14 DAY TRIAL // Benedict Cumberbatch is getting used to making statements of a political nature while on set for the next “Sherlock” series in London. This time, it’s the case regarding David Miranda, Glenn Greenwald’s partner.
Miranda was detained on Sunday for nine hours under schedule 7 of UK’s anti-terrorism laws that permitted authorities to question in the Heathrow airport.
Cumberbatch posed with several sheets of papers filled out with a clear message.
“Questions we have a right to ask in a democracy,” one message writes, including the names of the British PM and that of the GCHQ, the country’s intelligence agency.
“Schedule 7 prior restraint – Is this erosion of civil liberties winning the war on terror…?” the second page states.
The message sent by Cumberbatch echoes the worries many have expressed over the past several months, namely that governments use terrorist attacks as the new “boogey man.”
Governments have been known to accuse the war on terror for any actions fallen under public scrutiny, including mass surveillance and interrogations with no legal basis.
David Miranda was coming from Berlin and was headed for his home country – Brazil, carrying classified data from Laura Poitras, US film-maker who has also been working on stories related to the NSA files, to Greenwald.
The UK Home Office chose to take him into custody based on a law created for terrorists, demanding he gave them the passwords to his electronic devices so they could access the documents.
The action was decried by numerous politicians, human rights activists and media across the world.
“What schedule 7 allows an examining officer to do is to question somebody in order to determine whether he is somebody who is preparing, instigating or commissioning terrorism. Plainly Mr. Miranda is not such a person,” said Lord Falconer of Thoroton, a man who helped introduce this very act.
