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Comment by meursault334 | Hacker News Reader

I hope Obama does something to resolve both the Snowden situation and get Chelsea Manning out of prison before he leaves office. I can't see what the downside is to him of doing the right thing at this point.

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Manning isn't the same as Snowden. Lumping them together is a disservice to what Snowden did.

Manning volunteered for the military and gave up some rights as a result. He then distributed data that put lives in danger because he didn't think to clean it up.

Snowden was a private citizen, one who felt his country was not going down the right path. He took time to hatch a plan and release data that he believed wouldn't risk the lives of others.

Snowden deserves a medal not prison.

No, Snowden did exactly what Manning did with the data except took the time to read and organize it per several interviews. Despite being able to filter to domestic only, he instead dumped all NSA's secrets (including foreign operations) he had onto foreign journalists. That's risking operators' lives esp if a foreign, intelligence service our human assets target decides to target those media organizations. Given their results on defense contractors and banks, I'd bet on the foreign spooks getting the Snowden files except for where they were airgapped, guarded day & night in person, and only used by long-time vets.

So, operations blown, tactics exposed, and foreigners having our data on foreign operations. Yes, he burned the shit out of U.S. operations on top of his domestic whistleblowing which I applaud. An example of someone who didn't burn us would be Binney who, knowing all kinds of capabilities, just leaked specific programs and data that were unconstitutional and a threat to citizens' rights.

>foreign journalists

Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald are American citizens?

Guardian and Der Spiegel were what I was thinking about. Greenwald is now in Brazil. Poitras is enemy of U.S. military who previously did exposes on foreign activities and certainly would publish even legit secrets. My comment might need some clarification but it's still accurate. More so after Greenwald's stunt of running with the stuff to Brazil to start his own publication.

>Poitras is enemy of U.S. military

Poitras is pretty clearly not a fan of the US military, but I don't think she's been declared an "enemy combatant". Calling her an "enemy" of the military is disingenuous. The US military does plenty of horrific and inexcusable things, and criticizing those who commit clear war crimes does not make someone an "enemy".

What are you even talking about? I said she's an enemy of the U.S. military. That encompasses many things she can do to disrupt U.S. military. One is leak its classified secrets about operational capabilities in use against legit opponents. All of them were fine with doing that. Over and over. Definitely an enemy combatant on cyber side or Espionage Act contender otherwise. I don't mean technical interpretations of it either: straight-up describing targets, tools, and techniques to our enemies. That's exactly the kind of thing it was conceived for.

Yeah, she's an enemy of the U.S. military for sure. If you need balance, she's not the person to trust for review and reveal. On other hand, if it's domestic stuff... the actual whistleblowing... she's one of best people to handle it because she won't shut up. Just got to do some redactions before turning it over to reduce damage. She and Greenwald did the one's I'd have been concerned about on domestic leaks, mainly protecting the workers. So, that wasn't a problem.

You are bit mistaken - both Snowden and Manning went through reputable journalists, neither of them dumped any data directly to the public/adversaries. Also saying that if you volunteered for the military you should STFU when you see war crimes is questionable at best.

If Manning is a volunteer, how wasn't Snowden a volunteer too?

Both signed strict non-disclosure agreements to work for the US government. Both gave up rights.

In one way, Snowden served more voluntarily than Manning did, because Snowden could quit but Manning had to fulfill the enlistment term. Had Manning walked off the job exactly like Snowden did, he could easily have been court-martialed just for that, especially as Manning was working in a war zone.

What makes you think he is up for the right thing? Serious question.

Everyone wants to do the right thing, they just all have different ideas about what the right thing is. There's always hope that people will come around. Not much, but it's all we've got.

Every time someone decides that someone they disagree with isn't trying to do the right thing (at least according to their own judgement), a kitten dies. Also, every time a public official does change their mind about something but gets punished for it by being accused of "flip-flopping", 2 kittens die. Those two things plus money in politics are my personal top 3 reasons for why we can't have nice things (and/or kittens) in US politics.

If you cannot come up with stronger arguments than "a kitten dies", you are succumbing to the same "my way is right" mentality that you are criticizing.

Sometimes you have to be careful not to get JFK'ed.

>I can't see what the downside is to him of doing the right thing at this point.

It would be political suicide for the Democratic Party and guarantee a Trump victory.

But he'd do it after the election but before a new President is sworn in. Look up Bill Clinton's last day pardons.

as if Clinton had a chance against Trump.

It's like the opposite of McCain/Obama in 2008. Trump is the "Hope" candidate, and Clinton is the "dear god, don't let her in the office" candidate.

If anything, it would probably unite the liberal base, But Clinton is a "centrist"; She's trying to win over republicans with her pro-war agenda. She isn't confident in the liberal base being large enough to win an election.

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