Last Summer David Miranda, the partner of Gleen Greenwald was traveling from Berlin to Rio de Janeiro. During a transfer at Heathrow he has detained by British police on accusations of terrorism and his computer equipment confiscated. A British court has just ruled in favor of the government.
UK Court: David Miranda Detention Legal Under Terrorism Law
A British lower court has ruled that London police acted lawfully in employing an anti-terror statute to detain and interrogate David Miranda for nearly nine hours at Heathrow Airport last summer, even while recognizing that the detention was “an indirect interference with press freedom.”
The review of Miranda’s detention was widely seen as a test of how far governments that have adopted aggressive anti-terror policies will go — and will be allowed to go — in terms of treating journalists who expose secrets as criminals and terrorists themselves.
And yet, the ruling was not entirely surprising; the UK has historically been an outlier when it comes to both press freedoms and anti-terror policies.
In an editorial at The Intercept Greenwald gives his thoughts on the decision. He raises issues about journalism and press freedom that I find deeply disturbing.
On the UK’s Equating of Journalism With Terrorism
The UK Government expressly argued that the release of the Snowden documents (which the free world calls “award-winning journalism“) is actually tantamount to “terrorism”, the same theory now being used by the Egyptian military regime to prosecute Al Jazeera journalists as terrorists. Congratulations to the UK government on the illustrious company it is once again keeping. British officials have also repeatedly threatened criminal prosecution of everyone involved in this reporting, including Guardian journalists and editors.
Equating journalism with terrorism has a long and storied tradition. Indeed, as Jon Schwarz has documented, the U.S. Government has frequently denounced nations for doing exactly this. Just last April, Under Secretary of State Tara Sonenshine dramatically informed the public that many repressive, terrible nations actually “misuse terrorism laws to prosecute and imprison journalists.” When visiting Ethiopia in 2012, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns publicly disclosed that in meetings with that nation’s officials, the United States “express[ed] our concern that the application of anti-terrorism laws can sometimes undermine freedom of expression and independent media.” The same year, the State Department reported that Burundi was prosecuting a journalist under terrorism laws.
Legal principles and the rule of law don't work if they are applied as a matter of political convenience. You can't wrap yourself in self righteous indignation over somebody else's authoritarian repression and then practice it when you want to cover up your own dirty laundry. The battle for a free press in an open society has been fought many times before. It will always have to be continually fought.