David Miranda's Lawyers Respond

You saw this coming…

Lawyers for the partner of the Guardian journalist who exposed mass email surveillance have written to home secretary Theresa May and the head of the Metropolitan police warning them that they are set to take legal action over what they say amounted to his "unlawful" detention at Heathrow airport under anti-terror laws.

[...]

His lawyers at the London firm Bindmans are seeking an official undertaking that there will be "no inspection, copying, disclosure, transfer, distribution or interference, in any way with our client's data".

But they say if there has already been an inspection of his laptop and other equipment it should not be disclosed to any third party, domestic or foreign and should be kept secure pending the outcome of the legal action.

  Guardian

That gives me pause, because until just this moment I had not thought of the possibility of agents of the US, UK, or other allied governments passing some unique piece of material from a confiscated device to an enemy of those countries and creating the impression that the person to whom the device belongs is trading secrets.

The letter says the decision to detain Miranda "amounted to a frustration of the legislative policy and objects of the Terrorism Act 2000" and was for "an improper purpose and was therefore unlawful".

Bindmans say if the undertakings are not given by Tuesday afternoon they will have no option but to seek an urgent interim injunction in the high court.

The lawyers say they will also be seeking a "quashing order" confirming that his detention was "unlawful" and a mandatory order that all data seized is returned and copies destroyed.

[...]

Bindmans say the police used the anti-terror laws in order to have "deliberately bypassed" the normal statutory procedures for seeking confidential journalistic material such as court orders under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984.

Using Pace police can get permission to search premises and seize property but some classes of material are protected, including journalistic material.