RSS Feeds

British paper details confrontation with UK spies

Wednesday - 8/21/2013, 6:50am  ET


Associated Press




He said the paper has other copies of the same material located elsewhere.

Rusbridger spoke as disquiet continued to grow over the detention of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald's partner, David Miranda, who was held for nine hours at London's Heathrow Airport on Sunday as he was ferrying material related to the Snowden story between filmmaker Laura Poitras in Germany and Brazil, where Greenwald is based.


Legal commentators have questioned the legality of Miranda's detention, which civil liberties groups have decried as an abuse of power aimed at sabotaging Greenwald's coverage.




Experts have suggested the government's case is dicey. The piece of legislation used to stop Miranda -- Schedule 7 of the 2000 Terrorism Act -- is especially contentious because it allows police to stop people for passing through airports for up to nine hours without suspicion they have committed an offense.

British legal blogger David Allen Green said Schedule 7 could only be used to determine whether or not a person was a terrorist -- and not, as he put it, "a fishing expedition for property."

"If the questioning, detention, and search of Miranda was for a purpose other than to determine if he was a terrorist, then it was unlawful," he said.

David Lowe, a former police officer and academic at Liverpool John Moores University, said in a telephone interview that he believed the government was acting in good faith, although he said he could understand why journalists might be concerned.

He argued that the Snowden leaks could contain details of intelligence operations against groups such as al-Qaida, which he said was where anti-terror laws could come into play.

"It's a thin connection," he acknowledged.

British Home Secretary Theresa May took that line of argument in her comments Tuesday.


The role of American officials in the Guardian saga has remained a matter for speculation.

Americans have acknowledged getting advance warning about Miranda' detention, but when White House spokesman Josh Earnest was asked Tuesday whether the U.S. would ever order the destruction of an American media company's hard drives, he said it was "very difficult to imagine a scenario in which that would be appropriate."


Jill Lawless and Sylvia Hui in London and Julie Pace in Washington contributed to this report.
