Nitpick: Who was carrying large numbers of classified documents on him when caught.
Nitpick doubled: (a) Why does the UK care about documents classified by the US? and (b) The antiterrorism legislation used was designed (and was explicitly promised to be used only) for cases rather more serious than carrying classified documents.
Those powers being to use the military inside his own borders, being allowed to kill citizens of his own country without judicial oversight and waging wars by his own decision.
And these powers derive from the 9/11 trauma, not from mass surveillance. And we’ve seen far worse in the US in the last 60 years.
I certainly agree that surveillance enables bad governments, but I’ve yet to see a good argument that surveillance causes good governments to go bad (eg UK vs France).
The director of intelligence can keep his job despite the criminal act of lying under oath to congress. In what we call in Europe a democratic state something like that doesn’t happen.
Alas, that does happen, and has happened, regularly over the last years, decades, and centuries.
Nitpick: Who was carrying large numbers of classified documents on him when caught.
I mostly agree with your point.
Nitpick doubled: (a) Why does the UK care about documents classified by the US? and (b) The antiterrorism legislation used was designed (and was explicitly promised to be used only) for cases rather more serious than carrying classified documents.
Which isn’t a crime. Even if it would be because it violated some secret UK gap order law it isn’t terrorism.
And these powers derive from the 9/11 trauma, not from mass surveillance. And we’ve seen far worse in the US in the last 60 years.
I certainly agree that surveillance enables bad governments, but I’ve yet to see a good argument that surveillance causes good governments to go bad (eg UK vs France).
Alas, that does happen, and has happened, regularly over the last years, decades, and centuries.