Miranda documents ‘threaten UK security’
British lives would be put at risk if documents seized at Heathrow from David Miranda, partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald, were published, a government adviser has said.
Oliver Robbins, deputy national security adviser for intelligence, was putting the government’s case at the high court legal battle over what happens to Mr Miranda’s memory sticks. Mr Miranda was taking documents to his partner Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist behind the revelations about US NSA surveillance earlier this year, when the sticks were confiscated at Heathrow airport.
“The material seized is highly likely to describe techniques which have been crucial in life saving counter-terrorist operations,” Mr Robbins, told the high court on Friday.
“The compromise of these methods would do serious damage to UK national security, and ultimately risk lives.”
Mr Robbins said he could not go into any detail about the “real and serious damage” caused by the documents already published by the Guardian and Washington Post, but stressed that the publication of these new documents would put British lives at risk.
‘Inaccurate claims’
Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger questioned Mr Robbins’ statements and said that the government had many opportunities to act if the threat was as real and dangerous as they claim.
“Mr Robbins makes a number of unsubstantiated and inaccurate claims in his witness statement,” said Mr Rusbridger.
“The way the government has behaved over the past three months belies the picture of urgency and crisis they have painted.”
Criminal investigation
One of the drives taken from Mr Miranda contained about 58,000 UK documents which were “highly classified”, said the Metropolitan police in a statement on Friday.
A police spokeswoman added after the hearing that the police would continue to examine the drives: “The examination of this material is necessary for the purposes of an ongoing criminal investigation and to protect public safety.
“An initial examination of the seized material has identified highly sensitive material within thousands of classified intelligence documents. As previously stated, the Metropolitan Police Service Counter-Terrorism Command is now carrying out a criminal investigation, which is at an early stage.”
What do intelligence services want?
US security commentator David Schneier has separately questioned what the British and Americans hoped to achieve by detaining Mr Miranda and seizing the documents.
Arguing that the NSA cannot hope to destroy the documents which will exist as copies in many other places, and that the NSA must already know what the documents are, he questions the logic of the British police in seizing Miranda and the memory sticks.
“So if the NSA knows what Snowden has, or what he could have, then the most it could learn from the USB sticks is what Greenwald and Poitras are currently working on, or thinking about working on.
“But presumably the things the two of them are working on are the things they’re going to publish next. Did the intelligence agencies really do all this simply for a few weeks’ heads-up on what was coming?”