The government persecution of whistleblowers and journalists took a bizarre turn this week when journalist Glenn Greenwald’s partner was accosted at Heathrow Airport by British authorities for nine hours proving once again that airports are a bad place to be for individuals who challenge the global surveillance machine.
David Miranda, Greenwald’s partner, was returning to Brazil from Berlin on Sunday when he was stopped, and brought in for questioning under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000, which allows officers to stop, search, question and detain individuals. The law applies only at airports, ports and border areas. Nine hours is the maximum amount of time an individual can be held under the law before being released or formally arrested. Those held cannot have a lawyer present and may not remain silent. Miranda’s electronic devices were also confiscated.
“There is simply no basis for believing that David Michael Miranda presents any threat whatsoever to the UK government,” Widney Brown, Amnesty International’s senior director of international law and policy said. “The only possible intent behind this detention was to harass him and his partner, Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, for his role in analyzing the data released by Edward Snowden.”
The British government also ordered the Guardian to destroy the files Snowden leaked because the Guardian’s servers were not secure. According to whom were they not secure? Why the British government of course.
One small stop for man, one giant leap for the police state
This marks another step in the global war on freedom of the press. In the name of counter-terrorism first-world nations have cracked down on whistleblowers and journalists to prevent them from breaking stories about these nation’s secret surveillance programs.
Suppression of the press is nothing new, but it has escalated steadily post 9/11. It was rampant in the lead-up to the Iraq war through meticulous media relations work and restriction of access to sources; it was a major contributing factor to the press’ poor relationship with the facts during this time. Although admittedly rare in my experience reporting here at the University of Idaho, when access is restricted I know first-hand that makes it more difficult to write an informative story. When the press is restricted, democracy suffers.
In the recent trial of Private First Class Bradley Manning, journalists protested when they were subjected to background checks, searches and armed military police officers peering over their shoulders as they took notes. Manning was acquitted of aiding the enemy, a charge that would have established a dangerous precedent that would have essentially outlawed investigative journalism. The fact that the US government even brought such a serious legal charge when the U.S. Constitution explicitly protects freedom of the press is chilling.
The Fourth Amendment protects us from unwarranted searches and seizures, and yet the US National Security Agency is blanket-surveilling metadata of our phone calls and internet usage.
This dragnetting of metadata is so blatantly unconstitutional the congressmen who introduced the Patriot Act has voiced concerns that the law is being misinterpreted to justify it. Yes, you read that right, the chief architect of the Patriot Act is saying we are going too far. Welcome to the Twilight Zone.
I find it curious that national politicians do very little to defend us from warrantless searches and seizures–the House recently failed to pass a bill that would have curtailed the NSA’s surveillance–yet fight so bitterly to defend the right to bear arms.Why I would want a gun more than being protected from wanton investigative harassment is beyond me–the government has much bigger guns than I could ever hope to own after all.
It gets worse, because why wouldn’t it?
According to Reuters, the NSA is only the tip of the iceberg. The Drug Enforcement Agency has a division known as the Special Operations Division, which forwards tips gleaned from NSA intercepts, wiretaps by foreign governments, court-approved domestic wiretaps and a database called DICE to federal agents and local law enforcement officers. The worst part is that these officers are taught to recreate the investigative process, concealing the origins of the investigation. If defendants don’t know how an investigation began they cannot know to ask to review potential sources of exculpatory evidence, which could reveal entrapment, mistakes or biased witnesses. There goes the Sixth Amendment.
“It is one thing to create special rules for national security,” Nancy Gertner, a Harvard Law School professor who served as a federal judge from 1994 to 2011 said. “Ordinary crime is entirely different. It sounds like they are phonying up investigations.”
The Fourth-Estate cannibalizes itself
It’s gotten so bad that journalists are calling for the arrest of sources like Snowden. On “Meet The Press,” journalist David Gregory went so far as to question why Greenwald hadn’t been arrested for “aiding and abetting” Snowden.
Mike Grunwald, a reporter for TIME Magazine, tweeted “I can’t wait to write a defense of the drone strike that takes out Julian Assange.” After significant backlash, the tweet was deleted.
That a reporter would call for an extra-judicial strike on Assange–who could be called a journalist in today’s world of smartphones, social media and virtually ever-present internet–is utterly absurd.
Learning to love Big Brother
If one has read George Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece “1984” they will likely remember the telescreen. In Orwell’s dystopian world the telescreen was a device that not only broadcast messages from The Party, but surveilled you in your home. Say what you want about the telescreen, but at least its surveillance wasn’t secret; were it not for Snowden we couldn’t say the same about the NSA’s efforts.
“1984” also featured a world divided by constant war. Against whom? It didn’t matter at all as long as you could stir up a sense of nationalism in the proletariat, and justify the erosion of freedoms, war served its purpose. This seems to bear a striking similarity to the War on Terror, or the War on Drugs. You can’t ever win a war on an abstract concept; war needs clearly drawn battle-lines and clearly defined opponents. These wars serve their purpose just as the wars in Orwell’s novel served theirs.
Perhaps the most chilling part of “1984” is its conclusion. The protagonist goes from wanting to rebel against Big Brother and The Party to loving him, and loving him to the extent that he is moved to tears by his lack of faith in the past. We need to realize that a significant portion of the press, and the populace, are of similar mind. If we value our democracy that simply will not do.
Andrew Deskins can be reached at