cash, which I assume you is a lie. So, any chance of exposing, even damaging, this government will be thoroughly pursued. In short, to me, this firm being involved is the best news so far.

I sometimes wonder how it would be if politicians would try to use this rhetorical device in an ex-Communist country (I used to live in one, so I should know). They'd probably be laughed at the first couple of times, and then quickly labeled as crackpots. The catch is, most of them haven't actually experienced terrorism; to a population who hasn't seen a terrorist bombing for generations, "terrorist" is as empty a term as "enemy of the people".

It's things like this that convince me history should be a compulsory, well-treated subject, everywhere. History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes so well!

"In his role as Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, Lord Falconer sought to make it easier for government bodies to refuse to release documents under the Freedom of Information Act (2000), "

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Falconer,_Baron_Falcone...

Governing a country is a hard job and to expect ministers, whose briefs change every year or two, to do a good job is ridiculous. So they rely on the civil service, who have years of their careers based around governance over individual topics.

You can see this, for example, in the way that UK governments are almost always more authoritarian than oppositions. As soon as they become under the jurisdiction of the civil service, opinions change and the agenda of the previous 'government' is openly advanced regardless of what the new party said in opposition. Once you're actually in Whitehall, I could imagine that your world view changes as you become immersed in a very closed system. The current government came into power claiming to be wanting to repeal the liberty-removing legislation that the previous government imposed. And here they are a few years on, misusing that legislation, defending it and wanting to impose more of their 'own'.

They didn't arrest him, so no.

This is harassment of political dissent by the policing arm of the government. What makes this even worse is that it's the British government harassing a Brazilian national for the sake of American intelligence.

Even if that were true, leaking documents that aid terrorists is not same as being a terrorist. If it were, they would have arrested Miranda and charged him with being a terrorist. They did not, because they knew full well that he's not a terrorist. Their opinion that he's carrying stolen property or that he's like a drug mule also does not make him a terrorist. Thus it is illegal for the government to use powers that are it's only allowed to use in determining if someone is a terrorist.

Miranda was held for the full 9 hours permitted under the "law" and threatened with jail time. It doesn't take that long to confiscate/image someone's drives and extract their passwords. In conjunction with the utterly pointless and symbolic destruction of computer hardware at the Guardian offices, I think it's pretty clear that intimidation is at least partly the goal here.

"The various journalists involved will not send the data over the internet for obvious reasons - even if encrypted, it allows the various agencies know who has what. Sending data by personal courier is the only way. However, it's demonstrably unsafe at this point."

You need only send a hard drive of random data by courier, which can be used as a one-time pad. If you get intercepted, no loss. If not, you can thereafter communicate completely safely through pastebin.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/21/sending...

Has a quote to the effect that this was mostly to send a message. If that was the intended effect it failed spectacularly, if the main operational goal was to get an idea of what was taken then that paints a different light on things but so far this is mostly a theory. It would be a very interesting development.

What I don't get about all this is that the only thing that Miranda should have been carrying was a one-time pad. That way they could use dead drops afterwards, to actually move the data was an unnecessary operational risk, especially if the decryption keys were in the possession of the carrier.

Moving data+keys via the same carrier is the same as moving it in plain text.

Question out of my ignorance: couldn't the Tor network obfuscate such things sufficiently?

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitmessage

There have been statements by Teresa May attempting to justify the use of the powers since possession and latterly publication of confidential documents could arguably aid terrorists, but Miranda's actions are clearly not within the conditions that apply.

So it is a case of the UK overstepping the mark legally in an attempt to buddy up with the US, again (the White House has confirmed being notified of the action, and thus did not prevent it).

In reality it may be invoking the Streisand effect and fueling opposition at least as much as it is suppressing free speech - after all, it is fairly clear that Greenwald et al take precautions (as they must have to) to ensure that documents are replicated and available in multiple jurisdictions. But there is perhaps still not a good understanding of those processes and the ways that digital data can move at a UK political level.

That's the whole point here, Falconer argues that from a police point of view it wasn't justifiable.

The fact that there are people in the USA held in detention for years is something I'm not familiar with, the Guantanamo bay prison is not in the USA for that specific reason. And I'm also not familiar with people in Western Europe that are held in detention for years or even decades without a fair trial, which people do you mean (it's off-topic but interesting)?