As David Miranda contemplates legal action against the British Government for detaining him at Heathrow Airport for nine hours under an anti-terrorism law, the peer who actually introduced that law says the UK had no business invoking it in Miranda’s case.

“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 Charles Falconer of Thoroton, who served as solicitor general from 1997-98 and as Lord Chancellor from 2003-07. 

David Miranda is the partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, the journalist most closely associated with fugitive NSA leaker Edward Snowden.  The two revealed details of the US and UK conducting vast, and often unlawful, electronic surveillance on practically the entire Internet and many mobile networks.

Miranda was traveling from Berlin, where he had met with a filmmaker also working with Snowden.  He says cops at Heathrow intercepted him, detained him, and confiscated all of the electronics he was carrying.

The was praised by current Home Secretary Theresa May, who in turn has been condemned by Lord Falconer.

Meanwhile, Miranda’s lawyers are threatening legal action against May and the head of the police.  They’re demanding; the return of Miranda’s electronic gear; an official undertaking that there will be “no inspection, copying, disclosure, transfer, distribution or interference, in any way with our client's data”; and an order that if the data has already been copied, it will not be shared with any third party, foreign or domestic.