Source
r/circlebroke•
clonebo

DAE 1984?!? UK Police Detain David Miranda for "Thoughtcrime," r/worldnews jizzes itself.

np.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1pvfep/uk_cops_officially_detained_david_miranda_for/

We all know how much reddit loves to relate anything and everything the government goes to 1984. Picking up on this sentiment, the bastion of journalistic integrity that is boingboinbg.net posted and article that literally has the word "thoughtcrime" in it. As you can expect, r/worldnews circled up, dropped its pants and commenced the jerk.

Sidenote: We're going to sites called Boing Boing for our news now? What the hell? Their mascot/icon is a fat Pippi Longstocking using a jackhammer. What the Fuck?

The article is about the UK's rationale for detaining David Miranda at Heathrow Airport. Basically, the government wanted to detain Miranda because he possessed classified documents and intended to leak them to the public, which the government believed would damage national security interests. They did so with the authority of Section 7 of the UK Terrorism act. Admittedly, in order to use the terrorism act, the government took some liberties with the definition of "terrorist." To Boing Boing, and reddit, this was more than enough evidence to make the leap aaaaaaaaalllllllllllllllllllllll the way to thoughtcrime, the lynchpin of the Orwellian nightmare that reddit seems to wish the world was.

Did the UK overstep its authority in detaining Miranda? Maybe. Each side has valid arguments, but you wouldn't know it reading the comments section:

Well everyone it was a good run, we managed to go a couple hundred years without turning into an evil empire, good job everyone! [+181]

Britain's been an evil empire well inside the last 100yrs. [+114]

Yup. The government wanting to detain someone for possession of stolen government documents and an intent to release them == Sauron level evil.

Dont worry Brits. We are quickly following your direction here in America. Good thing we fought those two wars with each other so this wouldnt happen. [+8]

And, of course, no thread on r/worldnews can go more than 3 microseconds without the anti-American jerk rearing its head.

Corporations are People.

Money is Free Speech.

Truth is Terror. [+10]

Uhhhhhhhhh...............

It seems fitting that thoughtcrime should be punished in Orwell's homeland. [+118]

So the governments that are obviously, by their own definition, engaged in terrorism can hypocritically detain others engaged in thought terrorism because of the threat to their terrorist organization? [+2]

DAE teh gubmint is teh real terrorists??!?!?!?!?!

Posted Nov 5, 2013, 2:18 PM UTC

8570
ONE_GUY_ONE_JAR•

I love how everything there inevitably moves back to an anti-American circlejerk. It's as predictable as the tides.

54
payne6•

I just don't get it why every goddamn millisecond there is a anti-American jerk. A article about North Korea admitting their ship sunk and had causalities had a anti American and Israel jerk. HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

32
Khiva•

I think there's actually a good argument to be made that the Amerikkka jerk is the biggest jerk on the entire site, if for no other reason than that it can be shoehorned into so many possible situations. Anything that touches on government, policy, popular culture or social practices can be made into an example of how the US is a terrible, terrible place (and usually is). There was a thread in r/worldnews the other day about a French father raping his daughter that turned into how the US is an awful place.

I don't necessarily think that the animus against the US burns any brighter than, say, atheism or the STEMlordery or any of the other jerks, just that there's a tendency to jerk, and to jerk the thing closest at hand, and the Amerikkka jerk evidently provides the most fodder.

Consequently, it ends up being one of the most mentioned jerks on r/circlebroke, as well as the one that circlebrokers most often complain about circlebrokers complaining about. It's a really interesting cycle.

Edit: The counter to this being that the biggest rival for the Jerk Crown, atheism (naturally), gets its own very popular sub dedicated to nothing but jerking, whereas there's no other sub dedicated to Amerikkka jerking. The result of course being that the latter jerking is more widely distributed as opposed to concentrated in one place, so the real question you've got is whether you count concentrated jerking or distributed jerking as your unit of measurement.

19
MuldartheGreat•

I remember seeing a picture of a beautiful landscape on r/pics. I opened the comments to learn where it is.

The third top level comment was something about how the country (france?) was so much more beautiful than America which was being overtaken by urban sprawl.

Fuckin amazing how you made that leap

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[deleted]•

[deleted]

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payne6•

I actually haven't been on CB in awhile I just been on and off about r/world news and I can't believe how quick everyone is to blame America about something. Every little thing America is wrong. North Korea killed 3,000 people? Well that's JUST LIKE IRAQ AIMIRITE? I just don't get what they gain do they feel smart bashing America? or easy Karma? Probably the karma more than anything.

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[deleted]•

It's because people gravitate toward the biggest targets. When comparing countries, America is inevitably put into the arena because it's easily the most famous country, it's the most powerful, arguably the most important, and so forth. The entire world has a napoleon complex.

The same goes for basically any topic. If the topic is evil, racism, war crimes, etc. the nazis will always come up. If the topic is religion, Christianity will always come up. Graffiti, banksy. Smartphones, iphone. It's just how humans work.

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[deleted]•

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RayBoogs•

I was just about to post a link to an almost identical article FULL of brave souls (read as: delusional F*cking morons)

http://www.np.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1pvye3/uk_claim_that_journalism_equals_terrorism_sparks/

Some of the comments in there are hilarious. It makes me exhasperated that people think this extremely.

If I'm not mistaken he was arrested because he had potentially sensitive data on his person.

In fact it actually says that in the article

We assess that Miranda is knowingly carrying material the release of which would endanger people's lives," the document continued. "Additionally the disclosure, or threat of disclosure, is designed to influence a government and is made for the purpose of promoting a political or ideological cause. This therefore falls within the definition of terrorism..."

They are not calling Journalism Terrorism at all, he was not arrested for a thoughtcrime. He was arrested because he was going to leak documenttaion that could endager peoples lives.

They merely mentioned that this COULD COULD be classed as a terrorism.

I'm not to say what they did was right or not. But why is that Reddit gets all up itself about privacy when they are apprently having their privacy taken away, but when their hero and saviour Greenwald (not that reddit hero worships though, of course not...) wants to leak information about government officials and rich people its totally cool?

Also, get a load of this guy:

Please, keep hammering us on this kind of sh!t. Seriously, someone needs to. This sh!t is getting way out of hand and not enough people in my country care about this problem that is facing the press.

Murdoch really f*cked over journalism with his hacking bullsh!t and not enough people are standing up to defend what is normally a very honourable profession.

Keep hammering. Keep being outraged. As loud as possible. Make my moronic government f+cking listen and show them how dangerously close they are coming to fascism.

"I have no idea what I'm talking about but if I say Murdoch is bad and the word facism, whilst swearing, it will look good. GRRRR I hate the goverment."

Also I'd like to add, there is no problem facing the press that they didn't bring on themselves.

27
tetromino_•

He was arrested because he was going to leak documenttaion that could endager peoples lives.

It's easy to see how it could endanger certain officials' careers.

It's hard to see how it could endanger people's lives. Snowden and his friends have leaked a ton of documents already. As far as I remember, none of those documents endangered anybody's life — they did not reveal the names of undercover agents, and they did not point out vulnerabilities that terrorists can use to attack America or Britain.

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RayBoogs•

Yeah you're right. But there is still potential. Those guys didn't know what was in the documents.

I guess the point I was making is that he wasn't arrested for Terrorism, but for the reasons actually stated in the article, which aren't even that "shocking".

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q3rfgw4fgwfg•

I believe that a number of informants including the leaders of villages in Afghanistan were abducted and subsequently executed as a result of the leaks provided by Manning.

http://nypost.com/2010/08/03/taliban-seeks-vengeance-on-afghans-named-in-wikileaks-documents/

Google for "informants killed wikileaks"...

6
tetromino_•

You may be right about Manning, but Miranda (the guy detained at Heathrow) was associated with Snowden, not Manning, and Snowden has apparently been careful not to give out names of agents or informants.

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q3rfgw4fgwfg•

Oh I didn't mean to imply some kind of equality between Manning and Miranda, but merely that it's quite possible for informants to be disclosed (even in roundabout ways) through actions like these.

Fortunately, "has apparently" won't get any kind of investigation (of really any nature) off your back. "In theory" Snowden was careful enough to take encryption keys for military transmissions - the investigators in this case have to operate in some of the more plausible worst-case scenarios (that sounds awkward but I hope I got meaning across).

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kanooker•

I think Manning does belong in jail but I wouldn't believe anything in the nypost.

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[deleted]•

[deleted]

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Dankleton•

I'm not to say what they did was right or not. But why is that Reddit gets all up itself about privacy when they are apprently having their privacy taken away, but when their hero and saviour Greenwald (not that reddit hero worships though, of course not...) wants to leak information about government officials and rich people its totally cool?

As far as I'm aware, the information being leaked isn't about "government officials and rich people" - it is about government departments and agencies. The difference being that the former is individuals who therefore do have a right to privacy whereas the latter are the government who's work should as transparent as possible.

1
Thyrotoxic•

The guy was arrested for carrying state secrets, essentially espionage. He was not arrested for "thoughtcrime". Worldnews doing their standard hyperbolic shit as usual.

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[deleted]•

Foreign national, not an official journalist, transiting the UK with highly sensitive documents and planning on exporting them to Brazil? Yeah, damned right I want him stopped.

5
DILDO_BURRITO•

r/worldnews, where being arrested for carrying highly illegal government documents makes you a hero.

Reddit Admins, please take that vacuous shithole of a sub out of the defaults.

9
HomSig•

Arresting a journalist's boyfriend under terrorrist laws because he has a political cause seems pretty creepy to me. Don't know why you guys don't understand why r/worldnews flips out over it.

8
MuldartheGreat•

Because he was carrying state secrets and intended to leak them?

It's the equivalent of seeing a guy with a gun and a mask going into a bank and not doing anything because he hasn't taken any money.

In the U.S. this could easily be attempted espionage which is a crime. I'm not totally up to speed on Britain's laws regarding incohate crimes, but I would imagine it is largely the same.

The guy took clear actions to affect a crime and was arrested. If this was bank robbery no one would bat an eye.

12
HomSig•

The point is, instead of applying the laws that were designed to deal with journalists, they can and do abuse the laws that were designed to deal with terrorrists because he and his boyfriend have a political cause.

2
liquidtension•

Nice spin. They might have a political cause, but I guess you just accidentally didn't mention the state secrets in his possession.

5
Maharbal217•

I think that the point here is that they were going to release classified documents in order to further their political cause, not just because they had a political cause. Lots of people have political causes, lots of people fly through the UK, lots of people with political causes fly through the UK, but not very many people fly through the UK while carrying "some 58,000 encrypted UK intelligence documents." I think it's important to recognize the obvious national security risk this presents and to not immediately ride Glenn Greenwald's dick every time national security is discussed. I get that laws covering ideology can sometimes be seen as questionable, but it seems to me that carrying nearly 60 thousand encrypted intelligence files is a pretty good reason to detain someone.

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cloneboOP•

It definitely is a little worrying and they are certainly stretching their definition of terrorist. But "thoughtcrime"? That's where I draw the line for a jerk.

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[deleted]•

In what way was David Miranda a "journalist"?

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RayBoogs•

They didn't arrest him under terror charges. They merely stated this could have fallen into the realms of terroist activity and he could be charged under those laws.

But, you know, if you'd actually read about the story you'd know that.

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[deleted]•

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BigBobBobson•

Actually this is pretty terrible. It may not be equatable to 1984, but 1984 was not wrote to say "When you are making rats eat Winston Smith's face, plz stop", it was wrote to say "Never come close to making rats eat Winston Smith's face". For me and a lot of other people, this was, especially in the current climate, another step too close to poor Winston getting chewed.

David Miranda was detained for 9 hours in accordance with Terror laws, but not in any way in the spirit of Terror laws. He could have been detained this way, it didn't mean he should've been detained. The motivation was obviously political and if the forces using those powers cannot be trusted to do so in the spirit in which those powers were enacted and are prescribed, then they should not be as broad. Which is what the Joint Committee on Human Rights decided when it investigated this particular incident, recommending that "the more intrusive powers should only be available where the police have formed a reasonable suspicion that the traveller may be somebody who is involved in terrorism.".

Personally I think even the JCHR is being lenient, they stated that if David Miranda had only been subject to a minor search rather than a full 9 hour intensive stint, then it would've been appropriate without reasonable suspicion that an offence had been committed. I think that should surely only apply if it that minor search was under any pretext of a Terror allegation. This clearly had absolutely nothing to do with Terror, and only tenuous links to security concerns, links that could've been investigated and worked out with proper due process, given the Guardian's current track record of sensitivity when publishing these links.

Corporations are People.

Money is Free Speech.

Truth is Terror. [+10]

Uhhhhhhhhh...............

Also if this is an "Uhhh" of confusion then you should definitely read/re-read 1984, it's a great book and I thought that comment was a funny reference, despite how tired and inappropriately used the comparison is.

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brendax•

Well everyone it was a good run, we managed to go a couple hundred years without turning into an evil empire, good job everyone!

That's stupid on so many levels. Britain was a much eviler empire well within the 1900's DAE Boer wars? British Mandate?

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Emb3rSil•

For the record, BoingBoing ain't that bad. It's usually more of a tech/geek website though, not exactly a bastion of news. Also it's worth noting that a lot of articles on it are reader-submitted.

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Blaster395•

ain't that bad

a lot of articles on it are reader-submitted.

How do those things fit together?

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steakmeout•

That's some prime second opinion bias jerky.

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Emb3rSil•

Well, they usually focus more in tech or geeky fields. And, I mean, they are editor-cleared before they're posted. I think they posted the article in question because of the easy connection to be made to 1984, because otherwise I don't really see how it would fit the general feel of the site.

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[deleted]•

They're not mutually exclusive, but a good site consisting of user submitted content requires a very large base and very good anti-vandalism tools. Look at Wikipedia. There are tons of obsessive compulsive weirdos who sit there monitoring their "territory" for any sort of change and immediately nuke it to hell if they think it's vandalism. It's those weirdos that make Wikipedia trustworthy.

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CupBeEmpty•

I think BB has been steadily declining in quality. However, the one area where they have always been horrible is their comment threads on anything political (or scientific). It puts even the worst r/worldnews jerks to shaaaame.

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massaikosis•

I do feel that the government uses fear to manipulate us. I'm CRAAAAZY, right?

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cloneboOP•

I'm sure that the government does use fear to promote its policies to the public. Whether or not the fear is justified is a different question. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't.

Regardless, the jump from that to the government pursuing "thoughtcrimes" is completely ludicrous.

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massaikosis•

Well, they are perusing all your emails without a warrant and storing them for later reference. They did conduct all kinds of mind-control and brainwashing experiments for most of the last century.

I don't doubt that "they" (whoever they are) would LOVE to be able to read minds and sort out dissent whenever possible. Just because it isn't currently practical hardly means that the idea that they could desire such abilities is "completely ludicrous."

Sure, there maybe conspiracy theories that are way over-the-top, but I will never make the mistake of thinking that all the sinister, creepy stuff is behind them and beneath them now.

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Zorkamork•

They're not 'perusing your emails' at all, you have literally no clue what you're talking about.

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massaikosis•

Literally!

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Jrook•

When the fuck has the government punished someone for dissent in their emails?

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massaikosis•

whoa, chill out bro. Wana repeat the part where I made that claim?

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RayBoogs•

Go back to r/worldnews.

Are you completely insane.

I don't doubt that "they" (whoever they are) would LOVE to be able to read minds and sort out dissent whenever possible. Just because it isn't currently practical hardly means that the idea that they could desire such abilities is "completely ludicrous."

What the hell... "sort out dissent".

You need to get out more.

0
massaikosis•

TIL that keeping an open mind to the idea that powerful people can be corrupt is "completely insane".

You're a fucking retard, try to actually read what I meant instead of skimming it and filling it with whatever stereotypical "tin foil" attributes you want to put in.

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PotatoMusicBinge•

Sidenote: We're going to sites called Boing Boing for our news now? What the hell? Their mascot/icon is a fat Pippi Longstocking using a jackhammer. What the Fuck?

We're going to sites called reddit for discussion of current events now? What the hell? Their mascot is a fat alien tellytubby. What the fuck?

"Sidenote" doesn't magically excuse you from ad hominum shittyness.

>:(

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cloneboOP•

Fair enough. Although, to defend myself, the fact that they called this a government pursuit of a "thoughtcrime" doesn't really do much to support Boing Boing's journalistic integrity, or at least the integrity of that particular article.

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PotatoMusicBinge•

Also fair enough. But I stand by my point.

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cloneboOP•

Fair enough, indeed.

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[deleted]•

Nobody would argue that Reddit is a trustworthy source of unbiased news. Such a site doesn't need a non-wacky mascot, but they tend not to because they focus on professionalism.

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criminolelawyer•

I don't need to look because I know this is somehow america's fault.

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Cyril_Clunge•

I'm surprised that people are saying Britain has been an evil empire in the recent 100 years, which is after the fact that the empire they had began to decline.

It's really annoying me that people think they should know everything their government is doing. I remember seeing an article which said it should be made public what Britain's special forces units such as the SAS, SBS and SRR are up to which completely misses the point.

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TheAdoringFan•

American neckbeards seem really intent on pushing this idea that the UK is covered with government CCTV and you're being watched every second. It's not like that at all, and I doubt any of those people have ever even been to the UK.

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[deleted]•

[deleted]

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Dogs4President•

I am disappointed in this sub. You could have a circlebroke for circlebroke with how the pity parties in here have gotten. So few posts like the one about guns and so many like this. :(

All good things...

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ThornsyAgain•

Truth is Terror.

What is this even supposed to mean?

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[deleted]•

i am a political activist because i heard about 1984 on reddit and i saw that movie v for vendetta fight me irl

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[deleted]•

[deleted]

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