<story><title>Detaining my partner: a failed attempt at intimidation</title><url>http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/18/david-miranda-detained-uk-nsa</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>grey-area</author><text>The salient quote from Greenwald&amp;#x27;s article on this:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;They completely abused their own terrorism law for reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism: a potent reminder of how often governments lie when they claim that they need powers to stop &amp;quot;the terrorists&amp;quot;, and how dangerous it is to vest unchecked power with political officials in its name.&lt;/i&gt; [1]&lt;p&gt;This is a great example of why we should treat terrorism like any other crime, and why the police should never be trusted with exceptional powers simply because we feel under threat. Give them the powers, and they will be misused - in this case they were used on a relative of someone nothing to do with terrorism purely for the purpose of intimidation. The security services even called Greenwald to give him the news that his partner had been detained.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/18/david-miranda-detained-uk-nsa&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theguardian.com&amp;#x2F;commentisfree&amp;#x2F;2013&amp;#x2F;aug&amp;#x2F;18&amp;#x2F;david-m...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jacquesm</author><text>I wonder from how high up this order came. After all, it&amp;#x27;s not like Greenwald is going to take this lying down and that&amp;#x27;s something that they could predict quite accurately ahead of time. To abuse these powers on the partner of the journalist that is reporting the abuses is the worst tactical mistake made by any government to date, short of the diversion of a diplomats plane.&lt;p&gt;Taking into account that the UK law enforcement and Brazil have a bit of a history when it comes to labelling people terrorist wrongly makes it even worse.</text></comment>
<story><title>Detaining my partner: a failed attempt at intimidation</title><url>http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/18/david-miranda-detained-uk-nsa</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>grey-area</author><text>The salient quote from Greenwald&amp;#x27;s article on this:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;They completely abused their own terrorism law for reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism: a potent reminder of how often governments lie when they claim that they need powers to stop &amp;quot;the terrorists&amp;quot;, and how dangerous it is to vest unchecked power with political officials in its name.&lt;/i&gt; [1]&lt;p&gt;This is a great example of why we should treat terrorism like any other crime, and why the police should never be trusted with exceptional powers simply because we feel under threat. Give them the powers, and they will be misused - in this case they were used on a relative of someone nothing to do with terrorism purely for the purpose of intimidation. The security services even called Greenwald to give him the news that his partner had been detained.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/18/david-miranda-detained-uk-nsa&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theguardian.com&amp;#x2F;commentisfree&amp;#x2F;2013&amp;#x2F;aug&amp;#x2F;18&amp;#x2F;david-m...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rolux</author><text>&amp;gt; they were used on a relative of someone nothing to do with terrorism purely for the purpose of intimidation&lt;p&gt;Intimidation &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; the purpose of anti-terrorism legislation. This is not an abuse of some exceptional powers -- it&amp;#x27;s their most common &lt;i&gt;use&lt;/i&gt;.</text></comment>