The information that I have seen has shown the American Government and my own British Government to be involved in certain things that many of us would consider wrong and up until recently had no idea that they were involved in. PRISM is especially concerning and again shows how the Americans and others have swung to extremes in data collection on millions of law abiding citizens and justifying it with terrorism protection. A project like this may very well have stopped further terror attacks, but as bad as some terror attacks can be is it worth destroying our own values and systems? Not only doing this but doing it all in complete secrecy against the very people you are trying to protect. It just seems ridiculous to me.
What got me on this train of thought was the detention of Glenn Greenwald the Guardian Journalists partner being detained at Heathrow by British Officials. Greenwald is working on the information leaked by Snowden and has written articles on them. Yet somehow my own Government perversely used Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act to detain Greenwald's Brazilian partner David Miranda. I look forward to the reasoning behind all of this, as we all know Brazil is a hot bed of global terrorism and the partner of a prominent American Journalist would be well involved in it all! It seems to me my Government was trying to intimidate Greenwald and those involved with Snowden rather than protect us from terrorism on this occasion. Putting this incident to one side for a moment the reaction of the Americans and British Governments to the leakers has been extraordinary to watch as the information of the things they have done has come to light. What information that was leaked would be of use to the terrorists of the world? Their reaction makes them look more guilty and drunk on their own power. It makes you wonder what else they are hiding. Back to Greenwald and his partner, he was held for 9 hours the maximum under Schedule 7 where he was interviewed without a lawyer or assistance. I read somewhere that they made him give up his social network account passwords as well. Last I read on this David Cameron was refusing to say whether Ministers had sanctioned the detention, it might be me being cynical but his refusal screams guilty as charged.
So this hole episode has done nothing to help the situation for my government and the Americans. It has highlighted the exact reason why Snowden and Manning before him leaked what they did! It's a bad situation for a government to be in but detaining the spouse of a journalist investigating the material on terrorism legislation has made it far worse for themselves!
Someone somewhere should be out of a job soon I think!
