Editors Slam UK Action Against Guardian After Snowden NSA Leak

The editors of four top Nordic dailies on
Sunday wrote to British Prime Minister
David Cameron to protest his government’s
treatment of The Guardian newspaper over
its publication of US security secrets. The editors said they were “deeply
concerned that a stout defender of
democracy and free debate like Britain
refers (to) anti-terror legislation in order to
legalise what amounts to harassment. “The implication of these acts may have
ramifications far beyond the borders of
Britain, undermining the position of the
free press throughout the world,” wrote the
editors of Sweden’s Dagens Nyheter,
Denmark’s Politiken, Norway’s Aftenposten and Finland’s Helsingin Sanomat. The letter was also published in The
Guardian’s sister Sunday title, the Observer. “An assault on one newspaper easily
becomes an assault on several newspapers
and by extension everyone’s freedom of
speech,” Dagens Nyheter editor Peter
Wolodarski told the Stockholm daily. British counter-terror police on Thursday
launched a criminal investigation into
documents seized from David Miranda, the
Brazilian partner of Guardian journalist
Glenn Greenwald, who worked with former
American intelligence contractor Edward Snowden to break a series of stories on
massive electronic surveillance by the US
National Security Agency (NSA). Miranda was detained for nine hours at
London’s Heathrow Airport last Sunday by
police and agents using anti-terror laws, and
said he had his laptop, phone and other
electronic equipment confiscated. He had worked with Greenwald, his
American partner, on the Snowden material
and was stopped as he changed planes on
his way home from Berlin to Rio de Janeiro,
outraging campaigners for press freedom. Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger also
revealed last week that the British
government had forced the paper to
destroy its Snowden files or face a court
battle. The government confirmed that Cabinet
Secretary Jeremy Heywood – Britain’s top
civil servant and Mr Cameron’s most senior
policy advisor – was sent to tell the
newspaper they had to either destroy or
return the material, or face legal action.