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!ukpolitics@lemm.ee appears to have vanished! We can still see cached content from this link, but goodbye I guess! :'(
So this is basically the $5 wrench attack, but by the government
“The ultimate test of a society’s freedom is not how it treats its good, obedient, compliant citizens; it’s how it treats its dissidents.” - Glenn Greenwald
If you search his name, you'll see exactly zero big news orgs covering this story. BBC, Reuters, AFP, every British newspaper, all notable by their absence. Why? This is A Story, right?
There are a few reasons this can happen.
Super Injunction (sometimes self applying). But these tend to be used for privacy issues.
Unverifiable sources (which is why jumping to assuming a gag order is sometimes premature)
And it's possible that the major outlets are trying to prepare reports in a watertight way. Or that part of the story just hasn't been proven/released yet.
I'd like one of these to be the reason, but I see no evidence to support it.
Super injunction - as you say, usually used for privacy issues, unlikely to apply here and if it is the case, then the other, smaller, news orgs covering the story would be in trouble.
Unverifiable sources - the IFJ is a rock solid source. Even if it weren't, then this claim would assume that the news orgs that have published are all guilty of cowboy journalism.
Watertightness - for the Panama papers, yes. For this small story, no way. It's A Story, and it's the journalist's job to get copy out as quickly as possible.
As I said I'd like it if any of these were the case and thanks for pointing them out as I certainly hadn't thought of them when I wrote my comment, but I'm still just not seeing it. It seems like a decision has been made not to pursue this story, but I'm not jumping to conclusions as to why. It's hard to keep the faith though, when there are zero major outlets reporting on it, which means that decision not to pursue has been made multiple times by multiple different editors. WTF
According to the article the British Journalist Union condemned the arrest.
Medhurst openly supports Palestinian armed resistance. Which is probably why the big newspapers do not report on him.
"including a highly secure phone with a Graphene operating system"
Wow, what an endorsement.
I dislike Richard Medhurst for a whole bunch of reasons.
Pro-Assad, pro use of child soldiers (as long as it's the side he supports anyway), has expressed he wants to ethnically cleanse Israelis, is an avid supporter of China and denier of the Uighur genocide, is a contributor to and paid by PressTV (Iranian government owned news), is a contributer to and paid by Russia Today, believes NATO are the aggressors in the Russia-Ukraine war, etc.
There's also allegations from two women that he groomed them while they were teenagers, but as this is unproven I will assume his innocence on that one.
I don't think of this person as a journalist at all. He's a hack. A hack that has shown support of more than one proscribed terrorist institutions.
But I do believe you should have a fundamental right to privacy and not having to give your passwords up. Failing to give up his password should result in no extra charges against him IMO.
Section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000 criminalises anyone who “invites support for a proscribed organisation” or “expresses an opinion or belief that is supportive” of such a group. Those arrested under the section say the threshold is so low that individuals could be arrested with no intention of doing anything they are charged with.
https://www.declassifieduk.org/free-speech-threatened-as-journalists-treated-like-terrorists/
This law seems so broad, that it could be used to arrest anyone they want.
How does "expresses an opinion or belief that is supportive" work? If Hamas is in support of rescueing puppies and I am in support of rescueing puppies, does that make me a terrorist in the UK?
This law seems so broad, that it could be used to arrest anyone they want.
that is very likely the point. the UK has been trying to crank down hard on the “troublemakers” with rather general laws recently. another example being section 7 of the public order act. or really just the public order act as a whole
UK as a country hates its citizens
As someone from a dictatorship I seriously can't stress the importance of fighting this case and others like it. These people are trying to steal democracy from you, so hold on for dear life and do not let go. It'll be too late if you wait until there's a secret police arresting people for criticizing the state.
❤️ I hope you and your family are well.
Where can I donate to their legal fund?
Richard has a Patreon and direct donation button. However this is a general donation and not solely for legal funds.
Thank you
This is clear abuse of power and the officers detaining him should face false imprisonment charges.
"The police have no chance of extracting the information from the Graphene operating system phone, using the well-known technology of the Israeli company Cellebrite."
This article is a GrapheneOS advert in disguise.
As I prepare to watch the US slip into authoritarianism it pains me to see that, in some ways, the UK is already there.
“I forgot it”
Nowadays you have a duress password on Graphene. So you just claim "i forgot it" and then sadly sob out the duress password when they throw a fit.
I've always wanted to be able to have different pin logins on android. Log in 1 is all my shit, log in 2 is a dummy login with shit to show authorities. Log in 3 could be my porn log in.
Straight to jail
Works if you're Dick Cheney or Eric Adams
It’s cool how some zionist piece of shit downvotes people who take his side. But pieces of shit exist, so oh well.
I don't know man, I'm not sure I trust that scarf.