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Detaining my partner: a failed attempt at intimidation

theguardian.com

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Re: Detaining my partner: a failed attempt at intimidation

#221

Post by iandanforth »

This is crime. The people who authorized this should be put in jail and the officers present should at least be fired.

It should not be allowed that power is so easily abused, nor should written laws be so easily twisted without fear of consequence.

I believe a civil disruption of the airport specifically targeting the security apparatus would be an appropriate response.

To the cynics, yes, I am idealistic and, yes I'm pretty much just venting, but damn, this is just going too far. Suggestions for constructive frustration welcome.

Re: Detaining my partner: a failed attempt at intimidation

#222

Post by awjr »

I find this so hard to deal with. There's party of me screaming at the screen saying what is happening is so so so wrong more, but another part of me fears for my family. The fact I fear for my family feels like my head is above the parapet. The problem more than anything is that nobody around me seems to be that bothered about this. WTF do I do?

Re: Detaining my partner: a failed attempt at intimidation

#223

Post by straight_talk_2 »

jacquesm wrote: post #185
throwit1979 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first, obviously, is swift and violent revolution. Historically speaking, totalitarian power has only ever succumbed to greater power. Obviously this is not an option I would advocate or consider. Nor is it an option that's even possible. Drunk NRA members with Mini-14s versus the US Naval Carrier Fleet, USMC, and USAF, all of which are provided with dossiers on high value targets sympathetic to the cause provide…

Maybe you should stop the heavy drinking. Swift and violent revolution? That'll work just dandy, let me go get my AK-47 out of the storage grease. FFS don't talk nonsense and if you must don't do it here.

Right, because here we love the president.

Re: Detaining my partner: a failed attempt at intimidation

#224

Post by petercooper »

rdtsc wrote: post #169
jacquesm wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder from how high up this order came. After all, it's not like Greenwald is going to take this lying down and that's something that they could predict quite accurately ahead of time. To abuse these powers on the partner of the journalist that is reporting the abuses is the worst tactical mistake made by any government to date, short of the diversion of a diplomats plane. Taking into account that the UK law enfor…

2 tests perhaps and a warning. I suspect they are a step ahead, and actually did think this through. Whether it will backfire or not is up to the citizens to decide. But I suspect it won't backfire enough to cause a dent. 1) A test to see how the journalist will react and to flush out more information. I.e. force him to disclose more information so they know what he has. 2) Another test is to test public opinion. So…

Whether it will backfire or not is up to the citizens to decide. But I suspect it won't backfire enough to cause a dent.

Maybe in the US, but this is unlikely to make a ripple in the British public sphere.

The Snowden story has not been a big deal here and today's news has not had much airtime either (it's not even on the BBC News front page). The majority of Brits don't know about this story, nor are likely to have the context to care if they did.

Issues of UK-US cooperation, even over matters as worrying as extraditing Brits to the US for trial, rarely stir up great feelings amongst everyday folk. Being on Twitter and HN, I do know about this story and I still don't care for it much (in terms of how I consider British policy).

Re: Detaining my partner: a failed attempt at intimidation

#225

Post by mcintyre1994 »

alexhawdon wrote: post #138

Disclaimer: This is largely speculative and WHOLLY me playing devil's advocate. I do not condone this sort of behaviour by my government. Could the case be made that journalists are legitimate targets for investigation following on from Manning and Snowdon? My focus here is less on terrorism and more towards counter-intelligence. Were I a rival nation-state I would see an intelligence-gathering opportunity in what's…

I agree with what you're saying, but these were anti-terrorism laws. I see how you can play devil's advocate and make an argument of legitimacy as you have, but that doesn't legitimise using anti-terrorism laws for counter-intelligence.

Re: Detaining my partner: a failed attempt at intimidation

#226

Post by junto »

Amadou wrote: post #128
kabdib wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clerical for an hour, /maybe/. Not clerical for nine hours, that's planning.

No, it isn't because these lists are one-way. Once you are detained no one in authoritay ever considers the possibility that you are on the list incorrectly. There is absolutely no benefit to themselves to question the list. If they are wrong they let a terrorist go, meanwhile detaining the guy is all by the book so no risk to their job security.

No, this is Special Branch. David's passport is on a stop list. SB have a database that is outside the usual police records that contains information that you won't get by making an FOI request. They know exactly who is coming through and when. They will have had specific instructions on what to do, and those instructions come directly from the Home Office. Even HMIC don't get to look at this stuff. Stopping someone in transit is pretty unusual.

Any tech they seized is now being foresically analysed. He is unlikely to get it back.

They probably thought that it was highly likely he was a data mule between Greenwald and Poitras. I'd guess that they were probably right in that assumption.

I know a man, who knows a dog. I'll leave it at that.

Re: Detaining my partner: a failed attempt at intimidation

#227

Post by calibraxis »

jacquesm wrote: post #202
davidw wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inane comments like this are one of the many reasons why political discussions on HN are so bad. The thinking that most politicians are just like people who would take a 12 year old boy and dump him in a vat of acid after strangling him is shallow and devoid of any depth of thinking on how different organizations operate. States do dirty things, and so do individuals, and so do organizations on various levels. But th…

Berlusconi is pretty deep in bed with the Mafia and would not be where he is without them. http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/03/25/uk-italy-mafia-tria...

Interestingly, the US apparently reconstituted the Mafia (which had been destroyed by Mussolini) to undermine WWII resistance, labor unions and leftist movements. The stuff they don't teach in school...

(http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/200205--.htm, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborations_between_the_Unit...)

Re: Detaining my partner: a failed attempt at intimidation

#228

Post by vabmit »

rdtsc wrote: post #169
jacquesm wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder from how high up this order came. After all, it's not like Greenwald is going to take this lying down and that's something that they could predict quite accurately ahead of time. To abuse these powers on the partner of the journalist that is reporting the abuses is the worst tactical mistake made by any government to date, short of the diversion of a diplomats plane. Taking into account that the UK law enfor…

2 tests perhaps and a warning. I suspect they are a step ahead, and actually did think this through. Whether it will backfire or not is up to the citizens to decide. But I suspect it won't backfire enough to cause a dent. 1) A test to see how the journalist will react and to flush out more information. I.e. force him to disclose more information so they know what he has. 2) Another test is to test public opinion. So…

> 1) A test to see how the journalist will react and to > flush out more information. I.e. force him to disclose > more information so they know what he has.

I think they already know through a post event review of MicroSoft's built in auditing logs. My understanding is that Snowden was a low level Windows admin that copied stuff that was either 1) in transit through a Microsoft Sharepoint server 2) anything he could find by roaming around the intranet. The NSA disclosed that he started grabbing documents when he was working as a contractor under Dell. They said he was aggressively exploring the limits of his network access and announced that 1) documents on their intranet would from now on be encrypted 2) that they would drastically reduce the number of system and network (as in Microsoft misuse of the term) administrators.

Plus, Wikileaks leaked an AES256 encrypted insurance file that presumably is everything that have from Snowden. Wikileaks has some of the shittiest OPSEC ever (as the Manning events showed). So, we know that they probably used openssl for the encryption and that the STK string is probably a sentence, or a few sentences, from a seminal published book about liberty/privacy. The NSA has probably already cracked the insurance file key. So, if they don't have the Manning portfolio from audit logs, they probably have it from Wikileaks.

There's an ex-NSA NWC guy that is putting out a lot of excellent information on this whole thing: 20committee

https://twitter.com/20committee

Re: Detaining my partner: a failed attempt at intimidation

#229

Post by jacquesm »

petercooper wrote: post #224
rdtsc wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2 tests perhaps and a warning. I suspect they are a step ahead, and actually did think this through. Whether it will backfire or not is up to the citizens to decide. But I suspect it won't backfire enough to cause a dent. 1) A test to see how the journalist will react and to flush out more information. I.e. force him to disclose more information so they know what he has. 2) Another test is to test public opinion. So…

Whether it will backfire or not is up to the citizens to decide. But I suspect it won't backfire enough to cause a dent. Maybe in the US, but this is unlikely to make a ripple in the British public sphere. The Snowden story has not been a big deal here and today's news has not had much airtime either (it's not even on the BBC News front page). The majority of Brits don't know about this story, nor are likely to have…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DA-Notice

Re: Detaining my partner: a failed attempt at intimidation

#230

Post by malandrew »

throwit1979 wrote: post #82
jacquesm wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder from how high up this order came. After all, it's not like Greenwald is going to take this lying down and that's something that they could predict quite accurately ahead of time. To abuse these powers on the partner of the journalist that is reporting the abuses is the worst tactical mistake made by any government to date, short of the diversion of a diplomats plane. Taking into account that the UK law enfor…

the worst tactical mistake made by any government to date Why would this be a tactical mistake? The general public DOES NOT GIVE A FUCK. The government(s) know(s) this quite well. If you think for a second that detention of associates of political enemies matters to an electorate far more interested in the minutiae of Kanye West's baby, you're living in a fairy land of your own making.

Fortunately, an act such as this oftentimes is enough to start getting celebrities involved and prompting them to be outspoken to their fans. We don't always need to make Americans care directly. It can be enough to make the people who Americans listen to to care.
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