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Comment by d0 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

"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.

> 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.

"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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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).

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?

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

>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!

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