All Property Is Theft (23 August 2013)

I have been trying hard to follow the twists and turns in the High Court where a young man from Brazil - David Miranda - is arguing that the Police should not be able to scrutinize information that was seized from him recently, at Heathrow Airport, as he  attempted to leave the UK.

Now the Police case is that this information presents a potential risk to national security - and that some of it, at least, was 'stolen' or leaked by Eric Snowden - an American intelligence agent (or spy) and former employee of the National Security Agency (NSA) - who has since defected and claimed asylum in that other well-known land of the free and the brave - Russia.

Which all sounds a bit absurd - if you ask me.

But anyway, David's defence is that his arrest was unlawful and therefore the Police should not be allowed to scrutinise his property without permission - and that, in any event, all he (David) was doing was transporting 'information' on behalf of his partner - Glenn Greenwald - an American who writes for the Guardian and is based in America.

What I can't quite get my head around is why is it OK for David and his chums to pass on leaked information or data - property that clearly belongs to someone else - and yet they immediately cry 'foul' if someone behaves in the same way towards them. 

Would David object, for example, if someone (a publicly spirited Police officer, for example) now leaked information about his and his partner Glenn - if it was subsequently shown that they were engaged in some unlawful activity or wrongdoing?

Now I take the point that two wrongs don't make a right and the Police are obviously there to uphold the law and not take it into their own hands - but nonetheless it does strike me as a bit of a double standard.

I listened to David on TV the other night and heard him say that he wasn't really sure about the nature of the information or data he was carrying - which sounds rather daft I have to say - and no doubt he was going to tell his airline carrier, when asked, that he had personally packed all his own bags - and that he was not carrying anything for anyone else. 

A standard question for air travelers these days - when I last checked in at least. 

The High Court has allowed the Police to continue their search of David's belongings or other people's belongings - depending on which statement is true - so long as what they are looking at relates to national security.

Although the question that immediately jumped into my head was - 'How do you know what relates to national security, if anything, if you don't look at all the information that's been seized?' 

All of which means that life would be so much simpler - though not necessarily better - if we all lived our lives by the old anarchist slogan 'All property is theft!'