Snowdon is a dummy

Personal privacy simply cannot be maintained any more...and it is time for humanity to get use to that.

Miranda, 28, the partner of Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist who has exposed America's mass email surveillance, was detained for nine hours under anti-terror laws on Sunday.

The London law firm Bindmans will present Miranda's case for the injunction before two high court judges, arguing that the Metropolitan police misused schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000.

They will also claim that the Met had no powers to detain a transit passenger who had not formally entered the UK or Northern Ireland.

Bindmans say officers were aware that Miranda was travelling en route between Germany and Brazil at the time he was stopped on Sunday.

The lawyers will also argue that the detention was a violation of Miranda's fundamental human rights. ... ... ...

Frank Apisa wrote:

Personal privacy simply cannot be maintained any more...and it is time for humanity to get use to that.

Article 8 of the ECHR guarantees the individual’s right to respect for his private and family life. The Article specifies that public authorities may only interfere with this right in narrowly defined circumstances. In particular, any interference must be in accordance with law and necessary in a democratic society, in view of such public interests as national security and the prevention of crime.

The European Court of Human Rights has not previously ruled on a legal challenge to data retention legislation. We'll have to wait for the ruling ... now.

(On the other hand, most of the UK's Conservatives want to leave the jurisdiction of the ECHR.)

And that's of course a human right everywhere else but in Europe, correct?

Whether or not you support the Snowden leaks, what has happened since is disquieting

[...] If one accepts the Government view that the leak endangers national security, then police interest in Mr Miranda and the “stolen” information in his possession is, at least, consistent. Indeed, it would be surprising – remiss, even – were all possible efforts not made to recover the material. So much for the principle. In practice, the response was grossly disproportionate.

Mr Miranda is not a terrorist, nor was he ever suspected of being one; the basis for his detention under anti-terrorism legislation is therefore flawed, despite police claims of narrow legality. Furthermore, while there is some dispute over whether the Brazilian was or was not given access to a lawyer, the simple fact of his being held for the full nine hours – seven of them with nothing to drink – smacks more of bullying than effective questioning. Demands for social-media passwords salted by threats of prison only compound the impression of wilful heavy-handedness.

Even more concerning, though, are the broader questions the incident raises. It was always difficult to believe that the decision to stop Mr Miranda was the sole preserve of the Metropolitan Police. Sure enough, the list of those who admit advance knowledge of the plan grows longer by the day. The Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and US intelligence were all in the know, it now transpires. Even though Mr Miranda was no mere partner, then, his detention was no routine police matter either. And if loutishness on behalf of our own security services would be bad enough, the slightest hint of British policing conducted by remote control from Washington is even worse.

Nor do the shenanigans stop there. We now know David Cameron and Nick Clegg put pressure on The Guardian – via Cabinet Secretary Jeremy Heywood, no less – to destroy the Snowden data in its possession. In a scene that would be hard to believe had it not actually happened, the stand-off ended with GCHQ officials overseeing the destruction of computers at the newspaper’s office. With so many copies of the information elsewhere in the world, the gesture is at best a token one. Yet the message was considered to be worth sending.

Of course national security must be paramount. But there are lines to be drawn – between the message and the medium, between Britain’s interests and America’s, between enforcement and intimidation.

WASHINGTON — Outspoken members of the Senate Intelligence Committee have said frequently that they wanted to warn the public about the National Security Agency’s sweeping collection of telephone records but the program’s highly classified nature prevented them from making public reference to the programs.

That, however, is not the full story. Buried in the pages of Senate Resolution 400, which established the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in 1976, is a provision that allows them to try. Across those nearly 40 years, it’s never been used.

Any terrorists reading this crap must be laughing to the point of hysteria.

It was a very flippant remark from Frank. I don't think ridiculing the European Court Of Human Rights advances his argument that much. I would have expected such remarks from Gungasnake.

“It’s always negotiated, and it goes back and forth. So this is one of the tools available to the Congress in negotiating for a release of information,” said Kate Martin, the director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington, a nongovernmental civil liberties advocacy group.

But she agrees with those who say the Senate Intelligence Committee hasn’t asserted its authority to make information public.

“The question for the Intelligence Committee is whether or not in their discussions with the executive branch they make sure that the executive branch is aware of the power that they have to declassify themselves. That’s what should happen, and that’s what was missing in the last decade,” she said.

It may be missing because some current Intelligence Committee members aren’t fully aware of the power. Asked about the authority, Wyden confessed that he didn’t know the provision existed.

His Intelligence Committee colleague Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., also said he wasn’t aware of it.

By claiming the ECHR should protect people from volcanoes et al, you made it appear ridiculous.

Gungasnake hates every institution that has any international flavour to it, and human rights.

Walter was talking about certain aspects of law that have yet to be tested. This stuff is all new, and a lot of it has yet to properly fall within existing legislation. We can still use the law to curb the reckless behaviour of the intelligence agencies. Or we can just throw our hands up in the air and accept that we're all going to have cameras shoved up our arses.

It truly is not that bad, Izzy. It is not the horror some of you are supposing it to be.

Frank Apisa wrote:

It truly is not that bad, Izzy. It is not the horror some of you are supposing it to be.

It will be if we don't do anything about it.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
Edmund Burke