The British government pressured the country’s Guardian newspaper into limiting its surveillance coverage, another UK paper, The Independent, has revealed.
Late on Thursday, The Independent published a scoop, derived from Edward Snowden’s leaks, about a secret British surveillance base somewhere in or near the Middle East. The paper has not previously published any new Snowden information, with The Guardian — which has worked closely with the former NSA contractor — being the only British newspaper to have done so.
There is no right to freedom of speech in the UK, even though European law supposedly guarantees a right to free expression. Without claiming any inside knowledge of what went on, it appears to me that the British press is now playing pass-the-parcel with the Snowden information in order to get around this fact.
“Agreed to restrict”
The Independent story maintains that, when UK intelligence services forced The Guardian to destroy a computer apparently containing Snowden data (a largely symbolic gesture as the data is replicated elsewhere), they also got Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger to agree “not to publish any material contained in the Snowden documents that could damage national security”:
“As well as destroying a computer containing one copy of the Snowden files, the paper’s editor, Alan Rusbridger, agreed to restrict the newspaper’s reporting of the documents.
“The Government also demanded that the paper not publish details of how UK telecoms firms, including BT and Vodafone, were secretly collaborating with GCHQ to intercept the vast majority of all internet traffic entering the country. The paper had details of the highly controversial and secret programme for over a month. But it only published information on the scheme – which involved paying the companies to tap into fibre-optic cables entering Britain – after the allegations appeared in the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. A Guardian spokeswoman refused to comment on any deal with the Government.”
The destruction of the computer and the secret deal with the intelligence services took place in late July, with the destruction apparently having taken place at the request of Prime Minister David Cameron.
Miranda rights
Weeks later, David Miranda, the partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, was detained for 9 hours at Heathrow airport while in transit from Berlin to Rio de Janeiro, and intelligence officials seized his computers and digital storage devices.
On Thursday, The Guardian won an interim injunction in the High Court to ensure that the UK authorities cannot inspect or share this data for any reason other than national security. This is of limited use, as the authorities have decided to launch a counter-terrorism investigation based on the data they found – they refuse to give any details about proposed charges, though.
Miranda’s detention and the Guardian hardware destruction have drawn the attention of the Council of Europe, the European body that exists to maintain cooperation between EU states around the rule of law and human rights.
In a letter to British Home Secretary Theresa May on Wednesday, the Council’s secretary general, Thorbjørn Jagland, wrote:
“These measures, if confirmed, may have a potentially chilling effect on journalists’ freedom of expression as guaranteed by Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
“I would therefore be grateful to you if you could provide information on these reports and comment on the compatibility of the measures taken with the United Kingdom’s obligations under the Convention.”
Lord Falconer, the former British lord chancellor who helped bring in the Terrorism Act 2000 under which Miranda was detained, has also chimed in to say this was not what the law was intended for.
That Middle East station
According to The Independent, the British station in the Middle East is something of a crown jewel for the intelligence services. Part of the wider Tempora scheme, the station – which is still being set up — is apparently able to intercept communications from across the Middle East through satellite dishes and by tapping undersea telecoms cables.
The station’s activities were first authorised by David Miliband, the foreign secretary under the previous Labour government, in order to gather “information about the ‘political intentions of foreign powers’, terrorism, proliferation, mercenaries and private military companies, and serious financial fraud.” This remit gets renewed every six months, and “can be changed by ministers at will.”
The Independent seems to know the station’s location, but did not reveal it in its story.
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