Governo britânico vai ter de justificar em tribunal a detenção de Miranda
Downing Street sabia que a polícia se preparava para parar o brasileiro que vive com o jornalista que denunciou o programa de espionagem dos EUA
Sob a pressão dos editorialistas, o Governo britânico
veio ontem defender a actuação da Polícia Metropolitana de Londres e garantir a
legalidade da detenção do brasileiro David Miranda, o companheiro do jornalista
Glenn Greenwald, responsável pela exposição do esquema de espionagem electrónica
dos Estados Unidos e Grã-Bretanha. Miranda ficou retido no aeroporto de Heathrow
durante nove horas, e foi interrogado ao abrigo da legislação antiterrorismo,
numa investigação que foi previamente comunicada a Downing Street mas na qual o
Governo diz não ter tido qualquer interferência ou envolvimento político.
"Eram sete agentes a entrar e a sair da sala. Passaram o tempo a ameaçar-me,
dizendo que se não cooperasse e respondesse às perguntas me levavam para a
cadeia. Foi cansativo e muito frustrante. Eu sabia que não tinha feito nada de
mal, mas trataram-me como se fosse um criminoso prestes a atacar o país", contou
David Miranda, que foi detido em trânsito de Berlim para o Rio de Janeiro e não
teve acesso a comida ou a um intérprete. O seu advogado só conseguiu entrar na
sala de entrevista ao fim de oito horas de interrogatório.Num comunicado oficial, o Ministério do Interior esclareceu que "o Governo e a polícia têm o dever de proteger o público e a segurança nacional. Sempre que a polícia acredita que um indivíduo tenha em sua posse, e de forma ilegítima, informação secreta ou sensível que pode contribuir para acções terroristas, tem a obrigação de actuar no quadro estabelecido pela lei". Pelo parágrafo, depreende-se que as autoridades entenderam que David Miranda transportaria informação confidencial que poderia ser cedida ou ficar acessível a organizações terroristas. "É informação roubada e que pode ser útil a terroristas, que pode comprometer a segurança e potencialmente levar à morte de muita gente", frisou a ministra Theresa May numa entrevista à Sky News.
O que o Governo de Londres não esclareceu foi se esse era também o seu entendimento relativamente ao material que estava ao dispor dos jornalistas na redacção do The Guardian: um manancial de ficheiros e documentos relativos às actividades de espionagem conduzidas pela Agência Nacional de Segurança (NSA) dos Estados Unidos e pelos serviços correspondentes do Reino Unido, que foram obtidos pelo ex-analista informático e consultor da CIA Edward Snowden, e serviram de base às notícias assinadas por Greenwald naquele jornal.
Guardian pressionado
O director do The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, revelou que depois das primeiras notícias sobre os programas da NSA foi repetidamente pressionado pelo Governo britânico para "entregar ou destruir" o material disponibilizado por Snowden. O director recebeu vários responsáveis governamentais que o aconselharam a seguir as instruções e o ameaçaram com recursos judiciais para travar a publicação de mais histórias.
O jornal acabou por concordar com a destruição dos ficheiros da redacção de Londres, segundo Rusbridger porque ficara "bastante explícito" que existiam várias cópias do mesmo material armazenadas fora do país - o director explicou aos leitores que foi por causa dessa intervenção de Downing Street que a cobertura jornalística foi transferida de Londres para a redacção do Guardian nos Estados Unidos.
A operação que o Governo e a polícia consideraram "legítima" foi denunciada como um "grotesco abuso da lei" (Daily Mirror), e um "inadmissível assédio e intimidação" (Financial Times). "O certo e o errado deste caso são complexos, mas se a polícia teve indícios claros para suspeitar e deter o senhor Miranda, e confiscar o seu telemóvel, máquina fotográfica, computador portátil e discos externos, essas razões devem ser tornadas públicas rapidamente", escreveu o The Times.
O brasileiro recorreu à justiça contra o Governo britânico, para contestar a legalidade da sua detenção e recuperar o material que lhe foi confiscado - ontem era ainda incerto qual o uso que a polícia britânica fez da informação contida nos equipamentos de Miranda, incluindo se esses dados seriam partilhados com as autoridades norte-americanas.
Miranda alega que as eventuais buscas aos seus pertences estão feridas de ilegalidade, e o escritório que o representa em Londres já notificou a polícia para se abster de "inspeccionar, copiar, disseminar, transferir, distribuir ou interferir de qualquer forma" com os dados pertencentes ao seu cliente até o tribunal decidir sobre a legalidade da sua apreensão. "Mas o que mais nos preocupa foi a forma ilegal como foram interpretados os poderes accionados contra ele, bem como os efeitos terríveis que essa decisão pode ter em termos de liberdade de expressão", notou a sua advogada Kate Goold.
Mais do que um incidente diplomático com o Brasil, que chamou o embaixador do Reino Unido e exigiu explicações oficiais ao Ministério dos Negócios Estrangeiros britânico, o caso provocou uma tempestade política interna - até das bancadas da coligação choveram críticas à postura do Governo. O deputado liberal-democrata Julian Huppert falou num "claro abuso das leis antiterrorismo", cuja revisão considerou "urgente".
Já o conservador David Davis contestou os argumentos do Governo, considerando que "a resposta do Ministério do Interior desafia a lógica": "Mesmo que eles suspeitassem que o senhor Miranda transportasse informação sensível, eles sabiam que esses dados estão armazenados na América, ou na Alemanha, ou noutro lugar qualquer sob qualquer formato informático, e portanto a sua acção não iria prevenir o seu acesso ou divulgação", observou.
Snowden NSA files: US and UK at odds over security tactics
as row escalates
White House says it would be 'difficult to imagine' US
authorities adopting GCHQ tactic of demanding destruction of hard drives
Nicholas Watt, Spencer Ackerman, Josh Halliday and Rowena
Mason
The Guardian, Wednesday 21 August 2013 / http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/20/nsa-david-miranda-guardian-hard-drives
The White House distanced itself from Britain's handling of
the leaked NSA documents when representatives said it would be difficult to
imagine the US authorities following the example of Whitehall in demanding the
destruction of media hard drives.
As a former lord chancellor said the Metropolitan police had
no legal right to detain the partner of a Guardian journalist at Heathrow
airport under anti-terror laws, the White House suggested it would be
inappropriate for US authorities to enter a media organisation's offices to oversee
the destruction of hard drives.
The White House – which on Monday distanced Washington from
the detention of David Miranda – intervened for the second time in 24 hours
after the Guardian revealed that senior Whitehall figures had demanded the
destruction or surrender of hard drives containing some of the secret files
leaked by the US whistleblower Edward Snowden.
Alan Rusbridger, the Guardian editor, said that two GCHQ
security experts oversaw the destruction of hard drives on 20 July in what he
described as a "peculiarly pointless piece of symbolism". Rusbridger
had told the authorities that the action would not prevent the Guardian
reporting on the leaked US documents because Glenn Greenwald, the reporter who
first broke the story, had a copy in Brazil, and a further copy was held in the
US.
The White House responded with surprise to the report of the
destruction. Asked at his daily briefing on Tuesday whether President Obama's
administration would enter a US media company and destroy media hard drives –
even to protect national security – the White House spokesman, Josh Earnest,
said: "That's very difficult to imagine a scenario in which that would be
appropriate."
 |
White House principal deputy press secretary Josh Earnest:
'It’s difficult to imagine a scenario in which [demanding the destruction of a
media company's hard drives] would be appropriate.' Photograph: Pablo Martinez
Monsivais/AP
|
Theresa May, the home secretary, confirmed that she was
given advance notice of Miranda's detention as she praised the police action on
the grounds that he possessed sensitive documents that could help terrorists
and "lead to a loss of lives".
But May received a setback when Lord Falconer of Thoroton,
the former Labour lord chancellor who was involved in introducing the
anti-terror legislation used to detain Miranda, said the police had no right to
detain him under the Terrorism Act 2000. Miranda was held for nine hours at Heathrow
on Sunday under schedule 7 of the act, which allows police to detain people at
ports and airports even if they are not acting suspiciously.
Falconer, who helped introduce the act in the Lords before
he became lord chancellor in 2003, told the Guardian: "I am very clear
that this does not apply, either on its terms or in its spirit, to Mr
Miranda."
The former close ally of Tony Blair said that schedule 7 of
the act allows police to detain someone even when they have no grounds for
suspicion. Falconer added: "What schedule 7 allows an examining officer to
do is to question somebody in order to determine whether he is somebody who is
preparing, instigating or commissioning terrorism. Plainly Mr Miranda is not
such a person."
The former Conservative prisons minister Crispin Blunt told
Channel 4 News: "Using terrorism powers for something that doesn't appear
to be a terrorism issue brings the whole remit of the laws passed by parliament
to address terrorism into disrepute." But May praised the police action as
she and Downing Street acknowledged they were given advance notice of the
detention. May told the BBC: "I was briefed in advance that there was a
possibility of a port stop of the sort that took place. But we live in a
country where those decisions as to whether or not to stop somebody or arrest
somebody are not for me as home secretary. They are for the police to take.
That's absolutely right that they have their operational independence. Long may
that continue."
The home secretary, whose officials had initially declined
to comment on the issue on the grounds that it was an operational matter, said
it was right for the police to act because of the sensitive nature of documents
in Miranda's possession. May added: "I think it is right, given that it is
the first duty of the government to protect the public, that if the police
believe somebody has in their possession highly sensitive stolen information
which could help terrorists which could lead to a loss of lives then it is
right that the police act. That is what the law enables them to do. But of
course the law also has safeguards within it and we have an independent
reviewer who, as David Anderson has already said, he will be looking into this
case to ensure it was conducted properly."
Downing Street confirmed that the PM was also informed.
"We were kept abreast in the usual way," a No 10 source said.
"We do not direct police investigations."
The double confirmation, which followed a statement from the
White House on Monday that it was given a "heads up" about the
detention, marked an abrupt change of tactics by the government. Officials had
declined to answer questions about the affair on the grounds that it was an
operational police matter.
The government switched its response from it being an operational
police matter after the Guardian disclosed GCHQ's role in overseeing the
destruction of the hard disks in a basement of the newspaper's London office. A
few hours before the White House statement, Rusbridger said it would be
impossible to imagine a similar demand to destroy hard drives in the US.
He told the BBC News channel: "The British government
has moved against the Guardian in a way that would be simply undoable in
America. America has the first amendment and it has no prior restraint … The
British government explicitly threatened prior restraint against the Guardian –
ie that they would go to the courts to injunct us and to cede the material
which would have the effect of preventing us from writing about it."
Rusbridger added in an interview with The World at One on
BBC Radio 4: "It was quite explicit. We had to destroy it or give it back
to them."
Rusbridger launched a strong defence of the Guardian's
decision to comply with the request to destroy the hard drives after Index on
Censorship described the action as "very disturbing". He told Channel
4 News: "Rather than return the material to the government I said we would
destroy it in the knowledge that we already had copies in Brazil and in America.
It seemed to be our duty to this material and to the public is to go on
reporting. If we had waited for the courts to come in, judges would have been
in control of that information."
Former shadow home secretary David Davis said No 10's
confirmation that David Cameron was given notice of the detention of Miranda
meant that ministers had, in effect, approved of his treatment. Davis told The
World at One: "They didn't direct it, nobody is suggesting they directed
it. But they approved it by implication. If the home secretary is told this is
going to happen and she doesn't intervene then she is approving it."
May told the BBC: "No. We have a very clear divide in
this country – and I think that is absolutely right – between the operational
independence of the police and the policy work of politicians. I, as home
secretary, do not tell the police who they should or should not stop at ports
or who they should or should not arrest … I am pleased we live in a country
where there is that separation."
Miranda was stopped at Heathrow en route to Rio de Janeiro,
where he lives with Greenwald, who has written a series of stories for the
Guardian revealing mass surveillance programmes by the NSA. He was returning to
their home from Berlin when he was stopped, allowing officials to take away his
mobile phone, laptop, camera, memory sticks, DVDs and games consoles.
During his trip to Berlin, Miranda met Laura Poitras, the US
film-maker who has been working with Greenwald and the Guardian. The Guardian
paid for Miranda's flights. Miranda is not a Guardian employee but often
assists Greenwald in his work.
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