UK Court: David Miranda Detention Legal Under Terrorism Law | Hacker News Reader

UK Court: David Miranda Detention Legal Under Terrorism Law

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157 pointszorked132 comments

My father, an East German now living in the UK, was saying the other day that he sees parallels between the rise of the Stasi in the 1950's onwards and the UK government's behaviour over the last two decades. I'm inclined to believe him.

The legal system was pretty much the first thing to fall there as well as the criminalisation of literally everything. We have so much legislation now that deals with criminalising people that people don't have a chance if they get in trouble even for something trivial.

There's a difference between "seeing parallels" and the UK being anywhere close to East Germany.

Miranda was carrying classified files relating to UK intelligence gathering out of the country. You would have been stopped at the border for that at any point in the last 100 years. Almost any country in the world would do that.

I would question how many would then have a court system of the calibre of England and Wales' to allow the individual to appeal against it. The courts have repeatedly struck down bits of government anti-terror legislation, S44 being the most notorious.

I don't think he/she is referring to Miranda, but GCHQ's arbitrary espionage on citizens, interception of communications, etc., borderline legal, if not illegal. Although the Miranda detention is the story here, the real story is the NSA/GCHQ massive surveillance revelation.

For the moment...

Agree with your middle point however there are other laws in which he could have been stopped under which relate directly to the crime. Terrorism laws were picked selectively because they can hold suspects longer. This is the problem - everything looks like a target when a gun is handed to powerful people. This power was no accident either.

The courts are inconsistent in general. There is no law of the land any more -- it's down to the prosecutor's opinion unless it is trial by Jury. Consider the post-riot sentencing system that appeared to process suspects overnight without a fair trial. Many people were issued criminal charges and a prison term for civil issues that would have usually resulted in a fine or community service.

"Miranda was carrying classified files relating to UK intelligence gathering out of the country."

He was carrying them on a flight between Berlin and Rio de Janeiro, and was detained while in transit at Heathrow. Your comment that he was taking files "out of the country", while barely technically correct, is highly misleading. He didn't steal them in the UK and try to smuggle them out of the country; the files already existed outside the UK. In fact, they were stolen from an NSA site in the US by Edward Snowden.

I'm not sure that is a material change in circumstance. If it was actual terrorist materials that he was carrying, or drugs/whatever, the relevant UK law would have applied in the same way.

You are attempting to board a plane in the UK, and the same tests apply to a simple change of flight as they do to passenger flying from the UK.

Out of interest, if he had in fact stolen them from the UK (in the same way Snowdon did) would you object to his being stopped? What if it were Snowdon himself on his way to Russia?

I think the only argument I can see is that after the leak the documents should have been declassified? Since they were in the public domain. Sort of. I can't get a copy of them though so I don't see that being totally applicable.

I was commenting on the misleading wording of cmdkeen's comment, not disputing the legal basis under which Miranda was detained.

But since you asked...

"You are attempting to board a plane in the UK, and the same tests apply to a simple change of flight as they do to passenger flying from the UK."

Agreed. Transit passengers are subject to UK law. An important issue, though, is whether Miranda had actually committed any offence in UK law. Since he was ultimately released, it seems reasonable to assume that the police felt they couldn't establish that he had. Nevertheless, the judges in the present case found that the detention was a lawful means for the police to try to determine whether an offence had been committed. This seems reasonable to me, even though I'm sympathetic towards what Snowden/Greenwald/Miranda/Poitras have done to date.

"Out of interest, if he had in fact stolen them from the UK (in the same way Snowdon did) would you object to his being stopped? What if it were Snowdon himself on his way to Russia?"

First question: No, I wouldn't object. He could have committed a crime, even though I might argue that it was in the public interest. Second question: Depends on whether a crime had been committed by Snowden in the UK (unlikely, imo), or whether the UK had accepted a US warrant for his arrest (which they almost certainly would).

Declassifying the documents just because they had been leaked would be absurd.

"Depends on whether a crime had been committed by Snowden in the UK (unlikely, imo), or whether the UK had accepted a US warrant for his arrest (which they almost certainly would)"

I don't know if he was carrying the documents when he left, if so the same offence as Miranda.

Declassifying the documents just because they had been leaked would be absurd.

Yes, but to me it seems just as absurd to have openly available documents classified.

"the same offence as Miranda"

Miranda didn't commit an offence in the UK. He was released without being charged with anything. Today's judgement was about whether it was lawful to detain him under counter-terrorism laws.

Sorry, yes, casual with language. Would have had the same reason for detaining, I guess is what I meant.

You may want to read why he was detained. It only emphasizes that the detention was bogus from the beginning. It was harassment, and the harassers should be punished.

> I was commenting on the misleading wording of cmdkeen's comment

That's just it though; it wasn't even misleading. They were:

- Materials relevant to UK national security. - Materials present in a UK airport. - Materials about to be sent (w/ Miranda) across UK borders.

Those were the material facts of the day Miranda was detained. 'cmdkeen wasn't being "misleading" by not including the months of actions that led to Miranda being there with those documents on that day, because they really are irrelevant to the point he was talking about.

If Miranda should not have been stopped because of press freedoms or whatever, then that would have been just as true if Miranda had been personally handled the documents by a GCHQ mole that morning, as if he'd obtained them in Brazil weeks earlier from Greenwald.

It would be prudent to automatically declassify anything published by any newspaper, though. I think the reason why they don't is because that would be an admission that the documents leaked were actually true copies of real classified materials.

But then they as much as admit that the leak is real by pulling crap like this. It would be far more effective these days to simply claim that the leak was all honeypot disinformation, deny that it has any relation to real classified data, and imply that the leaker was flagged as an insider threat from the beginning.

When you arrest a journalist at the airport and hold him for hours, people might start to think said journalist is on to something.

The smart thing to do would be to arrest him, make a show of searching him, and quickly send him on his way without seizing anything, and then tell anyone who asks: "After a thorough search of the documents in his possession, no actual state secrets were found. Materials purporting to be classified as Top Secret were found, upon further investigation, to be decoys used by the US government to reveal its insider threats. Mister Snowden stole a lot of documents and gave them to the press, but if any of them were the real thing, we haven't seen them yet."

Between this, and destroying hard drives with angle grinders, they just look like Keystone Kops.

As the documents were produced by the government, they are unequivocally in the public domain. You can't be called out for copying them under copyright law. There is, however, the other pile of laws governing the handling of classified documents.

In the US, the system is stupid enough that once The Guardian has published a Top Secret document to the entire world, and someone visits their website with a non-classified computer, the security guys go just as crazy trying to clean up the leak from the affected machine as they would with a top secret file that somehow made it onto that machine from the secure network. To avoid this, the network guys add the Guardian website to the web filter rules. As a result, the only people in the world not allowed to read about the leak are the people cleared by the government as trustworthy enough to keep its secrets. Irony.

The system really is that stupid. It always has been. The problem now is that the humans running the system have lost the ability to act in a manner most other people would consider reasonable.

They stopped and searched someone at the airport who was carrying contraband information, after all.

Documents produced by the government in the UK are protected by Crown Copyright and are emphatically not as a matter of course in the Public Domain.

Perhaps the UK could sue the US for copyright violations, then? The leaked stuff was originally copied from a US facility.

As the documents were produced by the government, they are unequivocally in the public domain. You can't be called out for copying them under copyright law.

One of the nicest things about the US copyright system is the rule that things produced by the US government are in the public domain. That is very much not the case in all countries. In the UK, the government does own the copyright on the things they produce, and they commercially sell it.

OpenStreetMap started in the UK because the government produced maps (by the Ordenance Survey) were very heavily copyrighted.

It's Snowden, not Snowdon. At least spell the man's name properly.

Since when has the UK started to classify files of other intelligent services?

Beyond being a bit bureaucratic to classify files of other nations, but what does it mean if Sweden classify files created and kept the Norway government. Can it be used to jail Norwegian citizens if they travel to or from Sweden?

Actually they do that. Don't forget that GCHQ steal a lot of stuff as well and then retrospectively classify it as well.

If you read the actual court judgement (which I would recommend everyone to do, normally very interesting and shows the depth to which these things are considered) you will see:

Mr Oliver Robbins, Deputy National Security Adviser for Intelligence, Security and Resilience in the Cabinet Office, indicates in his first witness statement (paragraph 6) that the encrypted data contained in the external hard drive taken from the claimant contains approximately 58,000 highly classified UK intelligence documents. Many are classified SECRET or TOP SECRET. Mr Robbins states that release or compromise of such data would be likely to cause very great damage to security interests and possible loss of life.

Is that to be believed, in light of lack of evidence so far?

What evidence could they provide of this that would satisfy people?

At this point, anything more than completely nothing, nil, nada, would be an improvement. Whereas there is a parade of unsupported statements by state security officials that have been revealed, within a week or two, to have been a lie. The fact that the burden of proof seems to be heavy is not for no reason.

It might be an improvement, but it would not be enough - so what's the point?

So the US documents are now suddenly UK documents?

I call copyright infringement on grand scale. Authors' rights are internationally protected by the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. If the UK is claiming authorship of documents created by US citizen, the UK is either commit a crime or breaching international treaties.

Just to point out: If they were created by the US government , they would normally be automatically dedicated to public domain, so there would be nothing for the UK to infringe.

There are weird exceptions here, and i can't remember which agencies fall into them.

Authors moral rights are a bit more complicated, and I do not know how the UK deal with it. It is uncertain if I can in UK law take Shakespeare works and publish it as if I was the original author.

It is also uncertain if you can transfer moral rights. As I understand it, it is a legal gray zone to claim someone else wrote a copyrighted work.

>I can in UK law take Shakespeare works and publish it as if I was the original author //

It's fraud - http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/35/section/2, cf. Section 2(1)(b)(i).

Could it be possible that documents created by the UK security services are shared with their US counterparts?

The documents are UK classified that doesn't mean they created them necessarily. Indeed it has no bearing on authorship. For example a document on which a dictator of another country gave their plan for a nuclear strike against their enemies would likely be classified Top Secret as soon as a copy were possessed.

Yes, strictly speaking there is likely to be copyright infringement when a UK agent, say, copies a foreign document. But then there will also be treason, trespass and other similar crimes being committed [along with breach of other treaties than just TRIPs] that are also necessary if agents acting for the UK [or any country] are going to carry out such work.

Espionage is generally a crime.

The point of "seeing parallels" is that it seems to be moving in that direction with no stopping barrier in sight.

Neither UK nor USA nor Europe are currently oppressive dictatorships. However, dissent is already punished without much appeal or protection available to those punished. Laura Poitras, Jacob Appelbaum as first who come into mind in this mind context.

Powerful anti-terrorist measures are appropriate against guy with bomb in backpack planning to kill thousands people tomorrow. They are not appropriate against occupy members essentially guilty of sitting on a side walk.

Similarly, strong anti hacking measures are appropriate for those who just store millions. They are not appropriate against journalists who humiliated powerful companies.

Twisting non-infractions of political opponents into "terrorist acts" is what is happening here. That is essentially little suppression apparatus being build and used, just not being powerful enough yet.

The more of it is build, the harder it is to stop next growth.

This is the problem. The letter of the law actually allows laws designed to stop actual terrorism to be used against those undertaking activities that those in power deem undesirable. Correct me if I am wrong, but almost every country has some set of laws designed to stop journalists from publishing truly dangerous information. Had Britain used those laws to detain Miranda, there would have been outcry, but the question in court would have dealt with something reasonably within the scope of the spirit of the law. Applying anti-terrorism laws to a journalist just screams of press suppression. If I were an investigative journalist in the UK, I'd be spending all my time learning about encryption, privacy software, and how to move my files to secure, overseas locations with multiple backups and fail-safes.

"You would have been stopped at the border for that at any point in the last 100 years."

Comparing an action that occurs in our world today to a same action occurring 100 years ago does not invalidate the parallel being drawn because you are not accounting for the world being completely different.

As I see it, the technology advancements over that 100 year period have created a world that's much more sensitive to any encroachment in freedoms. So that same action can and, I believe, does align well to establish the parallel being drawn.

>There's a difference between "seeing parallels" and the UK being anywhere close to East Germany.

Give it time.

I agree that there are parallels. I also think, that even when the Stasi was (still) worse than that what is done by the US and the UK ... a start is made and the so often proclaimed "Freedom" of the western nations is undermined more and more. There was also a news that according to a worldwide Liberty organization, the US is now ranking below Romania as much as I remember when it comes to freedom of the press.

Trivial? He was carrying stolen state secrets.

He was inconvenienced for a few hours.

Lets not go overboard here!

To be honest though, the UK has been beyond laughable for a few years on this now.

During the great Icelandic banking crisis, the UK government used anti-terrorism laws to seize assets held by Icelandic banks. I quipped at the time that maybe they were worried about the assets being used to buy lumber for longships from Norway and wealthy bankers going a-Viking again. They might furthermore give the folks up in Orkney ideas and what then? Lose Caithness and Sutherland? That's an existential threat there....

If it was legal to use anti-terrorism laws in that case against a foreign entity far removed from any real terrorist activity (moreso than, say, the British-owned HSBC), then it is hard to see how antiterrorism laws wouldn't be perfectly legal here or anywhere else. Maybe they can start arresting people for drinking tea suspiciously.

Ant-terrorism laws have been used by local councils to spy on parents to make sure they lived at addresses they say they lived at for the purpose of primary school (5-10years of age) applications.

Anti-terror laws have been used way beyond their original intentions for a long time in the UK. In this case the original proponent of the legislation has come out and said excactly that.

Will it change anything? Nope.

There's been a change since the late 90s away from practising barristers being MPs. It used to be that barristers would be in court in the morning, see problems with legislation, and go to Westminster in the afternoon to fix them.

Now of course the media, and parties that never had many barristers in them, demand MPs work "full time" - which means there is far less legal expertise available in drafting and scrutinising legislation.

That's why things like the Terrorism Act happen. The name gets politicians to vote for it, but the contents is overlooked and full of powers that are not scoped to terrorism investigations.

I dispute that RIPA is actually an "anti-terror" law in any way aside from popular description.

I concur. RIPA was not about terror, especially when it was passed. It's a generally applicable law that's been mis-used in the name of 'security' and 'safety', in the same way that stop and search from PACE is.

Legislation introduced during 2012 limited the circumstances under which councils could use RIPA powers [1] and required judicial approval for the exercise of those powers [2].

[1]: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2012/1500/article/2/made

[2]: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2012/9/part/2/chapter/2/...

it won't change anything if you do nothing. It will get worse unless someone materially objects.

> During the great Icelandic banking crisis, the UK government used anti-terrorism laws to seize assets held by Icelandic banks.

This is an oft-repeated distortion of the truth. The UK government did not seize any assets but, rather made a freezing order to prevent UK depositors' money being transferred from an Icelandic banks' UK-based subsidiary to Iceland (it was clear at the time that the Icelandic government intended to use - "steal" is probably a better word - foreign depositors' money to ensure that Icelandic depositors didn't lose out).

The freezing order was enacted under section 2 of the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001, on the basis that HM Treasury believed that "action to the detriment of the United Kingdom’s economy (or part of it) has been or is likely to be taken" by the Icelandic government. Critics of the UK governments' actions disingenuously refer to it as "anti-terrorism" legislation, conveniently ignoring the "Crime and Security" part of the Act's name. The freezing order was exercised correctly, appropriately and proportionally.

A fuller discussion of the topic can be found at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7142487

David Miranda was found to be carrying tens of thousands of classified UK intelligence documents. I think he's lucky to have been allowed to go free, and not arrested for espionage. I suspect that the authorities felt a little sorry for him, given that he'd clearly been exploited by Greenwald.

Common misconception. It's a law that relates to any crime, terrorism is just the primary focus.

Sounds like shorthand for "we used the threat of terrorism to push these otherwise unacceptable powers through, but we've worded it broadly enough to apply it to anything".

>David Miranda was found to be carrying tens of thousands of classified UK intelligence documents.

Was he, though? I mean, we all "know" he was carrying secret documents, but have they ever proven that? If the files are encrypted and they can't crack it to prove what those documents were, then we don't know anything. For all we know (and unless there are news reports I haven't seen), Miranda/Greenwald/Poitras could have encrypted a million pictures of Rick Astley, deliberately to see if they could pull the government into abusing it's power.

And now I know what goes on my alternative truecrypt partition...

>Was he, though?

Yes https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7263662

Not only was he carrying those secret documents, he was also apparently carrying the decryption key written on a piece of paper for those documents. Truly a master of OPSEC and INFOSEC, that guy.

This is completely, utterly wrong. He had the key to the index of files, not the documents themselves.

OT: I suddenly wish for a GreaseMonkey script which would replace all instances of the word “terrorist” with “viking”. I feel this would make the world a better place, somehow.

An excellent idea, I agree! http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/391877

Gasp ☺ That was even more awesome than I thought it would be. Thank you indeed.

>> "According to documents made public during Miranda’s civil suit, police determined that he was subject to the anti-terror law because he was[...] promoting a “political or ideological cause.”"

I understand they had other 'terrorism' related reasons for detaining him (which I don't agree with), but the fact that someone can be detained simply for promoting a political or ideological cause is a disgrace. I'm sure it's there to stop extremist preachers but it's way to broad and sounds like it could be used to stop a hell of a lot of non-terrorists.

So harassing and silencing "extremist" preachers would be... fine? Is this OK?

A Christian street preacher was arrested and locked in a cell for telling a passer-by that homosexuality is a sin in the eyes of God.[1]

Is the law too broad only when it hits someone whose cause you care about?

And how do we decide which opinions are "extremist" or may serve as justification for detention? Hey, maybe we could have courts rule on that.

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/7668448/Christian-p...

Sorry, my point wasn't that I thought it was ok if used to silence certain people. It was that they have a reason that a lot of people would not object to. Hate speech isn't allowed in the UK (people have been locked up for racist tweets).

>A Christian street preacher was arrested and locked in a cell for telling a passer-by that homosexuality is a sin in the eyes of God.[1]

Sounds fine to me.

Fascism always seems just when you disagree with the point of view being silenced. That's why it's so pernicious.

"First they came for the homophobes..."

According to the article you cited, he was arrested for causing "harassment, alarm or distress" to a passer-by, who complained to a nearby police officer. He wasn't arrested for simply stating an opinion.

Have you ever been arrested? The charges you end up with often have little to do with reality. I despise people like the one we are discussing, but your post isn't convincing evidence that he was doing more, to be honest.

Can the citing be any more vague? Anybody could claim "distress, harassment or alarm" -- just because he doesn't like what you're telling him.

Promoting a political or ideological cause is the corner stone of exercising democratic rights if it is not done by violent means. If that is a reason for detention, then you are no longer in a democracy.

Actually I think this could be a good thing: we could put every politician in jail

They would presumably present in their defence that they don't care about ideology or any political cause at all, but is just in it for the money and power.

According to the cited Telegraph article, he was arrested for causing "harassment, alarm or distress" to a passer-by, who complained to a nearby police officer. He wasn't arrested for simply stating an opinion.

Was that "passer-by" ever identified?

Why would they be? You have a right to privately report something to a police officer.

Why wouldn't you be able to subpoena a witness?

Pretty sure it was a statutory offence to start with, there would be no real trial and I think the Police Officer would be the witness in this case.

You can't expect to interrogate anyone who complains about you, that just exacerbates the situation.

That applies to every politician (bringing home a kitchen knife set from the store, if the "dangerous material" part of the statement is significant).

You snipped a quite important part there: > ...knowingly carrying material, the release of which would endanger people’s lives”...

It seemed to me that that was a separate reason. It reads as though you can be detained for "knowingly carrying material, the release of which would endanger people’s lives" OR promoting a political ideology and that you didn't have to satisfy both criteria.

The 'political or ideological cause' qualification has come up before, in relation to british people fighting in syria: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/10/orwell-...

The full text of the judgement is at [1]. An interesting read.

Apart from the political and human-rights implications, what I find most interesting is how the police knew what Miranda was actually carrying. Paragraph 11 of the judgement quotes a police document (written before Minranda was stopped) justifying his detention:

"We strongly assess that MIRANDA is carrying items which will assist in GREENWALD releasing more of the NSA and GCHQ material we judge to be in GREENWALD’s possession. Open source research details the relationship between POITRAS, GREENWALD and SNOWDEN which corroborates our assessment as to the likelihood that GREENWALD has access to the protectively marked material SNOWDEN possesses. Our main objectives against David MIRANDA are to understand the nature of any material he is carrying, mitigate the risks to national security that this material poses..."

Which reads like supposition to me. Based on open source research? Please.

Later, in paragraph 13:

"The claimant’s hand luggage was examined, and items retained which as I have said included encrypted storage devices. Mr Oliver Robbins, Deputy National Security Adviser for Intelligence, Security and Resilience in the Cabinet Office, indicates in his first witness statement (paragraph 6) that the encrypted data contained in the external hard drive taken from the claimant contains approximately 58,000 highly classified UK intelligence documents."

Which is a very definite statement. Either it's based on guesswork, in which case the best that could be said is that it is merely an opinion, or else they broke the encryption (TrueCrypt?). I can't find anything in the facts section of the judgement to indicate that Miranda disclosed what he was carrying, or surrendered passwords.

[1] http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/Resources/JCO/Documents/Judgment... [PDF]

What depresses me is the court's acceptance that this involved "'very pressing' issues of national security". The US courts are also far too cowed by executive assertions of "national security". As if there were a clear, bright line of demarcation between everyday ho-hum government data and secrets so critical that their revelation poses an existential danger to civilization itself.

In fact, none of the data released by Snowden is a danger to national security in any sense. The identity of spies has not been released. No passcodes to nuclear weapons have been revealed.

The courts ought to take responsibility to assess the legitimacy of executive privilege claims and make judgments based on the actual content being protected. But for whatever reason, they are afraid to do so.

That the identity of spies has not been released does not mean that that information was not in the files carried by Miranda.

Basically the anti-terrorism laws are the contemporary inquisition. You can use for anything in order to obtain any outcome.

Colour me unsurprised - the courts have long shown that if political embarrassment is an issue, they are completely supine.

Chips are down. Western nations have realised democracy is expensive. Instead of China turning more democratic, to compete, they have turned into China.

the UK has historically been an outlier when it comes to both press freedoms and anti-terror policies.

Yup. Don't forget Northern Ireland. They went heavy handed there. Did it work? Nope.

did I miss something or is Northern Ireland still part of the Union?

No, but there was a prolonged dirty war by the security services against the republicans, including collusion with murderers and terrorists on the 'loyalist' side.

Northern Ireland is still part of the UK. I meant that the heavy handed approach didn't work, and was abandoned by the UK Gov (and the IRA et al.). Instead all sides sat down at the table and came to a (more) peaceful solution.

Heavy handed approach is seldom adequate, especially in situations with separatist sentiment. Retribution is an invisible and hard-hitting enemy in the long run, and going all guns blazing is a guarantee to breed one.

Well, this is pretty good proof that the "terrorism law" is wrongly formulated then, isn't it?

Does anybody know why they didn't just use PGP over the internet like Snowden supposedly did? He could have been caught holding onto a piece of paper with a 40 character fingerprint instead.

Are we sure that there were actual documents there? I thought that the UK authorities were under the impression that he might have GQHC (or whatever it is called) documents on his laptop.

GCHQ. It was only a Google away...

Oh, well if it was legal, then it's all okay, right? I mean, of course the law is always right. The law is always right, right? Right?!

Oh god, the world is coming apart at the seams.

> David Miranda Detention Legal Under Terrorism Law

Nowadays, everything is "terrorism". It's funny, because before Bush, nobody knew that word. Nobody ever talked about such a thing. It was something that was talked about maybe once in every 5 years. Nowadays, you can't read the news 1 single day without something being labeled "terrorism". Yesterday, it was the Ukrainian gov't calling the people in the tents "terrorists".

It's become really easy to strike people down.

> Nowadays, everything is "terrorism". It's funny, because before Bush, nobody knew that word. Nobody ever talked about such a thing

Are you shitting me? Do you perhaps not realise the UK was bombed by the IRA for many many years? That 5 letter bombs were sent only the other week?

Oh right, Americans didn't talk about terrorism, therefore it didn't exist.

Gotcha.

Actually as a resident of the UK, it was a "meh" thing. The word terrorist was still an extreme word used in rare circumstances even back in the height of the bombings.

And no one really actually cared about it that much.

Now it's a label for every crime. "The defendant is a terrorist unit proven otherwise".

I loved to London in 2000. I just realised today that there were at least 5 bombings and one rocket propelled grenade fired at Mi6 headquarters in the two first years I lived here - I only remember two (the car bomb outside BBC offices and the Ealing bomb where they'd phoned in a misleading warning naming a street that doesn't exist).

The rest apparently got so little media attention that I either didn't notice them or have forgotten all about it.

Of course that was well past the peak of the bombings, but it seems like a good illustration of how much of a "meh" thing it actually was.

To be fair, though, 9/11 was on a whole different order of magnitude to what the IRA attempted, and the IRA were never suicide bombers which made them easier to deter.

I'm from Manchester, so you know.

Yes sure you had IRA, ETA in Spain. Although they were making regular appearance in the media, that was not a daily drivel.

Suddenly 9/11 and everything any government in the world does not sanctify is labelled terrorism, and adequate action as demonstrated by the US is required. Break a window during protest: terrorism, complain loudly about stuff: suspected terrorist.

You cannot deny that since 9/11 lot of freedom have been given up in the name of fighting terrorism ? How is it that Spain/UK with active terrorist movement did not have those laws before ? How is it that we are dead scarred of this "muslim terrorist leaving in a cave in Afganistan/Syria/Irak/ next target", but we were fine living next-door to our homemade ones ?

Long before 9/11, I travelled with bottle of wine from spain to the uk and bottle of whisky to spain from the uk. Both when the IRA and ETA were active. Nowadays, it is not possible in case some terr'ist muslim (sorry no racism, but that's the current media scapegoat) want to "blow our freedom away".

How is it that Spain/UK with active terrorist movement did not have those laws before ?

They (the UK) did. They had the Prevention of Terrorism Acts in the 1980s. They had interment without trial. They had aggressive police on the streets. They had police shooting at protesters. They had the head of government (Thatcher) saying "We don't negotiate with terrorists". They had secret service spying on people of the wrong ethnicity.

I remember going to Northern Ireland in the 90s and being questioned by military with machine guns at the border. These things did exist.

Let's also remember that for a long time, several political parties were also not allowed to have their voices broadcast, either.

On the other hand, a lot of these things only applied in NI, not in the rest of the UK.

The IRA almost killed the UK Prime Minister. It was hardly a trivial matter.

... and bombed Manchester (1996); Birmingham; Docklands, London (1996); Omagh (1998) at least.

Omagh is NI; but the important point here was the militarized police force was (for better or for worse, given the number of mainland attacks) confined to NI. Much of the special powers granted only applied to NI. I'm not saying it wasn't a problem on the mainland — by any measure, it was — but one must realize the extra powers granted were limited.

As pointed out below, there was much less fuss about it, even after the Brighton hotel bombing, and much less restriction of civil liberties in mainland UK. (Civil liberties restrictions and human righs violations in Northern Ireland, on the other hand ...)

It's also worth pointing out that the US not only ignored IRA terrorism but in places actually supported it: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/06/12/glenn-greenwald-slams-...

"The Libyans!"

Back To The Future is my favorite example of the pre-90s perception of terrorists - gullible, ambitious beyond their means, a comical mix of bloodthirsty and inept, and only really dangerous if you stand still right in front of one with your hands in the air.

I think public perception started to shift well before 9/11, with 1995 being a critical turning point with the one-two punch of Oklahoma City and the capture of the Unabomber.

>> "Nowadays, everything is "terrorism"."

This hasn't changed. Mandela was once (stupidly) thought a terrorist by the current British prime minister. People's definition of terrorism constantly changes. I'm sure there are many people in the Middle East that consider the US a terrorist. It's a ridiculous classification as it's far too vague.

Edit: does the person who down voted this feel like explaining why? I don't see how it doesn't add to the conversation.

It was Margaret Thatcher that considered Mandela to be a terrorist, not David Cameron. I didn't down-vote you.

I understand she was in power at the time. Cameron was linked however to this[1] 'hang Mandela' campaign poster. I'm not positive but I believe he apologised in parliament after Mandela's death.

[1] http://i.stack.imgur.com/TeN0o.jpg

Cameron apologied on behalf of Conservative party [1], not personally.

The "Hang Nelson Mandela" material was created by a group, which Cameron was not involved with, within the Federation of Conservative Students.

Disclosure: I'm not a Conservative supporter. I dislike what Cameron is currently doing and loathe Thatcher.

[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/cameron-we-wer...

[2] http://www.newstatesman.com/media-mole/2013/12/twitter-fact-...

I'm pretty sure that they both "considered Mandela to be a terrorist", and most of the rest of the Conservative party at the time did too. But at the time nobody cared what David Cameron thought.

"Mandela was leader of the ANC's armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe which he co-founded. "he coordinated a sabotage campaign against military and government targets, and made plans for a possible guerrilla war if sabotage failed to end apartheid". If that's not terrorism (systematic use of violence as a means of coercion for political purposes) what is? The morality of this is another discussion.

> terrorism (systematic use of violence as a means of coercion for political purposes)

All warfare seems to fit under this definition. Commonly explicitly added qualifiers are "against civilians" or "by non-state actors". Another implicit one is "by people the speaker doesn't like".

Right, but we're talking about a non-state actor attacking civilian targets like power stations. Mandela fits any reasonable definition of terrorist.

Sure, not disputing that, only the definition expressed.

And the Labour governments before Thatcher sold arms to South Africa.

To be fair, he was the commander of Umkhonto we Sizwe which carried out bombings, torture and killings. By anyone's standards he was no peacenik.

Also, this was at the height of the cold war and the ANC was a communist organisation. Nobody in the west wanted South Africa becoming part of the USSR's sphere of influence. There was a large amoung of realpolitik involved.

Before he was turned into a Nice Older Gentleman Who Wanted Freedom, Nelson Mandela was a real revolutionary. Governments hate to admit it when revolutionaries win.

> because before Bush, nobody knew that word

There were various terrorist operations in the 80ies that were in the news. I would find it probable that the word is more used/abused these days, but the statement above is factually incorrect.

I seem to remember "anarchist" being used for "someone using violence to further their view", so in that sense the situation is maybe better now.

Marine barracks in Beruit, first World Trade Center bombing, Khobar Towers, Embassies in Africa, the USS Cole. I'm sure i've missed some.

The IRA in the UK?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_hijackings

Upvoted, I strongly agree. Sure there were many acts of terror committed in the past, but I remember we started using the label terrorist in my country after 9/11. We used to call people like IRA bombers, etc. zamachowiec (Polish for assassin, but covers suicide bombings and similar stuff), guerilla warriors, etc. but everyone suddenly became terrorist after the Towers fell.

The IRA were called "terrorist" by the UK Government at the time. They had the "Prevention of Terrorism Acts"[1], and the then head of Government (Thatcher), said they wouldn't negotiate with terrorists.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevention_of_Terrorism_Acts

It's funny, because before Bush, nobody knew that word. Nobody ever talked about such a thing.

Except for the IRA in the UK. You really need to read up on your modern UK history

David Miranda was detained under the Terrorism Act 2000, which was written and voted into law before George W Bush was elected President of the United States.

use of the word terrorist: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?year_start=1800&year_e...

bush just happened to make it more trendy. I hate the guy, but let's not contribute a word to his legacy.

> Nobody ever talked about such a thing. It was something that was talked about maybe once in every 5 years.

Someone else already mentioned it but living in the UK, the IRA (and UDF) was something that was mentioned DAILY.

We have form on this. We also used terror laws against the Icelandic government during the banking crash - http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aXjIA...

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