Tonight Rachel Maddow led her show with the story of David Miranda's detention at Heathrow yesterday, and gave a wonderful introduction to Laura Poitras. She starts with Poitras, her documentary work on US national security issues, her own very frequent detentions at airports, her winning a MacArthur genius grant, and her moving to Germany so the US government could not seize her source material.
A clip from her most recent documentary is shown, interviewing a former NSA employee who plainly explains what the NSA is doing and how they can lay out a timeline on the life of anybody in this country. Deeply scary stuff, unless you're OK with that. The NSA alumnus points out the danger that we could fall into a totalitarian state like East Germany. His hair, little that he had, did not appear to be on fire as he discussed this.
She goes on to discuss the relationship between Poitras and Glenn Greenwald, and gives her equal credit with Greenwald in taking the documents supplied by Edward Snowden and making news out of them, week after week. Then she goes on to outline the circumstances of David Miranda's detention at Heathrow yesterday, and the law under which British authorities held him. She finishes with an editorial such as we haven't seen since the great days of Keith Olbermann's Special Comments. See below for my own transcription.
Journalism is not terrorism. Journalism can be enraging to people in power; journalism can sometimes even be frightening to people in power, but journalism is not terrorism. Reporting on what governments do, even when those governments prefer to keep those actions secret, is not terrorism. Terrorism is a real and discrete thing in the world. It is not an all-encompassing term you apply to everything the government doesn't want you to do.
The White House today said it had been given a heads-up in advance that the detention of David Miranda was likely to happen.... The White House went out of their way today to say that it was Britain's decision to detain Glenn Greenwald's partner -- it was not something the US asked Britain to do; and okay fine, but the White House did know about it in advance and it still happened.
We have that kind of special relationship with Britain where if our government were outraged that this detention was going to happen, we could have objected, right? We could have at least asked our dear friends, the British government, to not do this, maybe in the interests of not intimidating the activities of the free press, if not for any other reason. Did our government make any objections when it got advance notice from Britain that this detention was going to happen? Did our government protest? And if not, why not? I tend to think we did not protest, since it went ahead.
I know the US government is not happy about Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald and their reporting about US surveillance. The president said that the disclosures from their source have led to a disorderly debate about these issues and even though we ought to have a debate about these issues, it ought to be more orderly. Fine. But if the United States wants to convince the world that the Glenn Greenwalds and Laura Poitras' of the world are correct when they say the US government is going too far -- if they want to underline and put flashing red lights on that reporting that says that counter-terrorism is being used to justify all sorts of things that are not justified by the actual threat of terrorism, and that in fact have just greenlit gross government overreach and intrusion and intimidation of legitimate activity including journalism -- then putting journalists and their families through marathon interrogations and seizing all their electronics is a really great way to start convincing the world that all that reporting is accurate.
Letting our closest allies do it while we stand silent is the same thing as us doing it. Journalism is not terrorism. Pretending otherwise is outrageous, and ridiculous, and a dangerous affront to who we are as a country and a democracy. It's an absolute outrage.
I have nothing to add, really. These are the actions of a would-be totalitarian state, and there appears to be no meaningful distinction between Britain and the United States in this respect. Anyone excusing them or blowing smoke in an effort to confuse the issue is aiding and abetting that state. The actions are shameful and deeply dangerous, and so are the excuses.
Shockwave has uncovered the video link below. Much obliged.