[Bradford] U.K. Court, in David Miranda Case, Rules Terrorism Act Violates Fundamental Rights of Free Press

[Robert Burrell Donkin]

Today's it's spun as European Human Rights. Yesterday it would have been
spun as the great tradition of British Press Freedom. Take your pick.

At the expense of ruining a good story, the judgement (as opposed to the
spin) upholds the government's actions but notes that the law is poorly
drafted.

During detention, there is no statuary mechanism for the detainee to admit
that they have privileged original documents in their possession and to ask
for a magistrate able to seal them to the court. This is both unreasonable
and inequitable.

The way these things are usually done are to obtain the services of a
lawyer who arranges for them to be declared at customs. No one in the civil
service seems to have considered that anyone would be stupid enough to
attempt to smuggle original legal documents through 'nothing to declare'.

My moral - don't play at being a spy. The British taking spying far too
seriously, and are better at it than most. Detention is nothing much to be
worried about. The time to worry is when the professional spooks invite you
politely to leave through the special private exit (before customs,
detention ot who have legally entered the country). During the troubles, if
you knew where the door was, you could see them taking away folk out from
Leeds-Bradford whose records would say they'd never boarded the plane in
Ireland.

For what it's worth, if you ever want to get documents out of the country
without the British spying on you, just ask a frenemy to ship them FedEx.
That's US of A, and they take care of their own.

Robert

On Wed, Jan 20, 2016 at 10:40 AM, Brian A <bradlug at hackroyd.org.uk> wrote:

> U.K. Court, in David Miranda Case, Rules Terrorism Act Violates
> Fundamental Rights of Free Press
>
> As a background, for those who have forgotten/not followed this: David
> Miranda is the partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald who interview
> Ed Snowden in Hong Kong.
>
> It is interesting to note that this case was won because of the protection
> of the European Convention of Human Rights. As I understand it Cameron
> wants us out of European Human Rights - so where would that leave us!
>
> UK Court Rules Terrorism Act Violates Fundamental Rights of Free Press
> <https://theintercept.com/2016/01/19/miranda-appeal-uk-terrorism-fundamental-rights-violated/>
>
>
> [image: image]
> <https://theintercept.com/2016/01/19/miranda-appeal-uk-terrorism-fundamental-rights-violated/>
>
>
>
>
>
> UK Court Rules Terrorism Act Violates Fundamental Rights...
> <https://theintercept.com/2016/01/19/miranda-appeal-uk-terrorism-fundamental-rights-violated/>
> The court ruled that the UK's laws breach rights in case involving seizure
> of documents from the partner of Intercept co-founder Glenn Greenwald.
> View on theintercept.com
> <https://theintercept.com/2016/01/19/miranda-appeal-uk-terrorism-fundamental-rights-violated/>
> Preview by Yahoo
>
>
> Brian
>
> _______________________________________________
> Bradford mailing list
> Bradford at mailman.lug.org.uk
> https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/bradford
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/bradford/attachments/20160121/3a8add63/attachment.html>