David Miranda: police win wider powers to investigate seized data

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Robert Booth
theguardian.com, Friday 30 August 2013 12.41 BST

The high court has granted the Metropolitan police extended powers to investigate whether crimes related to terrorism and breaches of the Official Secrets Act have been committed following the seizure of data at Heathrow from David Miranda, the partner of a Guardian journalist.

At a hearing in front of Lord Justice Laws and Mr Justice Kenneth Parker, lawyers for Miranda said they had agreed to the terms of wider police powers to investigate a hard drive and memory sticks containing encrypted material that were seized on 18 August. Previously the inspection had been granted conducted on the narrower grounds of national security.

Following the court ruling, the police will now be allowed to examine the material to investigate whether a crime of "communication of material to an enemy" has been committed as well as possible crimes of communication of material about members of the military and intelligence services that could be useful to terrorists.

Miranda had been travelling from Berlin to Rio de Janeiro via London on behalf of his partner, Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian reporter who has exposed mass digital surveillance by US and UK spy agencies based on leaked secrets obtained by the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

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Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/30/david-miranda-police-powers-data

[blackspade]

1. Why would they agree with this?

At a hearing in front of Lord Justice Laws and Mr Justice Kenneth Parker, lawyers for Miranda said they had agreed to the terms of wider police powers to investigate a hard drive and memory sticks containing encrypted material that were seized on 18 August.

That makes no sense.

And this is some chilling shit:

Following the court ruling, the police will now be allowed to examine the material to investigate whether a crime of "communication of material to an enemy" has been committed as well as possible crimes of communication of material about members of the military and intelligence services that could be useful to terrorists.

Who is the enemy? Couldn't anything be useful to terrorists? Which terrorists are they talking about? What evidence is there that the material contains info about specific "members of the military and intelligence services?"

[cstanleytech]

6. They might have agreed to it because there isnt anything to find especially

considering all of the upload sites that exist to store data and access it from anywhere in the world.

[blackspade]

8. But, if the whole idea is to prevent a precident from being set....

Well, that just fucks that up.

[cstanleytech]

9. Actually the whole idea might be to catch law enforcement with their pants down.

Read the whole article and you will see that law enforcement is making specific claims of what is on the drives however near the end the article says

"Gwendolen Morgan, solicitor for Miranda from the law firm Bindmans, disputed the claims. In a statement outside the court, she said: "The Home Office and Metropolitan police have lodged evidence with the court in which they make sweeping assertions about national security threats which they said entitled them to look at the materials seized, but they have said that they cannot provide further details in open court. Mr Miranda does not accept the assertions they have made and is disappointed that the UK government is attempting to justify the use of terrorist powers by making what appear to be unfounded assertions.""


If there isnt anything there then it will by a huge embarrassment to law enforcement and it might put a chill on them being willing to try and bully someone like this any time soon.

[blackspade]

10. Interesting idea.

We'll just have to see how this plays out.
It would be funny if there were just multiple episodes of Nightrider featuring the "Hoff."

[JDPriestly]

12. Why would Miranda have carried the classified materials with him?

I think they are looking for material with which to embarrass Glenn Greenwald. Maybe material of a personal or even sexual nature. That's what I think.

I cannot imagine that Miranda and Greenwald would be so naive as to carry sensitive materials on a plane. That is especially true since the woman they work with, Laura Poitras. has been interrogated and had her computer and materials taken several times in the past.

[cstanleytech]

13. No one with any common sense would these days.

She might have been carrying encrypted information sure but it could just have been copies of stories they were writing for future publication and that after this incident they came up with the idea to use it against the government to expose that their bullying served no purpose except to expose the government as bullies and incompetent ones at that.

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. It's a Catch 22 situation

The UK government threatens Miranda with jail if he doesn't cooperate by handing over all his equipment, and the passwords; then they say the problem is that he was carrying data that needed to be kept secret - which he had done, until threatened with jail by the UK government.

[Helen Borg]

3. I thought he was carrying heavily encrypted data.

So, how are they going to examine it?

[joshcryer]

4. Good point. The UK has journalist middleman protection.

He was acting as a middleman even if he couldn't claim to be a journalist, he was protected.

Hopefully his computer doesn't have any proof that he was carrying the Snowden files (a simple search index of the encrypted flash drives after being decrypted by the laptop would suffice).

I don't think GG would've let him have the actual passwords to the flash drives. If so that would've been a really bad lapse of judgment.

[dipsydoodle]

5. Don't change the fact

that at present anything they find can't be used in evidence against him in a criminal case.

That was a separate earlier judgement on this case.

[cstanleytech]

7. And I doubt they will find anything dipsy. nt

[blkmusclmachine]

11. One World

Government