Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption David Miranda: "I was kept in a room with six agents... asking me about everything." 
 
 Pressure is mounting on police to justify the detention of a journalist's partner under terror laws. 
 
 Senior politicians and an independent reviewer have said police must explain why David Miranda was detained for nine hours at Heathrow Airport. 
 
 Mr Miranda's partner is a journalist who published documents leaked by US whistleblower Edward Snowden. 
 
 Police have not said why Mr Miranda was held, but he said he was kept in a room and quizzed by "six agents". 
 
 Keith Vaz, chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, and shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said police must explain why terrorism powers were used. 
 
 Brazil's foreign minister Antonio Patriota said he would call his UK counterpart William Hague to tell him the detention of Mr Miranda - a Brazilian national - was "not justifiable" and ask him to ensure it "won't happen again". 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Neil Wallis, former executive editor, News of the World: "This is an appalling, blatant breach of press freedom" 
 
 Questions 'about everything' 
 
 Mr Miranda, 28, was held at Heathrow on Sunday on his way from Berlin to Rio de Janeiro, where he lives with his partner, Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald. 
 
 "I remained in a room, there were six different agents coming and going, talking to me," Mr Miranda said. 
 
 "They asked questions about my entire life, about everything. 
 
 "They took my computer, video game, mobile phone, my memory cards, everything." 
 
 In Germany, Mr Miranda had been staying with US film-maker Laura Poitras, who has also been working on the Snowden files with Mr Greenwald and the Guardian, according to the newspaper. 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Keith Vaz concerned about use of anti-terror laws 
 
 His flights were being paid for by the Guardian. A spokesman said he was not an employee of the newspaper but "often assists" with Mr Greenwald's work. 
 
 Mr Miranda was detained under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000. This allows police to hold someone at an airport for up to nine hours for questioning about whether they have been involved with acts of terrorism. 
 
 Anyone detained must "give the examining officer any information in his possession which the officer requests". Any property seized must be returned after seven days. 
 
 The Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, David Anderson QC, said it was very unusual for someone to be held for the full nine hours, and he wanted to "get to the bottom" of what had happened. 
 
 He said he had asked the Home Office and Scotland Yard for a full briefing. 
 
 'Bullying' 
 
 The Guardian said it was "dismayed" by the detention and was "urgently seeking clarification from the British authorities" as to why it had happened. 
 
 Analysis The stopping of David Miranda was highly unusual and will be just as controversial. These powers are often used to have a look at an individual heading in or out of the country to see if there is any evidence linking them to terrorism. That may involve questioning and a search of their belongings. In this case the search will likely be the key aspect. Police may well have been looking for any classified information originating from British and American intelligence and obtained by Edward Snowden. But this was not a random stop by a policeman on the ground. So who wanted him searched? Was it British intelligence? Or could it have been a request from the US? That's something it has denied although it won't stop questions. Another controversy will be over the stretching of counter-terrorism powers for something which doesn't look like it has anything to do with terrorism. Powers are often justified on the basis of stopping terrorist attacks. But what will the reaction be when they are used for something else? Add to this the fact the Brazilian government is clearly unhappy and that Glenn Greenwald says he will now go after British intelligence more aggressively in his journalism and you have to wonder if the person who made the decision might just be wondering if it was worth it. 
 
 The Metropolitan Police confirmed a 28-year-old man was held from 08:05 BST until 17:00 BST on Sunday under schedule 7 and was not arrested. 
 
 According to the Home Office, more than 97% of examinations under schedule 7 last less than an hour. 
 
 Mr Greenwald said the British authorities' actions in holding Mr Miranda amounted to "bullying" and linked it to his writing about Mr Snowden's revelations concerning the US National Security Agency (NSA). 
 
 He said it was "clearly intended to send a message of intimidation to those of us who have been reporting on the NSA and [UK intelligence agency] GCHQ". 
 
 He told the BBC police did not ask Mr Miranda "a single question" about terrorism but instead asked about what "Guardian journalists were doing on the NSA stories". 
 
 Mr Greenwald said he would respond by writing reports "much more aggressively than before". 
 
 "I have lots of documents about the way the secret services operate in England," he said. 
 
 "I think they are going to regret what they did." 
 
 'Extraordinary' 
 
 Mr Snowden, who has been granted temporary asylum in Russia, leaked details of extensive internet and phone surveillance by American intelligence services. 
 
 According to the Guardian, he passed "thousands of files" to Mr Greenwald, who has written a series of stories about surveillance by US and UK authorities. 
 
 Mr Vaz said police must "of course" question people if they have "concerns" about what they are doing in the UK. 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Julian Assange tells Radio 4's PM programme that the detention was "an attack on journalism" 
 
 "What is extraordinary is they knew he was the partner [of Mr Greenwald] and therefore it is clear not only people who are directly involved are being sought but also the partners of those involved," he said. 
 
 "Bearing in mind it is a new use of terrorism legislation to detain someone in these circumstances... I will write to the police to ask for the justification of the use of terrorism legislation - they may have a perfectly reasonable explanation." 
 
 Ms Cooper said the situation must be "investigated and clarified urgently", adding: "The public support for these powers must not be endangered by a perception of misuse." 
 
 In a statement, the Liberal Democrats said police should use schedule 7 powers "proportionately and for good reason". 
 
 Journalism 'not terrorism' 
 
 Dr David Lowe, a former counter-terrorist detective, said the length of the detention might be explained by the "volume of documentation" carried by Mr Miranda. 
 
 He said the amount of information revealed by Mr Snowden to the Guardian was not yet known, but police might have kept Mr Miranda for the full nine hours allowed because they had lots of data to go through. 
 
 Dr Lowe also said Mr Miranda might have been targeted because of the "top secret" information police thought he was carrying, rather than because of his relationship with Mr Greenwald. 
 
 But journalists' groups have accused authorities of misusing terrorism laws. 
 
 Bob Satchwell, of the Society of Editors, said the incident was "another example of the dangerous tendency" for authorities to "assume that journalists are bad when in fact they play an important part in any democracy." 
 
 He added: "Journalism may be embarrassing and annoying for governments but it is not terrorism." ||||| LONDON The British government, accused of abusing media freedom, said on Tuesday police were right to detain a journalist's partner if they thought lives might be at risk from data he was carrying from fugitive U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden. 
 
 Facing legal and diplomatic complaints after police held Guardian writer Glenn Greenwald's Brazilian partner for nine hours on Sunday - and accused by the newspaper of forcing it to trash computers holding copies of Snowden's data - the interior minister said officers were entitled to take security measures. 
 
 Home Secretary Theresa May said police held David Miranda at a London airport under anti-terrorism powers, which allow for action to prevent stolen data to aid terrorists. Material from Snowden, published by the Guardian, has revealed extensive U.S. and British surveillance of global communications networks. 
 
 "It's absolutely right that if the police believe that somebody is in possession of highly sensitive, stolen information that could help terrorists, that could risk lives, lead to a potential loss of life, the police are able to act - and that's what the law enables them to do," May told the BBC. 
 
 She added, however, that an independent reviewer was looking into the police conduct. 
 
 As interior minister, May said she was briefed in advance that Miranda might be stopped but she stressed that she did not decide whom the police detained. The United States said Britain gave it a "heads up" but it did not ask for Miranda to be questioned. 
 
 Snowden, who faces criminal charges in the United States, has been granted a year's asylum by Russia. 
 
 A British lawyer who launched an action on the Brazilian's behalf to question the legal basis of his detention said police seized a laptop computer, a telephone, memory sticks, a computer hard drive and a games console from him. He was released without charge after reaching a time limit on such detentions. 
 
 Miranda had been in transit at Heathrow airport, carrying material from Snowden that was being passed from Berlin-based American documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras to Greenwald, an American writer for Britain's Guardian who lives in Rio de Janeiro. 
 
 "These items contain sensitive, confidential journalistic material and should not have been seized," Miranda's London lawyers wrote in a letter to May and the police. 
 
 Brazil's government has complained to Britain. The action against Miranda also was denounced by British opposition politicians, human rights lawyers and press freedom groups. 
 
 The leaks by Snowden, a former U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) contractor, gave details of NSA and British surveillance of public telephone and internet traffic. The United States and Britain say their agencies acted within their laws and the leaks threatened their national security. 
 
 'YOU'VE HAD YOUR FUN' 
 
 On Tuesday, Guardian editors revealed how and why the newspaper destroyed computer hard drives containing copies of some of the secret files leaked by Snowden. 
 
 A timeline of events provided by the Guardian said initial British attempts to stop reporting on the files came two weeks after the newspaper published its first three stories based on Snowden's leaks. 
 
 These stories were about a secret U.S. court order obliging communications company Verizon to hand over data on customers' phone usage, Britain's secretive Government Communications Headquarters' (GCHQ) use of data from a NSA internet monitoring program, and British intelligence spying on allies in London. 
 
 Shortly afterward, two senior British officials arrived to see editor Alan Rusbridger to demand the newspaper hand over all its Snowden files, arguing the material was stolen, according to the Guardian's timeline. He refused. 
 
 Three weeks later, in July, after the publication of more articles, officials got back in touch with Rusbridger and told him, according to the newspaper: "You've had your fun. Now we want the stuff back." 
 
 The officials expressed fears that foreign governments, particularly Russia or China, could hack into the newspaper's IT network although the journalists stressed the documents were not stored on any Guardian system but held in isolation, according to the newspaper. 
 
 Between July 16 and 19, the Guardian said government pressure intensified and there was an explicit threat of legal action if the newspaper did not comply. 
 
 Rusbridger said he decided that if the government was determined to stop Britain-based reporting on the Snowden files, the best option was to destroy the London copy and to edit and report from the same material held in the United States and Brazil. 
 
 On July 20, two "security experts" from GCHQ visited the paper's London head office and watched as deputy editor Paul Johnson, executive director Sheila Fitzsimons and a newspaper computer expert used angle grinders and other tools to pulverize hard drives and memory chips storing encrypted files, according to the newspaper. 
 
 Both sides were aware other copies existed outside the Britain. 
 
 "I hope what (the Miranda detention controversy) will do is to send people back to read the stories that so upset the British state because there has been a lot of reporting about what GCHQ and the NSA are up to," Rusbridger said. 
 
 Downing Street and GCHQ have declined to comment. 
 
 In Washington, a White House spokesman said he could not comment on the destruction of some of the Guardian's Snowden material. But he said he could not see U.S. authorities destroying an American media company's hard drives to protect national security. 
 
 "That's very difficult to imagine a scenario in which that would be appropriate," spokesman John Earnest told reporters. 
 
 Britain came under criticism from press freedom group Index on Censorship, which denounced the forced destruction of computers revealed by Guardian editors. 
 
 "It is clear that the Snowden and NSA story is strongly in the public interest," the group said. "It seems that the UK government is using, and quite literally misusing, laws to intimidate journalists and silence its critics." 
 
 A British source with knowledge of the security services said GCHQ had no powers to seize material from the Guardian, but could have accused the newspaper of possessing stolen materials and demanded they be destroyed. 
 
 (Additional reporting by Andrew Osborn and Belinda Goldsmith in London and Mark Hosenball in Washington; Editing by Guy Faulconbridge, Peter Graff and Alastair Macdonald)
– Well, now the UK has gone and gotten itself on Glenn Greenwald's bad list. The Guardian journalist behind the Edward Snowden-NSA leaks story told reporters that after his partner was detained for nine hours at London's Heathrow airport, he plans to be "far more aggressive" in his reporting, Reuters reports. "I am going to publish things on England, too. I have many documents on England's spy system. I think they will be sorry for what they did," he said. Greenwald was at the Rio de Janeiro airport at the time to meet partner David Miranda upon his return to Brazil, where they both live. Brazil's government released a statement calling Miranda's detention unjustified, the Guardian also wants answers, and now even lawmakers in the UK are calling for an explanation from police as to why Miranda was held, the BBC reports. The Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation says it's rare for anyone to be held for so long under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000, which allows police to detain someone at an airport for as long as nine hours to question them about links to terrorism. But "they never asked him about a single question at all about terrorism or anything relating to a terrorist organization," Greenwald says. "They spent the entire day asking about the reporting I was doing and other Guardian journalists were doing on the NSA stories."