Scandalous Detention of a Journalist's Partner, It's Too Clear What Kind of World We're Heading to

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/media/being-polyamorous-shows-theres-no-traditional-way-live

You've had your fun: now we want the stuff back. With these words the British government embarked on the most bizarre act of state censorship of the internet age. In a Guardian basement, officials from GCHQ gazed with satisfaction on a pile of mangled hard drives like so many book burners sent by the Spanish Inquisition. They were unmoved by the fact that copies of the drives were lodged round the globe. They wanted their symbolic auto-da-fe. Had the Guardian refused this ritual they said they would have obtained a search and destroy order from a compliant British court.

Two great forces are now in fierce but unresolved contention. The material revealed by Edward Snowden through the Guardian and the Washington Post is of a wholly different order from WikiLeaks and other recent whistle-blowing incidents. It indicates not just that the modern state is gathering, storing and processing for its own ends electronic communication from around the world; far more serious, it reveals that this power has so corrupted those wielding it as to put them beyond effective democratic control. It was not the scope of NSA surveillance that led to Snowden's defection. It was hearing his boss lie to Congress about it for hours on end.

Last week in Washington, Congressional investigators discovered that the America's foreign intelligence surveillance court, a body set up specifically to oversee the NSA, had itself been defied by the agency"thousands of times". It was victim to "a culture of misinformation" as orders to destroy intercepts, emails and files were simply disregarded; an intelligence community that seems neither intelligent nor a community commanding a global empire that could suborn the world's largest corporations, draw up targets for drone assassination, blackmail US Muslims into becoming spies and haul passengers off planes.

Yet like all empires, this one has bred its own antibodies. The American (or Anglo-American?) surveillance industry has grown so big by exploiting laws to combat terrorism that it is as impossible to manage internally as it is to control externally. It cannot sustain its own security. Some two million people were reported to have had access to the WikiLeaks material disseminated by Bradley Manning from his Baghdad cell. Snowden himself was a mere employee of a subcontractor to the NSA, yet had full access to its data. The thousands, millions, billions of messages now being devoured daily by US data storage centres may be beyond the dreams of Space Odyssey's HAL 9000. But even HAL proved vulnerable to human morality. Manning and Snowden cannot have been the only US officials to have pondered blowing a whistle on data abuse. There must be hundreds more waiting in the wings – and always will be.

[kelliekat44]

1. I too am tired of the unrelenting journalist-fest. Meanwhile real news that means something to

people's suffering lives goes unnoticed and undiscussed.

[Fire Walk With Me]

2. K&R!

[1awake]

3. I hear you,

It's been stated by quite a few that The holding of Mr. Greenwald's spouse, Mr. Miranda was an illegal act which came through the PM himself whether by direction or by passive approval. The usage of the Terrorism Act of 2000 was utilized inappropriately with even at least one of the law's creators saying as much.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/21/david-miranda-law-detention-heathrow

Officials from both the UK and US have stated the incident was a warning.

http://www.theweek.co.uk/world-news/prism-leak/53895/pm-ordered-top-aide-warn-guardian-over-snowden-case

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130820/03160924251/us-official-admits-that-uk-detention-glenn-greenwalds-partner-was-to-send-message.shtml

While technically the destruction of the hard drives is laughable, it further makes it obvious that it was no more than a scare tactic. The argument that if he was holding stolen documents so that makes everything cool, doesn't hold water. After Miranda was released to leave, he was allowed to enter the UK until a flight could be obtained. SO, he was stopped under the Terrorist act, was never asked anything about being a terrorist... for 9 hours, they confiscated his electronics, then let him freely enter UK territory? Ya, sounds like they were very concerned about him being a bad guy. Did the US have a hand in this event to any real degree? I have no idea. We know they were told by the British Government of its intentions at the very least. What the US officials response was in this conversation has been withheld by "no comment".

I don't care if a person has a high opinion of Greenwald/Miranda/Snowden or not. It's irrelevant. Officials/agencies in several countries, specifically the US and UK are abusing their "given (taken?) authority", and hiding most of what they do under the premise of national security. How so? We have no idea, because that's a matter of national security. How far have they gone? Again.. a matter of national security. Any other questions? Yep... national security.