Dear people in the UK: the last time the British government treated its citizens this way, they held a revolution, and a large number of them became a new free country. Not fomenting anything, just sayinââŚ
Cue claims that Greenwaldâs reporting about abuse of anti-terrorism laws retroactively makes Greenwald and Miranda into terrorists and justifies the abuse.
Sometimes Iâm surprised that the shills Iâve run across elsewhere donât slip up and denounce Goldstein instead of Snowden.
I trust that he wasnât dumb enough to have any useful information on those electronic gadgets.
What we really need to know is what person or persons in the United States are responsible for these politically motivated detentions and harassments. Because there is a person or persons pushing this agenda. These individuals are acting against the freedoms of citizens and almost certainly doing it without formal adjudication of any kind. There are freelancers in the US Government running this agenda.
Who puts these folks on the SSSS screening lists?
Who, internet?
Who?
Time to take them down and hold them accountable for their fascist actions.
David Miranda should in future travel with a collection of punch cards, paper tape, core memory, RL02 disks, Files-11 formatted shadow sets on SCSI-1 disks, Zip disks and Zune music players, all loaded with random numbers displaying exquisitely high entropy.
I would love to see the authorities make an image of that lot in 9.0 hours.
Of course, that new country is also acting the exact same way at this point, but at least it took a while to get there.
On a related note, Iâm pretty sure Bin Laden was trying to teach the Western governments a little something about what happens when you oppress a society (albeit in the wrong way), but obviously they havenât learned a goddamned* thing.
*I donât capitalize the word god any longer.
And today, that new country, is free as the eagle soarsâŚ
This detention is an utter disgrace and a shame on my country. If the Terrorism Act is being used to target journalists and people who clearly have no terrorist intent, then it must be struck off the statute book. This alarming newspeak interpretation of âterroristâ as anyone whoâs inconvenient undermines the legitimacy of the rule of law.
I have written to my MP to ask him to take action about this, and I hope all UK-based BB readers are doing the same thing.
One presumes a revengeful and profoundly less introspective version of Inspector Clouseau is now heading up the UKâs counter terrorism efforts.
They know it wonât slow down Greenwald, but there are thousands of people reading this and making the decision that it isnât worth it to get involved in any kind of activism in the future, because they donât want their wives/children on watch-lists that possibly affect careers or university admissions in the future. This is the effect they wanted.
Here in the USA, they used âCommunistâ to achieve the same ends in the fifties and sixties.
Terrorism Act 2000, Schedule VII
Power to stop, question and detain
(1) An examining officer may question a person to whom this paragraph applies for the purpose of determining whether he appears to be a person falling within section 40(1)(b). [ = is a genuine terrorist ]
(4) An examining officer may exercise his powers under this paragraph whether or not he has grounds for suspecting that a person falls within section 40(1)(b).
Seems strange that we have a mechanism for arbitrary 9 hour detention without probable cause on the statue books.
The problem with the way western governments are acting at the moment is that they make crackpot conspiracy theories seem entirely plausible. Interesting times indeed (I wonder if the Chinese realise just how effective a curse that is).
Its not strange really, its exactly as they want it. The US government claims that the constitution doesnât apply, even to American citizens, at border crossings, so they can do whatever they like: steal your electronics, detain you indefinitely, etc. By those standards the UK is positively liberal. Of course thatâs not saying much.
The Magna Carta protections that have existed for 600 years no longer apply in cases of âterrorismâ, which as we have seen, means anything the government wants it to.
In the US, even file sharing is being folded into the terrorism âlawsâ. Peace protesters, anti-corruption protesters, environmentalists and now file sharers are deemed potential terrorists. The law no longer exists if you go against the state. The abuses keep getting worse, like a slow drip, and things that a few years ago wouldâve shocked the public are now done as a matter of course. I am not eager to see where we will be 5 years from now.
On a related note, bin Laden won.
Probable cause was the old standard.
be cause is the new one.
Dear Heathrow officials,
If your goal was to anger millions of people across the globe, mission accomplished.
Sincerely,
The World
I trust that he wasnât dumb enough to have any useful information on
those electronic gadgets.
Thatâs exactly what he was doing, according to the NYT.
Funny how Greenwaldâs own reporting of the event doesnât mention that he was using Miranda as a mule.
