General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: David Miranda was employed as a messenger to carry stolen government documents. [View all]ljm2002
(10,751 posts)...but that "fruit of a poisoned tree" phrase is usually applied when refusing to consider evidence at trial, not when talking about stolen goods / documents.
In any case, there is an issue of journalism here. Snowden did steal the documents, there is no one who claims otherwise, not even Snowden himself. But once a journalist gets their hands on the documents, their status is very different from that of the person who did the leaking / whistle blowing / theft, whatever you want to call it. Journalists in this country, at least, are protected in a way that Snowden would not be.
Furthermore, the documents in question were stolen from the US, not the UK; so why is the UK using its authority under terrorism statutes to detain someone who might have documents that were stolen from the US? If the US had charged him and had requested such help from the UK or Interpol that would be a different matter; however, that is not the case.
Finally, there is zero evidence that Miranda possessed stolen documents in the first place. He could have had drafts of articles by Poitras and/or Greenwald; or the beginning of a documentary; or chapters of Greenwald's book; or any number of other things related to these stories that are not the stolen documents themselves.
I cannot make any claim about what he had in his possession -- nor can you, nor can the UK authorities. Nor will they be able to, since Poitras will have ensured everything was encrypted.