dagblog - Comments for "David Miranda, schedule 7 and the danger that all reporters now face"

Guardian strikes deal with

artappraiser — Fri, 30 Aug 2013 13:50:32 +0000

In reply to David Miranda, schedule 7 and the danger that all reporters now face

Guardian strikes deal with gov't on Miranda
Associated Press, August 30, 2013

The Guardian newspaper and Britain's government have agreed to allow the authorities to keep sifting through documents seized from the partner of one of the paper's journalists until a full hearing on the issue in October.

The agreement announced Friday during a hearing before Britain's High Court came after David Miranda _ the partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald _ unsuccessfully sued to stop police from combing through digital material seized from him earlier this month at Heathrow Airport.

Miranda's attorney Matthew Ryder told the judges that the parties had agreed that the order could continue. Ryder says Miranda had taken a pragmatic approach.

Judges had earlier ruled that the material could continue to be examined, but only on grounds of national security.

Also see the August 23 thread

New York Times And Guardian Will Publish More Snowden Revelations

regarding this

[....] “In a climate of intense pressure from the UK government, The Guardian decided to bring in a US partner to work on the GCHQ documents provided by Edward Snowden,” Guardian spokeswoman Jennifer Lindenauer said in an email. “We are continuing to work in partnership with the NYT and others to report these stories.” [....]

and having the Aug. 23 Independent article in comments titled

Exclusive: UK’s secret Mid-East internet surveillance base is revealed in Edward Snowden leaks

P.S. One thing becomes clear

artappraiser — Wed, 21 Aug 2013 22:08:51 +0000

In reply to I noticed this little bit of

P.S. One thing becomes clear if you look at the subject category @ The Guardian, The Latest News and Comment about David Miranda. It's 4 full pages of stories since Monday! Seems like someone at the top made the decision to be loud and proud about it.

I noticed this little bit of

artappraiser — Wed, 21 Aug 2013 21:34:52 +0000

In reply to Throughout the Snowden story,

I noticed this little bit of dishonesty early on in the coverage. And I thought about pointing it out on a post here, but decided not to. But I thought I saw it mentioned in a Guardian story, that the trip was paid for by the Guardian, I thought that it was just a tiny thing buried deep in the article and would be missed if you didn't read carefully. But now I've got to admit I don't know where I saw it first, maybe I read the NYT piece too and thought I saw it in the Guardian.

The thing that bothered me about it was this: I thought why are you downplaying his role here. Is someone ashamed of the nepotism angle or what? Are you, the Guardian, going to make this about freedom of the press in the UK or not? Because if you are, be loud and proud about it, don't try to make it look like they were hassling the totally innocent spouse of a journalist. That the way to go about it is to attack the Article 7 use against a paid representative of The Guardian, not to play up the hassling of an innocent naif in order to pressure his spouse.

In the end I agree with rmrd's comment below that this is all a sideshow. But it does make me wonder about it, as a sideshow, about the integrity of the Guardian vis-a-vis a difficult relationship, perhaps a prima donna one, with one of it's star employees. That that's something of interest to me. to watch.

I suspect there may be a clue in editor Rusbridger's op-ed of yesterday. He didn't write about this until yesterday. And when he did, he decided to reveal the news about the smashing of the computer in the Guardian's basement, which didn't happen yesterday or even last week. And he started it out referring to his thoughts about the preview of the Dreamworks movie about Wikileaks. And his main point in the end seemed to be: journalism is international now, and no longer goes by any single country's rules about freedom of the press. And how stupid it is of the UK authorities not to realize that. Perhaps a difficult decision about a star reporter's request to use a spouse who was a citizen of yet another country, and how that turned out, was just another thing he was thinking about in this vein.

The tiffs between Greenwald,

rmrd0000 — Wed, 21 Aug 2013 18:33:49 +0000

In reply to David Miranda, schedule 7 and the danger that all reporters now face

The tiffs between Greenwald, Cesca and Toobin who equated Miranda to a drug mule are mere sideshows.

The NSA is conducting Stop and Frisk on grand scale. They collect so much information that they cannot process the data. We have not had a serious strike in the US in spite of the NSA,not because of the NSA,

The NYPD just had the largest gun haul in city history because of police work not because of Stop and Frisk.The city would have to humiliate millions of people to confiscate an equal number of guns. The NSA operates in a similar misguided fashion.

We need to be more worried about cyber-attacks from other countries like the recent attack by the Syrian Electronic Army than trying to access 75% of US internet activity.

I do find Cesca an entertaining diversion though.

This piece by Cesca can

A Guy Called LULU — Wed, 21 Aug 2013 18:15:25 +0000

In reply to Throughout the Snowden story,

This piece by Cesca can hardly be considered an unbiased piece of reporting. Rather, it is piss-poor punditry. I said, I believe it was in my last comment here at Dag, that I like reporting with an attitude and a mixture of punditry so as to prove a point but I added the caveat that the reporting should follow journalistic standards. This piece fails completely to meet any fair standards of honest journalistic reporting. It is full of unproven allegations for which no evidence is given. Cesca says in this piece that Miranda was carrying stolen top secret materials. At his own sight Cesca says that Greenwald has admitted this but offers no link.

http://bobcesca.thedailybanter.com/

Later, in the article you linked Cesca quotes the NYT:

And then, late in the evening east coast time, The New York Times revealed the purpose of Miranda’s trip to Berlin:

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 sentence I put in bold type is not something which Greenwald said, it is something the NYT said but I have not seen substantiated antwhere. There is no reason to believe that Miranda was carrying documents that were already in possion of both Poitras and Greenwald. The simple fact is that Miranda was carrying drafts of future Guardian columns to be co-edited by Greenwald and Poitras.
How do I know that to be true? I don't. It is a complete bullshit statement. It is simply an explanation I hope is true and is more likely true and what I want you to believe and so I assert it as a fact. Just like the NYT. Just like Cesca. And if that assertion, which must be considered more likely to be bullshit than truth until at least some evidence is presented, is in fact true, whose secrets was Miranda carrying? Does a Brazilian carrying U.S. secrets between U.S. journalists break any United Kingdom laws? And if what Cesca asserts is/was known to be true and that shows that he was in violation of some law, why was Miranda released?

As the hours rolled by, Charlie Savage, reporting for The New York Times, began to reveal more details about the trip — details which The Guardian mysteriously didn’t include in either of its articles.

These details don’t entirely excuse U.K. officials from holding Miranda for the full, legal-limit of nine hours, but they certainly dispel the notion that Miranda was an innocent, unaffiliated spouse on vacation, harassed by the U.K. goon squad simply because Greenwald is his partner.

Those details dispel nothing Cesca wants us to believe .

Greenwald and Poitras have been in personal face to face contact numerous times since obtaining the documents from Snowden and both already have possession of them all, it is reasonable to believe. Why on earth would they be sending any parts of those documents back and forth across the Atlantic with a courier to another party which already had them and who could be expected to be under close surveillance and who could be detained, legally or otherwise, and whose property could be confiscated?

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.

Later:

That’s a huge piece of the puzzle, not to mention a total debunking of any hysterical assertion that Miranda was being harassed and intimidated just because he’s Greenwald’s spouse. He was, in fact, detained because he was transporting stolen national secrets.

More bullshit in bold. Cesca is asserting that a great many respected people and organizations are hysterical to believe that Miranda was targeted because of his relationship with Greenwald and he again asserts as fact that Miranda was transporting "stolen national secrets". He doesn't know that to be true or he would no doubt offer his evidence.

I do not know Cesca's work to have an opinion based on many readings but this article shows him to be a propagandist with little regard for common sense among his readers.

Throughout the Snowden story,

Donal — Wed, 21 Aug 2013 14:22:48 +0000

In reply to David Miranda, schedule 7 and the danger that all reporters now face

Throughout the Snowden story, Bob Cesca has been on Greenwald like a dog on a bone, and criticizes the Guardian for not telling us that Miranda was a courier.

... Right off the bat, The Guardian reported that Miranda was on his way back to Rio de Janeiro after having spent a week in Berlin, Germany. While in Berlin, he “visited” Laura Poitras, the documentary filmmaker whom Edward Snowden first contacted. Poitras was not only the camera operator for the infamous Hong Kong interview with Snowden, but Greenwald once referred to Poitras as the “Keyser Soze” of the entire operation. Keyser Soze was the Kevin Spacey character in The Usual Suspects — a quiet, unassuming figure who turned out to be the nefarious mastermind behind everything. Greenwald clarified that Miranda didn’t simply visit Poitras, as The Guardian wrote, he “stayed with” Poitras — “Keyser Soze” — for the entire week.

As the hours rolled by, Charlie Savage, reporting for The New York Times, began to reveal more details about the trip — details which The Guardian mysteriously didn’t include in either of its articles.

These details don’t entirely excuse U.K. officials from holding Miranda for the full, legal-limit of nine hours, but they certainly dispel the notion that Miranda was an innocent, unaffiliated spouse on vacation, harassed by the U.K. goon squad simply because Greenwald is his partner.

Then there is this:How can

A Guy Called LULU — Tue, 20 Aug 2013 17:01:56 +0000

In reply to I would have posted this if

Then there is this:How can this be?

How come that the British media are not covering this attack on their freedom while the German media have all out coverage of it? Why is this censored and by whom? Why is the Guardian editor blogging this issue on the Guardians "Comment is free" section and not reporting it as general news? Why and how is this censored in the UK and by whom?

http://www.moonofalabama.org/

Thanks for that link. The guy

A Guy Called LULU — Tue, 20 Aug 2013 16:09:44 +0000

In reply to I would have posted this if

Thanks for that link. The guy does have a very impressive resume. I have been impressed by The Guardian for a couple years now but then I appreciate journalism combined with punditry. By that I mean punditry with an aggressive point of view supported by journalistic standards. Not to say that no one could find any legitimate criticism, just as knowing some of the indefensible things , by my lights anyway, that the NYT's has done does not completely negate their value. The ratio of good reporting to agenda as I see it from The Guardian is quite good.
The Guardian may have just identified a market niche and successfully filled it with nothing but a business plan guiding them, [as I see MSNBC mostly doing] but I don't see that as being near the whole truth and your link does reinforce that conclusion.

Part of their value is that they are viewing from our outside with different restraints but at the same time from a cultural perspective mostly like our own. Plus, they have given Greenwald a bigger international platform. I know that is a big plus for you too.

I would have posted this if

artappraiser — Tue, 20 Aug 2013 09:36:50 +0000

In reply to David Miranda, schedule 7 and the danger that all reporters now face

I would have posted this if you hadn't. Because the author is not exactly just another pundit offering his two pence. Among other things, he's paid to think about and plan for the future of journalism. And he publishes his thoughts quite rarely.