Joshua Foust reports on a hearing today in the UK about the government’s detention of Glenn Greenwald’s partner David Miranda. There was apparently much more to that incident than we previously knew. Excerpt:

• Statement from senior Cabinet Office civil servant to #miranda case says material was 58000 ‘highly classified UK intelligence documents’
• Police who seized documents from #miranda found among them a piece of paper with the decryption password, the statement says
• This password allowed them to decrypt one file on his seized hard drive, adds Oliver Robbins, Cabinet Office security adviser #miranda
• The Govt believes Edward Snowden, the NSA ‘whistleblower’, “indiscriminately appropriated material in bulk” #miranda
• The material contains personal information that would allow British intelligence staff to be identified, inc some overseas, it adds #miranda
• The Govt has had to assume Snowden data is now in the hands of foreign governments, since his travel abroad (to HK and Russia) #miranda
• Statement specifically says UK but they haven’t finish decrypting yet
• It is “impossible” for Glenn Greenwald or any other journalist to determine which info could damage UK national security: Robbins statement
• “The claimant & his associates have demonstrated very poor judgment in their security arrangements with respect to the material…”#miranda“…
• rendering the appropriation of the material, or at least access to it by other, non-State actors, a real possibility” #miranda

In other words, David Miranda was allegedly carrying top-secret British intelligence documents, including information that could identify British spies abroad, and Greenwald & Co. were so lax with their security — including Miranda’s traveling with a code that would allow someone to decrypt the documents he also carried — that the information could have been accessed by terrorists.

That’s not nothing. To put it mildly.

Alan Rusbridger of The Guardian vigorously disputes the government’s claims, as does Miranda’s lawyer.