What seems clear is that Miranda was in transit through Heathrow when he was detained by some kind of security services (though who was involved remains a little unclear: border officials? police? MI6?) for just a few minutes short of the 9 hour maximum allowed by law, and then released without charge.
What is also clear is that the Home Secretary, Teresa May, knew about the detention before it happened. That tells us that this was a deliberate and targetted action, and not border officials just happening to stop someone because he looked a bit dodgy.
After that, however, it all gets a bit murky.
Why was Miranda detained for questionning? If it was for any reason other than establishing whether he was involved in terrorism, then it was unlawful. The Police claim that establishing links with terrorism was indeed the reason. However, it seems implausible that anyone seriously thought that Miranda was about to start blowing things up or flying planes into buildings. Presumably the "terrorist" connection was that he was suspected of carrying data that would be useful to a terrorist.
Well, it seems (though I don't think we can be sure) that they found he was carrying data, given that they confiscated a whole load of his electronic equipment. So why didn't they arrest him on terrorism charges?
To me, that really doesn't stack up.
Then there is also the question of who made the decision to detain Miranda in the first place. Given that the Home Secretary was briefed in advance, I think we can rule out the possibility that it was just some junior front-line border officer acting on his own initiative. The Home Secretary denies that it was a government decision and insists it was an operational decision for the police.
Do we believe that? Hard to say. And if it was a decision from the police, how far up the chain of command did the decision go? Was the Met Commissioner involved?
These are important questions which I have not yet seen anyone in the media attempt to answer.
The story also goes that Miranda was carrying sensitive documents as part of the Guardian's investigation into the role of security services. This seems a little odd. If you have sensitive documents, would you put them on removable media that could easily be stolen (or even consifiscated by security services) or would you send it by secure FTP using a 512-bit encryption method? I know which I'd do. Why did the Guardian choose the other?
Perhaps you could argue that secure FTP connections can be intercepted. Well, maybe they can, especially if you have resources of the security services. But I think even they would struggle to break a properly implemented 512-bit encryption scheme. And even if they do break it, so what? It was their data in the first place. I'm pretty sure they know what's there.
So sending sensitive documents in person seems a little odd.
In response to recent events, the Guardian's editor, Alan Rusbridger wrote about how the UK government had tried to persuade him not to publish any more information on the NSA leaks. He also claims that security officials from GCHQ oversaw the destruction of some hard disks containing the leaked material.
Apparently this happened about a month ago. So why wait all that time to report it? I have yet to see a convincing explanation of that.
And I'm sorry, Alan, but the story about destroying the hard drives really doesn't ring true. What on earth was the point of this? Are we really supposed to believe that officials from GCHQ with responsibility for computer data are so utterly clueless about how computers work that they are completely unfamiliar with the concept of backups?
The story just does not make sense. I'm not saying that Rusbridger made the whole thing up (though I can't rule that out), but it seems that at the very least some spin has intervened in the story or some important details have been left out.
Rusbridger is clearly right about one thing. Investigative journalism is under threat, though perhaps not for the reasons he thinks. If we had good investigative journalists, they would be asking all these questions, and maybe even answering some of them. It seems to me that the spirit of investigative journalism is simply not in fashion any more.
There's clearly much about the Miranda story that we don't know. Good investigative journalism might tell us what that is. But I'm not holding my breath.
Unanswered questions about David Miranda's detention
We've heard a lot in the last few days about David Miranda's detention at Heathrow Airport. There are some things we know about this, but a whole lot more that we don't know.
What seems clear is that Miranda was in transit through Heathrow when he was detained by some kind of security services (though who was involved remains a little unclear: border officials? police? MI6?) for just a few minutes short of the 9 hour maximum allowed by law, and then released without charge.
What is also clear is that the Home Secretary, Teresa May, knew about the detention before it happened. That tells us that this was a deliberate and targetted action, and not border officials just happening to stop someone because he looked a bit dodgy.
After that, however, it all gets a bit murky.
Why was Miranda detained for questionning? If it was for any reason other than establishing whether he was involved in terrorism, then it was unlawful. The Police claim that establishing links with terrorism was indeed the reason. However, it seems implausible that anyone seriously thought that Miranda was about to start blowing things up or flying planes into buildings. Presumably the "terrorist" connection was that he was suspected of carrying data that would be useful to a terrorist.
Well, it seems (though I don't think we can be sure) that they found he was carrying data, given that they confiscated a whole load of his electronic equipment. So why didn't they arrest him on terrorism charges?
To me, that really doesn't stack up.
Then there is also the question of who made the decision to detain Miranda in the first place. Given that the Home Secretary was briefed in advance, I think we can rule out the possibility that it was just some junior front-line border officer acting on his own initiative. The Home Secretary denies that it was a government decision and insists it was an operational decision for the police.
Do we believe that? Hard to say. And if it was a decision from the police, how far up the chain of command did the decision go? Was the Met Commissioner involved?
These are important questions which I have not yet seen anyone in the media attempt to answer.
The story also goes that Miranda was carrying sensitive documents as part of the Guardian's investigation into the role of security services. This seems a little odd. If you have sensitive documents, would you put them on removable media that could easily be stolen (or even consifiscated by security services) or would you send it by secure FTP using a 512-bit encryption method? I know which I'd do. Why did the Guardian choose the other?
Perhaps you could argue that secure FTP connections can be intercepted. Well, maybe they can, especially if you have resources of the security services. But I think even they would struggle to break a properly implemented 512-bit encryption scheme. And even if they do break it, so what? It was their data in the first place. I'm pretty sure they know what's there.
So sending sensitive documents in person seems a little odd.
In response to recent events, the Guardian's editor, Alan Rusbridger wrote about how the UK government had tried to persuade him not to publish any more information on the NSA leaks. He also claims that security officials from GCHQ oversaw the destruction of some hard disks containing the leaked material.
Apparently this happened about a month ago. So why wait all that time to report it? I have yet to see a convincing explanation of that.
And I'm sorry, Alan, but the story about destroying the hard drives really doesn't ring true. What on earth was the point of this? Are we really supposed to believe that officials from GCHQ with responsibility for computer data are so utterly clueless about how computers work that they are completely unfamiliar with the concept of backups?
The story just does not make sense. I'm not saying that Rusbridger made the whole thing up (though I can't rule that out), but it seems that at the very least some spin has intervened in the story or some important details have been left out.
Rusbridger is clearly right about one thing. Investigative journalism is under threat, though perhaps not for the reasons he thinks. If we had good investigative journalists, they would be asking all these questions, and maybe even answering some of them. It seems to me that the spirit of investigative journalism is simply not in fashion any more.
There's clearly much about the Miranda story that we don't know. Good investigative journalism might tell us what that is. But I'm not holding my breath.