CONSERVATIVES, LIBERALS BLAST DETENTION OF REPORTER’S PARTNER

David Miranda, the partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, who was detained by authorities at London’s Heathrow airport for nine hours over the weekend, told reporters in Rio de Janeiro today that he was never questioned about terrorism — despite the fact that he was being held under a British anti-terrorism statute. “Not one question about terrorism, not one,” Miranda told Brazil’s Globo TV. Greenwald said that Miranda was acting as a courier for him and had received files in Berlin containing information from Edward Snowden on an encrypted portable computer drive. That device, along with Miranda’s laptop computer and other possessions, were seized by British authorities at the time he was detained. In a separate interview with the Guardian, Miranda said that he knew nothing about the information on the devices he was carrying. “I don’t look at documents. I don’t even know if it was documents that I was carrying,” he said. Meanwhile, Britain’s National Union of Journalists and the Society of Editors issued a statement warning that the controversial schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act of 2000, which allows police to stop, search and question individuals at airports, ports and border areas, should not be used to “intimidate” journalists. Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said,”We are very disturbed by this unacceptable violation of the UK’s obligations to respect freedom of information and the confidentiality of journalists’ sources.” USA Today media columnist Rem Rieder commented that the Miranda case offered a “vivid example of how the War on Terror can morph into a war on journalism.” Wrote Nick Cohen in the conservative magazine The Spectator, British citizens now live in a world “where not only journalists but their partners can be detained and questioned for hours on end. … David Miranda’s arrest proves how sinister the state has become.”