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Comment by Amadou | Hacker News Reader

I think it is quite possible that it was clerical.

Some nameless official put anyone plausibly close to Snowden on one of however many "people of interest" type lists the UK has. It might even be a trickle down from some list in the USA. The original list may not even be intended as a "detain this person" list, but the way these secret lists work sourcing from other lists with different intents means the end result isn't necessarily the intended result.

Tyranny through bureaucracy basically. A little bit ironic what with the guy being Brazilian and Terry Gilliam's opus Brazil dealing with basically the same theme.

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Clerical for an hour, /maybe/. Not clerical for nine hours, that's planning.

Yes agree. 9 hours is way more than clerical.

Not on a weekend.

You have an unwarranted amount of faith in bureaucratic competency.

Adam Curtis just 10 days ago published a good piece on bureaucratic competence within the UK intelligence community:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/BUGGER

The film J. Edgar actually felt a lot like that. Similarly, A Beautiful Mind.

No, it isn't because these lists are one-way. Once you are detained no one in authoritay ever considers the possibility that you are on the list incorrectly. There is absolutely no benefit to themselves to question the list. If they are wrong they let a terrorist go, meanwhile detaining the guy is all by the book so no risk to their job security.

No, this is Special Branch. David's passport is on a stop list. SB have a database that is outside the usual police records that contains information that you won't get by making an FOI request. They know exactly who is coming through and when. They will have had specific instructions on what to do, and those instructions come directly from the Home Office. Even HMIC don't get to look at this stuff. Stopping someone in transit is pretty unusual.

Any tech they seized is now being foresically analysed. He is unlikely to get it back.

They probably thought that it was highly likely he was a data mule between Greenwald and Poitras. I'd guess that they were probably right in that assumption.

I know a man, who knows a dog. I'll leave it at that.

> They probably thought that it was highly likely he was a data mule between Greenwald and Poitras. I'd guess that they were probably right in that assumption.

If you're right, they screwed up, because they detained him on his trip back to Brazil. Any data he might have been carrying to Poitras he could have already delivered -- and I'm sure he would have been smart enough not to keep a copy.

Clerical error, maintained for a day, with Amnesty International and the Brazilian ambassador screaming blue murder? Yeah, right.

Alternative explanation (without endorsing either): it took 9 hours because nobody high enough could be found that would sign off on keeping him longer.

I like that better.

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