Monday 19 August 2013

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? again

I wonder if the security forces decided  to  Glenn Greenwald's partner was  at London's Heathrow airport for nearly nine hours, as reported by  the Obsever/Guardian  on Sunday. in yhe safe knowledge that parliament was not sitting and therfore some awkward MP or Lord didn't ask some difficult questions.

David Miranda, who lives with Greenwald in Brazil, was held under a controversial provision of Britain's Terrorism Act that allows police to stop, question and search people without having to prove any reasonable suspicion, and without a lawyer needing to be present. The paper said he was held for the maximum amount of time allowed under the law: 

Miranda was then released without charge, but officials confiscated electronics equipment including his mobile phone, laptop, camera, memory sticks, DVDs and games consoles.
Miranda was coming from Berlin, where, the Guardian said, he had stayed with Laura Poitras, the filmmaker and journalist who, along with Greenwald, has been at the center of the storm surrounding NSA leaker Edward Snowden. Greenwald told the New York Times that the Guardian had paid for Miranda to travel to Berlin so he could give documents to Poitras, and that he was coming home with documents from Poitras.

Who ordered this arrest/detention? Was it our own security forces or were they acting on behalf of the USA?

We live in a democracy, which surly gives us protection when our security forces are breaking he law as Snowden whistle blowing as shown and which we are still probably not fully aware of.

This must be a case of Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? ( who guards the guardians?) and the harresment of someone because he is the partner of someone involved in exposing the wrongdoings of the very people who are detaining him.

Imagine the rection of both USA and UK government if Putin goverment behaved in such away the hypocricy would be blatentent.

But prehaps the real problem here is the silence of the Leader of the oppposition David Milliband  over this it is part of his job to expose and question the government over this and yet he seems happy to ignore this abuse of power.

With the Liiberal Democrats largely silenced by thier coalition partners it means that the opportunity of the "minor parties" to act in defence of our freedoms is limited.

One doubts that a change of government will make the slightest differnce in this abuse of power.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I suppose Milibean doesn't really want to say too much until more facts come out. If Miranda was carrying stolen docs, as some say he was, then he should have been arrested and charged. Being a journalist or a journalist's partner doesn't put you above the law as a number of Murdocjh journos know to their cost