National Security Agency (NSA)
Court bars advocate from filing, orders psych: Delhi high court advocate Uma Shankar Pandey was barred from filing petitions in the court and was ordered to undertake psychiatric treatment, by justices Pradeep Nandrajog and V Kameswar Rao after hearing his six-hour-long arguments for three days. The right to access courts can be restricted to pursue “legitimate and proportionate aims”, observed the bench [IE]
New Madras HC judges: The president has finalised 7 new madras high court judgeships: R Mahadevan, K Kalyanasundaram, PN Prakash, S Vaidyanathan and a lawyer Pushpa Sathyanarayana and two service candidates V Ravi and G Chockalingam [Hindu]
End of Swiss bank secrecy: Switzerland, well-known for its anonymous numbered bank accounts and tight banking secrecy rules, became the world’s 58th nation on Tuesday to sign the Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters – a document, which paves the way for automatic exchange of tax information, thus ending baking secrecy in Switzerland [Hindu]
Bar Assoc against Telangana: Visakhapatnam Bar Association have decided members will meet BJP leaders Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley and request them not to extend their support to the proposed Bill for creation of Telangana State [Hindu]
Indo-brazil internet security: Brazil and India have agreed to share information of internet security strategies to devise internet regulations in order to protect online privacy from snooping by other countries [Hindu]
NSA knows your friends: The National Security Agency has been sifting through millions of contact lists from personal email and instant messaging accounts around the world including those of Americans in its effort to find possible links to terrorism or other criminal activity, according to a published report [Hindu]
Partner of the Guardian journalist whose reportage recently exposed the US’ National Security Agency’s (NSA) mass-surveillance programs, yesterday joined the 0.05 per cent detenu minority to be held up at an airport for over six hours under the Terrorism Act 2000 by the UK police, reported the Guardian.
David Miranda, the Brazilian partner of British journalist Glenn Greenwald, was detained at the Heathrow International Airport for nine hours by the UK police under Schedule 7 of the Act as he was returning from a trip to Berlin. At Berlin he was visiting US filmmaker Laura Poitras who has also been working with Greenwald on the NSA expose.
As per official figures, over 97 per cent of the examinations under Schedule 7 last less than an hour. Miranda was released, but officials confiscated electronics equipment including his mobile phone, laptop, camera, memory sticks, DVDs and games consoles.
Schedule 7 empowers the police to stop and search individuals without prior authorisation or reasonable suspicion, and those stopped do not have the right to silence – setting it apart from other police powers.
Greenwald said: “But the last thing it will do is intimidate or deter us in any way from doing our job as journalists. Quite the contrary: it will only embolden us more to continue to report aggressively." [Greenwald’s editorial]