Things are getting really weird. But let’s go back to something Glenn Greenwald said in late June:
For now, Greenwald said he is taking extra precautions against the prospect that he is a target of U.S. surveillance. He said he began using encrypted email when he began communicating with Snowden in February after Snowden sent him a YouTube video walking him through the procedure to encrypt his email.
“When I was in Hong Kong, I spoke to my partner in Rio via Skype and told him I would send an electronic encrypted copy of the documents,” Greenwald said. “I did not end up doing it. Two days later his laptop was stolen from our house and nothing else was taken. Nothing like that has happened before. I am not saying it’s connected to this, but obviously the possibility exists.”
So, he told the world of his intent to send encrypted documents to his domestic partner, David Miranda, and Miranda’s laptop disappeared the next day. Then Miranda traveled to Berlin and met with another of Edward Snowden’s journalist partners, Laura Poitras. On his way home from Germany to Brazil, Miranda was seized at the airport and questioned for nine hours. All his electronic equipment was confiscated. The technical charge used to detain Miranda was “Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act of 2000.”
Things have clearly escalated here pretty dramatically. Based on my Twitter feed the reaction has divided the left into two main factions. One group is outraged by the heavy-handedness of the UK government, and many of them feel like this was all done at the behest of the U.S. The other faction thinks this is all Greenwald’s fault and he never should have involved his partner.
I don’t know why this has to be an either/or debate. Can’t we agree that it’s way over the top to use a terrorism statute to detain someone who has no ties to terrorism and also fault Greenwald for senselessly telling everyone that his partner was working with him to secure stolen documents?
