In an unusual warning, Europe’s top human rights organization said on Wednesday that Britain’s reaction to the exposure of the US’ vast surveillance program had potentially troubling consequences for free expression.
Using language usually reserved for authoritarian holdouts in Eastern Europe or the Caucusus, the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe asked British authorities to explain why they ordered the destruction of computer equipment held by the Guardian newspaper — the publication at the center of the revelations — and the detention of a reporter’s partner at London’s Heathrow Airport.
“These measures, if confirmed, may have a potentially chilling effect on journalists’ freedom of expression as guaranteed by ... the European Convention on Human Rights,” Council of Europe Secretary-General Thorbjoern Jagland said in an open letter to British Home Secretary Theresa May.
The Council of Europe, a separate entity from the EU, runs the European Court of Human Rights, which enforces the rights code signed by the council’s 47 member states. The watchdog body regularly intervenes on human rights issues across the continent, but the language deployed in the letter was more familiar from council communications to countries with shaky records on the rule of law.
Council spokesman Daniel Holtgen said the words “chilling effect” had previously been used in reference to situations in Turkey and Azerbaijan.
“Rarely has there been the case that we’ve expressed concern over a Western state,” he said in a telephone interview. “The bottom line is: We have to have the same standards.”
Britain has been on the defensive since Sunday, when London police used anti-terrorism powers to detain David Miranda — the partner of reporter Glenn Greenwald — at Heathrow and seize disks carrying what his lawyers said was sensitive material.
Greenwald has been at the center of the Guardian’s reporting on the US National Security Agency’s secret domestic espionage program, and Miranda’s detention drew outrage from many.
The next day, Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger revealed that British spies had overseen the destruction of hard drives carrying the leaked material which has served as the basis for much of the paper’s reporting, sending intelligence agents into the newsroom’s basement to watch as the disks were smashed.
Although Rusbridger said other copies of the leaks exist elsewhere and British officials defended the move as an attempt to keep the sensitive intelligence out of foreign hands, the image of spies overseeing the destruction of journalists’ hard drives rang alarm bells across Europe.
Holtgen posed a rhetorical question: What would have happened had a journalist’s partner been detained in Moscow, or if a Russian newspaper had had its hard drives smashed?
“You would have the Western press all over Russia,” he said.
“We need to apply the same standards to Western countries — including founding members of the Council of Europe, such as France, the UK, or Germany,” he said.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of