Wednesday 21 August 2013

Theresa Miranda Rightwing.

It seems that once again the Metropolitan police is trying to find excuses for the way it has treated a Brazillian, this one got off slightly better than the Last who was callously murdered on a tube train. This time was detained in transit at London Heathrow under the Terrorism Act 2000 section 2 (4)

(1) An examining officer may question a person to whom this paragraph applies for the purpose of determining whether he appears to be a person falling within section 40 (1) (b).

(4) An examining officer may exercise his powers under this paragraph whether or not he has grounds for suspecting that a person falls within section 40 (1) (b).

Section 40 is

40 Terrorist: interpretation. (1) In this Part “terrorist” means a person who
(a) Has committed an offence under any of sections 11, 12, 15 to 18, 54 and 56 to 63, or
(b) Is or has been concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.


That it is in the slightest way relevant except that it defines what the questioning can be about.

TPTB can detain anyone without any reason and question them to determine whether they are a terrorist even if they do not suspect that they are a terrorist, but why would you want to do that unless it was to harass someone, even if you suspect some not terrorist crime, you cannot question them about that, you cannot search their equipment for for information relating to a non terrorist matter.

The home office has said The government and the police have a duty to protect the public and our national security. If the police believe that an individual is in possession of highly sensitive stolen information that would help terrorism, then they should act and the law provides them with a framework to do that. Those who oppose this sort of action need to think about what they are condoning. This is an ongoing police inquiry so will not comment on the specifics."

Now David Miranda is connected to the Snowden who has released some information from the NSA into the world, to be honest the information relates to the way in which NSA and GCHQ have gathered data. I for one was not surprised by the revelations except for the low cost of the equipment. This is very unlikely to be useful to a terrorist as the levels of paranoia they operate under will make them assume far greater levels of surveillance than actually exist.
Like WikiLeaks the scale of real damage is minimal, everyone thought that governments where 2 faced with each other, and every government knew it was true. The areas that where genuinely in the public interest where the evidence related to war crimes in Afghanistan.
While it seems that the intelligence services are not overly bothered about other WikiLeaks or Snowden, the politicians are. I think it's note worthy that it seems to be the Metropolitan Police that where in the lead on this. The Commissioner Hogan Howe has quite a reputation for giving Politicians what they want, he has happily backed Theresa May at every opportunity.
May's willingness to pander to the authoritarian right was clear if not in her desire to deport Abu Qatada but in the glee she took in doing it. Then there is the pointless destruction of disk drives at the Guardian after the threat of legal action from HMG. Admittedly supervised by GCHQ technicians, who was told of other secure copies of the Snowden data, before they started. Which part of government threatened legal action would it be the Home Office perhaps?
The secret services are by name and inclination secret, left to themselves they would step up internal security to prevent future leaks, try and protect any staff in danger and generally keep a low profile. They would prefer not to have a 3 ring circus with themselves looking like the ringmasters.
This has the stink not of a Police state but a politician making capital, the aim of these actions isn't to enforce the law but to toughen up the Tories image with the law and order brigade, and May's especially. It helps the party fight of the UKIP challenge by highlighting the narrowness of UKIP base when it comes to being bastards and in the event of a Tory defeat it will do no harm in the May's campaign to be the second female PM. The equally pointless Vans with the Illegals go home slogan, where another element in this strategy. May's one and only shot of being PM will require her to become the next leader of the Tory party. If I was you Dave I'd watch my back.

Should the Tories and May be using public funds to engage in electioneering?

Some more learned comments on the matters.

Could David Miranda be a “terrorist”? by Carl Gardner 
David Miranda – Remember his name. UK Human Rights Blog

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