By David Hass and Dr Evan HarrisAlarm about the detention of David Miranda under anti-terror legislation has been met with accusations of hypocrisy. It has been claimed that to condemn Miranda’s detention without criticising the arrests of journalists accused of illegal phone hacking and bribery is double standards. Is it a fair charge?David Miranda was arrested at Heathrow on 18 August and held for nine hours under anti-terrorism legislation. The justification given by the authorities was that he was suspected of carrying sensitive material – that was a threat to national security - from the US whistleblower Edward Snowden to his partner, Glenn Greenwald, the journalist responsible for much of the coverage of Snowden’s revelations about the scale of internet surveillance by UK and US intelligence services, reported in the Guardian and New York Times.The Guardian have strenuously argued that Miranda’s arrest was an abuse of the anti-terror laws which allow police to hold someone for questioning about whether they have been involved with acts of terrorism. And on the face of it, the paper has a strong case. As Lord Falconer, an architect of the Terrorism Act 2000 told the paper, "What schedule 7 (of the Act) 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," he said last week.Miranda’s detention and the seizure of his laptop and other equipment were condemned by news organisations around the world, though not in every corner. Comment pieces in some sections of the UK press this weekend claimed his treatment was justified, in the interests of national security. Some commentators – both opposing and supporting the detention of Miranda - made a different point, namely that it was liberal hypocrisy to express alarm about the detention of Miranda, having “turned a blind eye” to the suffering of journalists and others arrested in connection with allegations of phone hacking and bribery.The Mail cried double standards: “The Guardian continues to be vociferous in its demands for police to pursue tabloid journalists suspected of acting illegally. Is the paper so arrogant and hypocritical as to believe it is itself above the law?” The Spectator declared: ”It is good to see The Guardian suddenly rediscover its interest in the sanctity of a free press. Just five months ago, the paper seemed to have given up on the idea, when it backed the statutory regulation of newspapers. It did not show any particular alarm when Rupert Murdoch’s journalists were hauled out of bed at 6am and had their computers confiscated while police tried to identify their sources.”To equate these two very different investigations does a disservice to serious investigative journalism and to the reading public. One involves the questionable use of anti-terror laws, with little or no formal scrutiny, to detain a man who is helping a journalist report on the extent of secret surveillance of the public by the intelligence services. The journalistic work is clearly on a matter of vital public interest (the extent to which we are under surveillance by foreign intelligence agencies) and the legal question is whether the treatment of the individual (journalist or otherwise) is within the rule of law.The other is a set of criminal investigations, where many of the arrests have led to charges, and others to convictions, relating to the alleged of misconduct of public officials and the stealing of data of private individuals.So in the former case, the state is using what seem to be unlawfully inappropriate methods to try to keep an issue of clear public interest out of the spotlight. In the latter, due process is taking place, of the sort that is inherent in every criminal prosecution – “arrest on suspicion, charging on evidence and conviction on admission or proof of guilt”. The arrests are announced, the charges are listed publicly (one example is here) and the trials will be held in public. All the individuals have lawyers present for their questioning, and they have the right to challenge the entire process judicially. The police investigation – because of its history – is being specifically being overseen by the IPCC, and anyone convicted will have appeal rights. The five members of the editorial staff of the former News of The World facing trial this autumn have all pleaded not guilty to the charges they face.It is hard to avoid the conclusion that what is going on here has little to do with high principle and much to do with false equivalence, a game played aggressively by those publishers fervently opposed to the Leveson reform. If a story can be slightly distorted in order to demonstrate that the press are being unfairly targeted, then it seems it will be distorted. We saw it most recently during the blue chip phone hacking saga, with claims (still not backed by hard evidence) that law firms and other companies knowingly employed illegal methods to get information via private detectives.Most curiously, some of those who argued at the time of Leveson’s publication that state interference in our media was intolerable (a view that we share and which is entirely consistent with Leveson’s prescription for independent self-regulation underpinned by independent audit – in both cases with no role whatever for the Government) now appear to be prepared to tolerate it, under certain circumstances. “No one could be more passionate than the Mail about Press freedom, but the handling of stolen intelligence files by the Guardian raises some uncomfortable questions about its limits”, commented the paper.It should also be remembered that Leveson called for a new law which made clear that the Government must not interfere with the free press - but this was rejected by most in the press.There is justified public interest in how to find the right balance between security, civil liberties, freedom of speech and privacy. Publishing information obtained illegally can be to the public good and prosecutions must pass the normal public interest test (including one designed specifically for media cases where the public interest in the journalistic output is weighed against the overall criminality. In a few cases, there are express public interest defences - and Hacked Off believes that there is now a strong case for more defences of this kind for investigative journalism.Evan Harris is Associate Director and David Hass is Director of Communications for Hacked Off. Evan tweets at @DrEvanHarris