The New York Times report on today’s huge libertarian freak-out has a very interesting detail, completely left out of the reports by the Guardian and Glenn Greenwald: Britain Detains the Partner of a Reporter Tied to Leaks.

Mr. Miranda was in Berlin to deliver documents related to Mr. Greenwald’s investigation into government surveillance to Ms. Poitras, Mr. Greenwald said. Ms. Poitras, in turn, gave Mr. Miranda different documents to pass to Mr. Greenwald. Those documents, which were stored on encrypted thumb drives, were confiscated by airport security, Mr. Greenwald said. All of the documents came from the trove of materials provided to the two journalists by Mr. Snowden. The British authorities seized all of his electronic media — including video games, DVDs and data storage devices — and did not return them, Mr. Greenwald said.

That’s correct — Glenn Greenwald’s partner was helping Greenwald and Laura Poitras exchange documents stolen by Edward Snowden. He was basically a mule.

And note: Mr. Miranda is not a journalist, and has no journalistic protections, according to Glenn Greenwald:

“This is obviously a serious, radical escalation of what they are doing. He is my partner. He is not even a journalist.”