On August 15, Progressive magazine editor Matt Rothschild was arrested at the Wisconsin state capitol building in Wisconsin for the act of reporting on the arrest of a protestor. As he told Democracy Now! (8/19/13):
I get out my iPhone and take pictures. I was doing that, and then they were moving Bonnie Block out down a hallway toward an elevator—this is in the Capitol, a public space—and I was following them down there, and I was taking pictures. And they said, “You can’t come here.” And I said: “Well, you know, I’m a reporter. I’m with the Progressive magazine.” They said, “No, you can’t come here.” I said: “I’m with the press. I have a right to be here.” And with that, I didn’t get another word out, because they grabbed my hands, put them behind my back and handcuffed me right then and there.
On August 18 David Miranda, the partner of Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald, was held at Heathrow Airport for nine hours under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act of 2000. As Greenwald wrote (8/18/13):
The stated purpose of this law, as the name suggests, is to question people about terrorism. The detention power, claims the UK government, is used “to determine whether that person is or has been involved in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.”
But they obviously had zero suspicion that David was associated with a terrorist organization or involved in any terrorist plot. Instead, they spent their time interrogating him about the NSA reporting which Laura Poitras, the Guardian and I are doing, as well [as] the content of the electronic products he was carrying. They completely abused their own terrorism law for reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism: a potent reminder of how often governments lie when they claim that they need powers to stop “the terrorists,” and how dangerous it is to vest unchecked power with political officials in its name.
Worse, they kept David detained right up until the last minute: for the full nine hours, something they very rarely do. Only at the last minute did they finally release him. We spent all day–as every hour passed–worried that he would be arrested and charged under a terrorism statute. This was obviously designed to send a message of intimidation to those of us working journalistically on reporting on the NSA and its British counterpart, the GCHQ.
Before letting him go, they seized numerous possessions of his, including his laptop, his cellphone, various video game consoles, DVDs, USB sticks and other materials. They did not say when they would return any of it, or if they would.
On August 19, Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger revealed that the British intelligence agency GCHQ destroyed computers at the newspaper’s office in a completely futile attempt to impede their reporting on the National Security Agency:
The mood toughened just over a month ago, when I received a phone call from the center of government telling me: “You’ve had your fun. Now we want the stuff back.” There followed further meetings with shadowy Whitehall figures. The demand was the same: Hand the Snowden material back or destroy it. I explained that we could not research and report on this subject if we complied with this request. The man from Whitehall looked mystified. “You’ve had your debate. There’s no need to write any more.”
During one of these meetings, I asked directly whether the government would move to close down the Guardian‘s reporting through a legal route–by going to court to force the surrender of the material on which we were working. The official confirmed that, in the absence of handover or destruction, this was indeed the government’s intention. Prior restraint, near impossible in the U.S., was now explicitly and imminently on the table in the UK. But my experience over WikiLeaks–the thumb drive and the First Amendment-–had already prepared me for this moment. I explained to the man from Whitehall about the nature of international collaborations and the way in which, these days, media organizations could take advantage of the most permissive legal environments. Bluntly, we did not have to do our reporting from London. Already most of the NSA stories were being reported and edited out of New York. And had it occurred to him that Greenwald lived in Brazil?
The man was unmoved. And so one of the more bizarre moments in the Guardian‘s long history occurred–with two GCHQ security experts overseeing the destruction of hard drives in the Guardian‘s basement just to make sure there was nothing in the mangled bits of metal which could possibly be of any interest to passing Chinese agents. “We can call off the black helicopters,” joked one as we swept up the remains of a MacBook Pro.
None of these tactics would appear to discourage the journalists who are being targeted. But the stories, taken together, represent a direct attack on news gathering. This should outrage every single journalist, and anyone who believes in freedom of expression.
NoDifference
Whoa. The GCHQ agents smashed a couple of hard drives to smithereens. That takes care of that… but they didn’t destroy every backup stored in the Guardian’s data center or a cloud storage facility somewhere on the Internet.
Britain’s government officials can’t be that stupid, seriously. This was symbolic, perhaps an intimidation tactic, some sort of ominous premonition of worse things to come.
Doug Latimer
There will be no outrage from the corpress.
Since this can’t be ignored, their function is to obfuscate, to make this a “controversy”, to confuse the public as to the nature of this assault on our rights
All to allow the government to go about its business, which is to construct the pillars of the police state, in anticipation of the coming meltdown of an unsustainable system.
It will be Gestapo 2.0, relying as much upon the manipulation of inculcated fears as those arising from the exercise of brutal force to achieve its ends.
And the media establishment will have played a central role in laying the groundwork for that nightmare.
“Not every item of news should be published. Rather must those who control news policies endeavor to make every item of news serve a certain purpose.” – Joseph Goebbels
Jay Warren Clark
“And so one of the more bizarre moments in the Guardian’s long history occurred…” This is nonsense! There is just this “and so” between the demands of an intelligence agent and the capitulation of that bulwark of investigative journalism, The Guardian? Nonsense!
“And so…” one of the Guardians of free speech actually allowed, on his word alone and without an order from the court, some spook to seize and destroy the paper’s electronic equipment–theft and mayhem. Nonsense. This is not believable and not the behavior of a guardian, but of a wimp.
Again, this is nonsense. Make the sacrifice; do the time, and everything else is just verbiage which, I hate to remind you, rhymes with garbage. And that’s what this is. Every journalist in the “free” world, including Peter Hart, ought to be on this guy Rusbridger to explain himself or admit that he is the very opposite of a courageous journalist! One thing is clear though, the big ruse was not bridged at all by this agent of the official press, Ruse-bridger. JWC
Jay Warren Clark
And one more thing: the press cannot expect to receive respect if they don’t think enough of themselves and what they do to actually take the risks necessary to get out the news. Here is the question: is journalism a sacred vocation or is it just a job? If it is just a job then Rusbridger can easily get another one. Snowden has a hundred times more integrity than this fellow.
Oh, and let’s hear a blow-by-blow description of what happened to Miranda while in custody for 9 hours! I want to hear that he turned the tables on them. I want to hear that he made them suffer. Starting with “do you pick your toes,” he might have asked them a hundred questions designed to show them just how stupid they are, and how stupid what they were doing was. Wouldn’t that be fun?
But one thing is clear, he should never have given them an inch, he should never have given them even one clear answer to their impertinent questions! Let’s turn the tables on these toe picking morons. JWC
MtVernonCannabisFarms...
governments that abuse their powers make enemies of the people
there are more people than there is government , and even those in government chaff at licking boots
Eric
A new category of Luddites: state “intelligence” operatives.
But Jay Warren Clark has a point: the Guardian should at least explain why it capitulated.
Glenn
Journalism worthy of its name would be referring to the government documents made public as the “embarrassing documents” or as the “criminal evidence” instead of as the “secret documents.”
After all, any criminal with classification powers could, in their complete disregard for law, classify their crimes as secret so as to be beyond scrutiny.
Kevin Bradshaw
Mr. Latimer,
I agree with you 100%. Anyone who thinks the persecution of journalists and whistle blowers- as well as the defenders and proponents of voter suppression and programs like stop and frisk- is acceptable shoul dbe challenged as fascists. B/c that’s what it is. And an economy that is increasingly neofeudal will need a repressive police apparatus, state propaganda, and the outlawing of certain kinds of political speech. The is last step was accomplished by the Obama administration.
Jay Warren Clark
Erick: And Mr. Hart should be holding their little pinkies close to the fire on this issue. How many times have we heard cowards use “I pick my fights” as the first and final excuse for not taking the risk(s) than without which we are not warriors at all?!
The crisis comes when the crisis comes. And if this is not a crisis and the most important civil liberties crisis since 1776 just what is it then? And not only that, it has an immense international face and the responsibility of Americans is that much greater because of the hope and sincere fellow feeling that has been directed at this nation since the Revolution. What a disappointment we (Americans) must be to those souls who have looked to us for leadership–while our own forces, dumbed down in American schools, have murdered them!
Crisis? America’s imperial forces, and their lackey agents, are actually forcing down the planes of other here-to-for sovereign nations and stopping and interrogating their here-to-for free citizens completely outside the law and in willful violation of human decency. And, they are arresting their own citizens for actually presuming to exercise their own First Amendment rights and take part in the political process! These citizens must cease and go home or be arrested. Why? Because a policeman tells them to, and that’s it! There is a name for it and we all know what it is.
So, just when have things gone too far and events sanction the voice of journalistic (and a general) outrage? I think that time has come and passed and the timid language and in fact capitulation to to rogue forces by the Guardian is highly suspicious. I mean, are the journalists at the Guardian uninformed? Clearly the Guardian is not guarding the bridge here and the ruse has been allowed to cross over into what was formerly a sovereign territory, eh?
Thank you Mr. Rusbridger. The act of capitulation teaches your fellow citizens of the world one important thing: things are not that bad, not really, and capitulation is the good and timely thing. Really?
Thanks for the response Eric. JWC
aought
I can’t help thinking, my how the mighty have fallen. From “the Sun never sets on the British Empire” to being the biotch of a former colony that’s gone off it’s rails.
Marc
@Glenn
You think they haven’t been doing that all along? Just look at any aspect of America’s (DEEP) involvement in The Dirty War. How we helped Pinochet set up torture labs where the most nightmarish atrocities were commited. How we oversaw the Murder of the Dissapeared students. They were put into cargo planes and thrown out over the Pacific ocean at about 20,000 feet. Thousands of people suffered this particularly American form of torture/murder…We had been throwing Human Beings out of helicopters all over Vietnam for years before that.
gloriana casey
Oh, Mr, Jay Warren Clark, I think you have it backwards. The strange British government man was the story. How amazing that he performed so badly, even though it was explained to him that the NSA secrets were also held in other places around the world. It seems that this strange government person has a short attention span, lacks cognitive skills and has an anger management problem too. Now put those 3 qualities together and you get….. a thug. A pobble with no toes AND no brain. Bullies tend to be destructive when they lack understanding.
Keith Harris
A society built on foundations of fear can never last. I fear we are headed towards a total meltdown of civil and individual rights as those in power deliberately and without conscience tighten their grip.
When civil and individual rights are ignored and trampled upon, human rights themselves no longer apply or mean anything greater than dismissed sentiment.
And we have all seen, from global history, what happens when human rights are thrown out of the window …
mandika
I’m from the press and have a right to be here??? What a maroon
Jay Warren Clark
Gloriana: Of course he and thousands of others are thugs. Of course that is the news. But the deeper problem for me is that the public is uninformed and the press needs to actually do its job and not just seem to be doing it! I want to keep the pressure on the press. The schools are obviously a total corruption (my area) and so that does not help. And without a genuinely free press there can be no change since those are the only two sources of public education. The press is not a free press but a corporate (official) press and we should be on guard for those who are wolves in sheep’s clothing, eh? Of course the government are thugs. That’s what the media needs to talk about; but they also need very much not to capitulate to them. If you are not a warrior then get out of the investigative journalism business. JWC