Obama's Gestapo Cracks Down on the Free Press



They enjoyed their police work too.

Obama's Gestapo

Obama snaps his fingers and his British lackeys arrest and harass the partner of the reporter who helped Edward Snowden

What the Fuck?  -  Crap.  Every damn time I go on the Internet there is yet another outrageous attack on the liberty of the people.  I could literally spend 24 hours a day on the growing Police State. 

Now we see Obama in another direct attack on a free press.  Obama could not get away with arresting the press himself so he has the British act as his agents.

Authorities in London on Sunday detained and questioned for nine hours the gay partner of Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who has authored a series of recent articles exposing mass surveillance programs by the National Surveillance Agency (NSA).

 

The Guardian, Greenwald’s employer, reports the journalist’s partner, David Miranda, was held for nearly nine hours and questioned under the Terrorism Act at the UK’s Heathrow airport.

Officials also confiscated Miranda’s electronics, including his cell phone, laptop, camera, and memory sticks, according to the UK Guardian, without saying when they would return the items.

According to the report, Miranda was stopped by UK airport officials at 8:30 AM and told he would be detained for questioning under schedule seven of the Terrorism Act of 2000. The law, reportedly allows officers to search and detain individuals at key transportation areas.

 

Miranda was reportedly released without being officially charged with anything.

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Reporter Glenn Greenwald (right) and his partner David Miranda, who was
held by UK authorities at Heathrow airport on Terrorism charges.

The 28-year-old was held for nine hours, the maximum the law allows before officers must release or formally arrest the individual. According to official figures, most examinations under schedule 7 – over 97% – last less than an hour, and only one in 2,000 people detained are kept for more than six hours.

Since 5 June, Greenwald has written a series of stories revealing the NSA's electronic surveillance programmes, detailed in thousands of files passed to him by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The Guardian has also published a number of stories about blanket electronic surveillance by Britain's GCHQ, also based on documents from Snowden.


While in Berlin, Miranda had visited Laura Poitras, the US film-maker who has also been working on the Snowden files with Greenwald and the Guardian. The Guardian paid for Miranda's flights.

"This is a profound attack on press freedoms and the news gathering process," Greenwald said. "To detain my partner for a full nine hours while denying him a lawyer, and then seize large amounts of his possessions, is clearly intended to send a message of intimidation to those of us who have been reporting on the NSA and GCHQ. The actions of the UK pose a serious threat to journalists everywhere.

"But the last thing it will do is intimidate or deter us in any way from doing our job as journalists. Quite the contrary: it will only embolden us more to continue to report aggressively."

A spokesperson for the Guardian said: "We were dismayed that the partner of a Guardian journalist who has been writing about the security services was detained for nearly nine hours while passing through Heathrow airport. We are urgently seeking clarification from the British authorities."

Labour MP Tom Watson said he was shocked at the news and called for it to be made clear if any ministers were involved in authorising the detention.

He said: "It's almost impossible, even without full knowledge of the case, to conclude that Glenn Greenwald's partner was a terrorist suspect.

"I think that we need to know if any ministers knew about this decision, and exactly who authorised it."

"The clause in this act is not meant to be used as a catch-all that can be used in this way."

Widney Brown, Amnesty International's senior director of international law and policy, said: "It is utterly improbable that David Michael Miranda, a Brazilian national transiting through London, was detained at random, given the role his partner has played in revealing the truth about the unlawful nature of NSA surveillance.

"David's detention was unlawful and inexcusable. He was detained under a law that violates any principle of fairness and his detention shows how the law can be abused for petty, vindictive reasons.

"There is simply no basis for believing that David Michael Miranda presents any threat whatsoever to the UK government. The only possible intent behind this detention was to harass him and his partner, Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, for his role in analysing the data released by Edward Snowden."

“It is thus necessary that the individual should finally come to realize that his own ego is of no importance in comparison with the existence of the nation, that the position of the individual is conditioned solely by the interests of the nation as a whole.”
Adolf Hitler