I don’t know. In the comments of the last thread, TarheelDem said that Mr. Miranda was an employee of The Guardian but it appears that the British paper merely paid for his flights. He was acting as a courier and carrying classified information in an encrypted form.
Mr. Miranda was in Berlin to deliver documents related to Mr. Greenwald’s investigation into government surveillance to Ms. Poitras, Mr. Greenwald said. Ms. Poitras, in turn, gave Mr. Miranda different documents to pass to Mr. Greenwald. Those documents, which were stored on encrypted thumb drives, were confiscated by airport security, Mr. Greenwald said. All of the documents came from the trove of materials provided to the two journalists by Mr. Snowden. The British authorities seized all of his electronic media — including video games, DVDs and data storage devices — and did not return them, Mr. Greenwald said.
I think everyone needs to relax. Think about what the law is in Britain, what it is here, and what it should be. People seem to be just taking up sides depending on whether they primarily dislike intrusive surveillance or they primarily dislike self-righteous people who do shoddy reporting.
People leak to journalists all the time and those journalists are supposed to be able to store the information and move through airports. But this is a much different set of circumstances. Mr. Miranda isn’t a journalist. He merely agreed to be a courier for a newspaper. Their little operation was sniffed out and it’s a bit complicated to sort out.
Using a terrorism statute seems ridiculous. But I can envision some other statute that would be perfectly reasonable. For example, a statute that says people can be stopped if there is a reasonable suspicion that they are part of a conspiracy to disseminate classified information would fit the bill. The complicating factor is how to treat a contract agent of a journalistic enterprise.
If the government knows that someone is about to leak classified information to a reporter, they can intercept that person and detain them. But what if the reporter hires a courier to bring him the information? I think it’s obvious that the courier can be detained too.
But, still, the use of a terrorism statute is a bit much.