Tag Archives: david miranda

Liblink: Nick Clegg “I share the concerns about David Miranda’s detention”

You can’t accuse Nick Clegg of hiding away. Now that he’s returned from holiday, his first direct public comment on the Miranda detention and Guardian files controversy comes in a column in that paper.

First, where the Liberal Democrats are coming from:

Liberal Democrats believe government must tread the fine line between liberty and security very carefully, and are not easily persuaded by a government minister asserting: “Just trust me.” So now that we are in government, we have been vigilant in ensuring the right decisions are made: scrutinising and challenging the assumptions of security experts, even as we give them our

Posted in LibLink | Also tagged , and | 8 Comments

I’m a liberal and I’m sticking up for Nick Clegg over David Miranda and The Guardian

Civil liberties. It’s the issue that unites Lib Dems like no other. While you’ll find a range of views within the party on big issues that matter more to the voters — such as the economy or the NHS or even tuition fees — personal freedom, the right to live your life as you choose, is at the heart of liberalism. Nick Clegg made his name within the Lib Dems as shadow home affairs spokesman by proposing measures like the Freedom Bill and threatening to go to prison rather than carry an ID card.

Yet civil liberties is also the …

Posted in News and Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , , , and | 46 Comments

Lord McNally writes…David Miranda and the reform of Schedule 7

Being a Lib Dem Minister in Government has both its pleasures and its downsides. One of the downsides is that if anything hits the headlines concerning civil liberties there are some in the Party who instantly assume that Lib Dem ministers have been passive and quiescent whilst human rights are trampled under foot. The case of David Miranda, and more broadly what we are doing regarding the use of the Schedule 7 powers which were used to detain him at Heathrow is a good case in point.

I’ve read with interest the views of a wide range of Liberal Democrats, both …

Posted in News | Also tagged | 52 Comments

David Miranda’s detention – what do the public think?

Polling firm YouGov has surveyed the British public on their attitudes to this week’s big news story: the detention of David Miranda, partner of Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who’s worked with Edward Snowden, the former US intelligence officer on whistleblowing / leaking details of the the surveillance activities of the US and British intelligence agencies.

‘Public divided’ is how YouGov’s summarised it, pretty fairly. This in itself is surprising: generally the public favours ‘national security’ over ‘individual liberty’ when push comes to shove. This suggests the police’s actions, possibly in themselves unlawful, have worried more than just the usual civil …

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Sarah Ludford MEP writes…Conference must debate Miranda detention

I was not initially planning to get particularly involved on the David Miranda Schedule 7 issue except as a concerned, nay horrified, spectator. After all, I’m an MEP not an MP nor (at present) able to be active as a peer, and I have plenty on my plate in Brussels.

But from early Monday morning, as I read the admirably vigorous response from the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation David Anderson QC – and the immediate if deeply hypocritical reaction from Yvette Cooper – I did start to wonder who from the party was going to be vocal. So I tweeted …

Posted in News | Also tagged , , , , , , and | 35 Comments

Why we should consider the detention of David Miranda and destruction of the Guardian’s data as distinct issues

The conflation of the detention of David Miranda, the partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, and the story of the Guardian having destroyed the computers on which a version of the data released by Edward Snowden was stored was perhaps inevitable, and has certainly been encouraged by the Guardian. But we should avoid considering the issues as a single whole, for there are separate arguments at play in each in relation to the actions of the state and others, particularly when it comes to the actions of Liberal Democrats in government.

I have relatively few concerns about the state’s actions regarding …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged and | 41 Comments

Some more information on the reasoning behind Nick Clegg’s approval of the destruction of the Guardian’s information

I think it’s been quite clear, both in the comments to our earlier post giving Nick’s views on the Miranda/Guardian case that people were still unhappy and many felt, including me, that they didn’t really understand why he decided to approve the request to the Guardian to destroy the data that they held. Elsewhere in the Liberal Democrat blogosphere, people like Neil Monnery and Andrew Brown have expressed their concern about Nick’s actions.

This has not gone unnoticed by the party’s spokespeople. They’ve noticed that people have been wondering why they had a quiet word with the Guardian rather than …

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Nick Clegg’s office speaks out on Miranda detention and destruction of Guardian data

nick clegg by paul walterA spokesperson for Nick Clegg has released the following statement to the press:

We understand the concerns about recent events, particularly around issues of freedom of the press and civil liberties. The independent reviewer of terrorism legislation is already looking into the circumstances around the detention of David Miranda and we will wait to see his findings.

On the specific issue of records held by the Guardian, the Deputy Prime Minister thought it was reasonable for the Cabinet Secretary to request that the Guardian destroyed data that would represent

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Opinion: Secret courts and the detention of David Miranda

For a number of years where it was felt that taking a case into court may result in information being divulged that could harm national security successive British Governments have settled out of court.
 
This Coalition Government decided that this approach was too costly and so resolved to introduce closed material procedures, or secret courts, for civil cases brought by citizens against the intelligence services.
In these secret courts the citizen will lay their case before a Judge, who will then sit in private with the intelligence services present but the Citizen not, and consider evidence that may never have been seen

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 9 Comments

Paddick: Police have some explaining and reassuring to do on Miranda detention

Brian Paddick has just gone on the BBC News Channel to talk, very briefly, about the detention of David Miranda. The former Liberal Democrat London mayoral candidate, recently ennobled by Nick Clegg, has a unique perspective on the issue.

He was quite careful in his use of language, but the overall impression I took from what he was saying is that he’s not entirely convinced that the detention was justified. He said that it was extremely unusual for a transiting passenger to be stopped in this way and that the authorities must have had some sort of intelligence that he would …

Posted in News | Also tagged , and | 52 Comments

Why I’m not so worried about David Miranda’s detention

When David Miranda was arrested under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act at Heathrow Airport on Sunday morning, he had the best lawyers the Guardian could afford at least  arguing with the authorities if not with him for all of that time, the newspaper itself and the Brazilian Government, concerned at the treatment of one of its own citizens, to stick up for him. Even then, the authorities held on to him to within minutes of the maximum nine hours. Holding the partner of the journalist who has been working on a story alleging that Governments have been acting beyond …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 42 Comments
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