Comment by ZenPro | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ZenPro | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

If you are going to be condescending at least stay factual; the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Britain is simply an island.

Can you be specific about which legal cases you are in outrage over?

If you are talking about David Miranda then he was lucky that we treated him so leniently.

As a former military intelligence operator I wrote a piece on the detention: http://urbantimes.co/2013/11/the-david-miranda-detention-why...

We were exceptionally lenient and reasonable in our treatment of David Miranda, regardless of what the general populace think.

He was a foreign national, in possession of UK Top Secret documentation, held on a non-secure IT system, and he was not a journalist. Why would anybody in their right mind think we would allow a foreign national to waltz off with our material is beyond me.

Replace "David Miranda" with "Chinese Hacker" or "North Korean Diplomat" and ask whether the detention would have been lawful then.

“A Chinese computer hacker was arrested with 58,000 TOP SECRET files from the UK intelligence community. He was spoken to for 9 hours and released without charge. He is requesting the return of his computer.” The UK public would be up in arms if our police services released that individual back to his host nation.

You think you get a free pass for being the partner of Glenn Greenwald?

"He was a foreign national, in possession of UK Top Secret documentation, held on a non-secure IT system, and he was not a journalist."

He was in possession of copies of UK Top Secret documentation. Given that other copies of the documents exist outside the UK and its legal jurisdiction, what exactly would be the point of detaining him?

I can see how you would arrive at that conclusion, it is also a point I deal with in the article.

Detaining was merely a means to removing the documents from his possession. Nothing more. Miranda was not intimidated and he also refused legal counsel.

However, let's take a less emotionally charged example.

A man breaks into your house - makes copies of all of your ID's, your bank records, passwords, logins, hard copies of your keys to your residence in a plasticine mould. Enough to considerably damage your financial, emotional and professional well being.

He also makes copies of anything regarding your family including schooling, medical, financial records and keys to whatever they own.

All of the material is then copied by a third party. Two copies now exist.

The police contact you and inform you that they can detain the one of the individuals with copies of your material but the other copies still remain at large in the real world.

By your logic, that man could neither be detained, questioned or have the copies removed from his possession.

As any serious penetration tester/corporate investigator will tell you. It does not matter how many copies of data exist, you have a legal responsibility to remove from circulation the copies that you can remove from circulation.

In your mind, once multiple copies of data exist then no further law enforcement action is required. Those involved in industrial espionage just voted for you en masse.

I assume that if I enter your place of work, copy all of the IP, pass the copies to a third party you now believe I am free to go and can keep the IP in my possession?

"By your logic, that man could neither be detained, questioned or have the copies removed from his possession."

I didn't say they couldn't detain him. I asked what the point - the actual objective - was.

I think you have a valid point that reducing (by one) the number of copies of the document collection in circulation was a valid and rational action by the UK authorities - especially since it appears that Miranda was carrying a piece of paper with the encryption password written on it. But it's also an empty gesture given how quickly the documents could be re-copied. How many new copies could be created by others during the nine hours that he was in detention?

Your analogies with people breaking into houses or places of work are sophistry. They involve the commission of criminal acts against individuals. Miranda didn't break any UK laws. Neither did Snowden.

It was rational and valid but it was also dictated by legislation. We had to.

I don't consider my reasoning to be sophistry at all - your claim that Snowden/Miranda broke no laws is simply a sleight of hand to avoid the thrust of the argument.

Do you believe those in possession of copied IP, in contravention of legislation, deserve to be detained and have the IP removed from their possession?

Which specific piece of legislation required it?

To answer your question: I believe in the rule of law, so it would be the decision of a court as to whether some item in a person's possession should be taken from them.

Like this decision?

http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/JCO/Documents...

The Facts of the Case

"He provided them with encrypted data which had been stolen from the National Security Agency (NSA) of the United States. The data included UK intelligence material. Some of it formed the basis of articles in the Guardian on 6 and 7 June 2013 and on later dates. On 12 August 2013 the claimant travelled from Rio de Janeiro to Berlin in order to meet Laura Poitras. He was carrying encrypted material derived from the data obtained by Mr Snowden. He was to collect computer drives containing further such material. He was doing it in order to assist in the journalistic activity of Mr Greenwald"

The document that you linked to is the judgement confirming the legality of Miranda's detention at Heathrow. It's not a pierce of legislation; its a judgement. It doesn't compel detention, it just confirms that it was lawful [1].

The judgement was also handled-down six months after the event, so how can you claim that it means the UK authorities had to detain Miranda at the time?

[1] I've already said that I agree that his detention was valid (ie lawful).

Detention was necessary to confirm or deny the reports that David Miranda was in possession of stolen documents pertaining to the National Security of the UK and, if found to be so, relieve those documents from his possession.

Once the classified material had been confirmed, security operators were then legislatively bound to destroy or other render unusable the material in question.

The legislation which required all reasonable and necessary measures are contained within the Official Secrets Act 1989, the National Security Strategy, the Data Protection Act and the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 with detailed policy guidance promulgated to intelligence operators via HMG Information Assurance Notes (1/2 (SPF)) and, more importantly, HMG Information Assurance Note 5 and the Joint Services Publication 440 which governs counter-compromise measures.

Ultimate responsibility for HMG security policy lies with the Prime Minister and the Cabinet Office. Departments and Agencies, via their Permanent Secretaries and Chief Executives, must manage their security risks within the parameters set out in the framework, as endorsed by the Official Committee on Security (SO).

All HMG employees (including contractors) have a collective responsibility to ensure that government assets (information, personnel and physical) are protected in a proportionate manner from terrorist attack, and other illegal or malicious activity.

The loss or compromise of such Critically Important Assets would have a severe, widespread impact on a national scale and Departments must work with the National Technical Authorities and the Cabinet Office to ensure they are afforded appropriate levels of protection.

[] [] []

Points to note

a. The judgement was handed down 6 months later in response to the challenge by David Miranda. There was never any doubt that Schedule 7 was applied correctly from the outset apart from by the Guardian, Greenwald and Miranda.

>and he was not a journalist.

There's not a license (in freer countries) that you have to have to be a journalist. If someone is acting as a courier between two reporters, or between a reporter and a source, they're certainly acting as a journalist.

Absolutely not and under UK legislation that was safely put to bed, and rightly so.

That would allow a Foreign Intelligence Agent, Thief or Fence to transit goods between two parties as long as both parties referred to themselves as journalists

Legally absurd.

I would love to see your legal argument that a courier is adopting the professional status of the those who is delivering or receiving from. If FedEx deliver medical records to your house, be sure to ask the courier to perform brain surgery.

There isn't one clear-cut legal definition of a journalist, but it's a topic that has been extensively hashed out in different jurisdictions and contexts. In any given situation the argument over who counts as a journalist will depend on the laws and precedent for that context, almost without regard to the commonsense meaning of the word.

For anyone who is wondering, the article referenced in the post above is well worth a read.

Thank you, I really appreciate that. I attempted to keep the issue as distinct as possible from the actions of Edward Snowden and just focus on that one incident including the reasoning behind it.

You're welcome. It's a great reminder that it's easy to criticise "the machine" from the sidelines, but when you're part of it there are protocols and processes and systems etc that mean there really is no latitude. Also, your point about making judgements while not knowing the whole picture is important and easily overlooked.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com