Early Sunday morning David Miranda, partner of the Guardian‘s Glenn Greenwald, was detained in London’s Heathrow Airport for 9 hours– the maximum time someone can be held without charge in the UK. Greenwald was the first to break Edward Snowden’s stories on the National Security Agency’s (NSA) surveillance tactics.
“They wanted to intimidate our journalism, to show that they have power and will not remain passive but will attack us more intensely if we continue publishing their secrets,” Greenwald said on Monday about the UK’s decision to detain his partner.
The Guardian‘s editor-in-chief, Alan Rusbridger, appeared on Tuesday’s All In. “There came a point, about, just over a month ago where the tone changed and there was an explicit threat to use the law if we didn’t either return the material that we had, or destroy it.”
Rusbridger agreed to “destroy” the documents obtained by the Guardian on British soil; there are still copies elsewhere. “I was not going to hand this material to the government in any way, so I said [the Guardian] would destroy it, and if they wanted to supervise the destruction, then they could.”
The documents may be gone from the UK but Rusbridger will not discontinue publishing. “There is material there which I believe deserves to be aired.”
Watch the full segment above
Collier Meyerson