Was This Person Unduly Treated By Our Security People?.

[anotheoldgit]

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/19/detention-david-miranda-keith-vaz-glenn-greenwald

Now let's see if this is more pleasing to the pallet, it should be taking into account that it circles round, the 'unlawful' arrest of a Guardian journalist's partner, by the dreaded British police, most likely at the request of US National Security Agency and wait a minute Mr Miranda also happens to be Brazilian, so we also have the racist element thrown in.

Yes this should start off a debate surely.

[baza]

Gromit, that only happens on the tube.

[albaqwerty]

I heard on the BBC news at lunchtime, that if you ask for a lawyer whilst detained at Heathrow, you can carry on being questioned until the lawyer arrives, but elsewhere in the UK, this is not the case.
Is Heathrow a little country with its own laws?

[ToraToraTora]

nowt to do with the location alba, it's who's doing the questioning. essentially customs and excise have more powers. However the right to remain silent is still there.

Anyway it is a bit Rich, Labour moaning about the anti terrorism laws that they introduced!

[Gromit]

The anti terror laws are flawed and were rushed, but that is not the problem here. This is about abuse of powers.

[FredPuli43]

Unfortunately, the latest terrorism law is in distinguished company, if that's the right adjective. The Official Secrets Act and the Defence of the Realm Act are two others. All were passed in a time of national emergency or perceived emergency, all were not properly considered being passed, and all had unforeseen, sometimes absurd, consequences when put into practice by those entrusted to carry them out.

[pixie373]

Sorry. This is irrelevant, but i have a lot of respect for aog considering the amount of personal abuse he gets with every question and words being put in his mouth (not necessarily this thread).

[joggerjayne]

Me too, pixie.

Little cheer for AOG.

AB stalwart, and mega contributor.

[pixie373]

It's one of the first things i noticed- as a fairly newbie

[FredPuli43]

Exactly ,pixie. Good to hear someone defending AOG. He is one of the mainstays of this site, and News would be very dull without him.

There's no need to put words into his mouth, 'words which he never said'. If you read carefully , you'll find it does that unaided :)

[wolf63]

AOG ~ we could run your fan club for you. :-)

The problem with stories that we read about in the press is that we are being given a biased version of events and we are never given all the facts.

[237SJ]

...and have you noticed how polite he (AOG) is when he is asking a question about something unrelated to the news? He does get an awful lot of flak - I think he must secretly thrive on it though :-)

[Peter Pedant]

If you are a Fed (federal employee) you can ask (ie instruct) a policeman to arrest someone and apparently they have to.

We dont have Feds in this country BUT

they seem to have rung up the friendly plodz at Thiefrow [oops a nickname relating to the corruption that plagued Heathrow thirty y ago] and said Arrest X - and they seem not to have said Certainly Sir what do we charge him with ? they just cocked their tommy guns and went rat a tat tat - sorry that was another Brazilian - they said to this Brazilian, you're f+ing nicked mate and the Sarge knows what it is for

and yes I dont think people should be doing that

and I dont think the police should be following foreign orders....

but who am I to lay down the law on all this ?

[Gromit]

It now turns out he was carrying encrypted files from Snowden. And his detention and confiscation of his possessions was orchestrated long before he arrived at Heathrow. The Police and Special Branch knew exactly what they were looking for. We have no idea what the authorities have siezed, but it is highly unlikely it was related to or aiding terrorism, under which laws and pretext he was detained.
So we certainly have a miss use of the law or an abuse of power. The guilty party in the NSA story was the US Government, and this detention and taking of equipment only aids them really. So it would appear we are still obeying our masters across the pond.

[ChillDoubt]

Lucky for him he hadn't made it as far as the Underground......

However this is fronted out it's still gonna look like it was done at the behest of another government, one that has more than an interest in places like Menwith Hill.

[anotheoldgit]

friedgreentomato

/// We do not always get the answers we want to our questions but that is the way life is - your parents should have taught you that! ///

Don't be so rude, I wonder what your reaction would have been I had given the same answer to a certain 15 year old on this site?

[jno]

the tragic loss of UK sovereignty, for which people prefer to point the finger at Brussels when clearly the problem lies in the other direction.

[jake-the-peg]

I think we have to remember that GCHQ appears to have been implicated up to their eyes in the illegal activities of the NSA

Personally I think we can probably take the American's word that this was not done on their behest - I suspect that a certain Cheltenham organisation is a little worried that what they knew and perhaps even what their involvement was could lead to an investigation and possibly even disciplinary action or charges.

They would have been very keen to ensure no additional revelations came to light

[Peter Pedant]

AOG there are quite a few 15 y o on this site - mentally that is !
which one have you in mind?

I think like all of us, they have to take the benefit along with the burden if they clock on here.


and yes it looks as tho they wanted to get files off of the laptop
and no I dont think they should be doing this at American behest
for a start it makes us look like monkeys dancing to an organ grinder's tune (the US that is) -
yeah..... daily mail reading monkeys.....

[anotheoldgit]

Svejk

Thanks for both yourself's and Douglas's support Svejk, if others like you two remain on this site instead of being frightened off by the pack, then maybe one day we may look forward to a more balanced and fairer debate on the news section.