Chelsea Manning released from prison
cnn.com
cnn.com
Let's hope the media doesn't tear her apart.
[1]: https://twitter.com/xychelsea/status/847264510247190532
For one thing she is certainly more credible not being in prison.
For what its worth, I have family that believe like grandparent's family. Your anecdotes cannot convince them or me what their beliefs really are. This line of opinion does exist.
You can dress it up with whatever fancy logic you want, HN commenters are as bias and unthinking as any others.
Empirically, this is true.
If those many people are wrong on net neutrality because they do not understand the issues, why is it that HN commenters are the biased and unthinking ones?
If you put the fingers in your ears and sing lalala i cant hear you- you end what might have been a discussion. I found most conservatives i met not to reactionary dictator supporters. They are just people with reasonable concerns, finding and in constant fear of some radical social discussion dominance bombers showing up shutting any chance on discussion with a warcrime down.
The worst thing that can happen to a cause is some crazy jackass being held up by the media as the spokesperson.
I was on board for the tea party until the media grabbed a few nut bags and made them the de facto spokespeople for the cause. It was purely about limited government until it got co-opted.
They get to pick the person who they hand the microphone to and they will pick the craziest bat-shit insane person for that role if they don't like what your selling.
I'm just speaking from experience.
Lets cut through all the noise and look at the President's uncut opinion on net neutrality.
>Donald J. Trump Verified account
>@realDonaldTrump
>Obama’s attack on the internet is another top down power grab. Net neutrality is the Fairness Doctrine. Will target conservative media
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/53260835850816716...
So there, that's what about one third of the country are led to believe about net neutrality. Just like with all the fake news recently, facts and rebuttals don't help one bit, and make the believers believe even more in their own "facts".
Good luck getting Breitbart and conservative radio on board with NN, they are fundamentally opposed to anything Obama did, plus are skeptical of govt regulations and there is a lot of money to be made from the cable industry fight on NN.
But if anything net neutrality protects the voices of smaller media which, other than fox, many conservative media e.g. breitbart fall into that category. CNN wouldn't like it but they could pay for a network fast lane, Alex Jones or TheBlaze wouldn't nearly be able to compete!
That whole argument makes no sense, but given where it comes from one of Trump's advisers probably whispered it into his ear.
For anyone else wondering where this is coming from.
[0] https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/819630102787059713
[1] http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/314783-assange-lawye...
?
He was never going to do it in the first place. Do you really think that a president would reverse a pardon if Julian Assange did not stand by his words?
>He was never going to do it in the first place.
That is what I was implying. Julian didn't think Obama would actually commute the sentence so said he'd turn himself in for free PR points.
Maybe not. But I don't think he decided to spend 3-4 years in the Ecuadorian UK embassy because he's having fun there.
To my knowledge, that ist what he is wanted for in Sweden. If there is a better way to express that, I would like to hear it.
Edit: I have now listened to the whole thing and there seems to be no mention of that offer as far as I can tell. So either I missed it, you mistakenly linked the wrong interview, this is anti-Assange Propaganda you hope nobody is going to check too closely, or it is guerilla marketing for the intercept.
It seems to me to be too little (clemency instead of a pardon) too late (she already spent a horrific amount of time under torturous conditions in prison).
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/05/14/chel...
> After the 2013 sentencing, the ex-intelligence agent changed her name to Chelsea Manning and identified as transgender.
Enlisted MI are hardly 'intelligence agents'.
Edit: NBC reports it as voluntary excess leave. http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/chelsea-manning-set-be-r...
Thank you Chelsea, welcome home
3am?! A parting kick to the head, or a ploy to avoid publicity?
I would like to go as early as possible. 3 am is not as good as immediately at midnight, but I wouldn't consider it a kick to the head.
(edit removed the yet in "proved yet")
Because of the media, power balances, legalities etc of US life, they obviously wouldn't be doing them in an open Third World/Banana Republic style (where, depending on the country/political climate, the state doesn't hesitate much to semi-openly get rid of enemies and more or less everybody knows they did it).
Because people who would be targets of political murders don't die at a statistically unusual rate. Unless you think they are also being secretly replaced with more pliant clones/cyborgs or we are all just copied over to a less unruly simulation. Then it would be harder to know.
They don't have to be well known people that you would identify as targets. In fact those would be the worst to target. They could be potential whistleblowers you never learned of, for example.
That said, sticking to well known people that could be targets, there's a large variety of those to e.g. MLK Jr, Malcom X, JFK, Robert Kennedy -- to name but a few in a single decade's span.
Some of them, we don't know who did them at all (e.g. MLK).
But even if that was the case, it's not difficult to manipulate a "crazy" to do something, especially if you have both crazies and guns in abundance in a country.
It would be a nice way to avoid blame for the whole thing, and you can even have some mafia figure/ex-cop collaborator kill them afterwards, before said crazies ever get to go to trial for the first murder.
>you have to come up with some evidence otherwise it's just conspiracy theorizing
You think there's much evidence in e.g. banana republic political murders too, even those where still everybody knows the government or some mogul with special interests ordered them?
It's not difficult to say it's not difficult. Again, it's a completely evidence-free claim.
You think there's much evidence
There isn't any evidence the government is taking out hits on politically inconvenient figures in the US. "There can't possibly be any evidence, look at some other (vaguely described, non-specific place/event) where there is also no evidence, QED" is pretty much classic conspiracy-theorist logic (if you can call it that).
I worried about all these things and all I was doing was coming out as gay. And I live in the UK, which has strong legal protection against discrimination on the basis of sexuality and gender, and a relatively accepting culture.
I can only imagine it was a thousand times worse to come out as trans. Or even to understand it in yourself - again, this took me years and I was "merely" discovering that I was gay.
Then when you get wounded you call a airstrike and eliminate the village.
One has to give it to the drone warriors- at least they send the commando duke of hazards to the unemployment office.
I hate this whole walking on eggshells around gender/identity politics. It detracts from the discussion for no valid reason.
I don't go out of my way to be insensitive, but I'm not going to flush my DVD of The Matrix down the Memory Hole because it has "Wachowski Brothers" stamped on it. If the Wachowskis put out a new movie today, I'll reference them appropriately as the Wachowski sisters who produced it, but they simply weren't sisters when they created The Matrix, and I'll continue to reference the creators of that movie as brothers.
I saw a similar rewriting of history upstream in this thread, and I just can't let that slide. In fact, this is an edge case where nobody is right or wrong, so there can really be no "correction" to call out. Someone (Manning) changed the rules mid-game, so it must be expected and tolerated that not everyone will parse the output of the remainder of the game to their liking.
Until then, I'm afraid that there's not really a whole heck of a lot that's respectful about your disagreement. Trans folks as a whole overwhelmingly evince preference for not having their prior name or gender identity thrown around and trans folks very regularly remain in the closet publicly even when they are out to friends and family, making your assumptions based on...well, not a whole heck of a lot. Unless you've read something I haven't (totally possible, but you'll forgive me if I doubt it), you have no idea of timing or the propriety here and so the presumption of her gender identity at that point is kinda actually really mean. You may have good intentions, but you're pissing in the pool and you should stop.
For instance, when Muhammad Ali won a gold medal in the 1960 Olympics and the heavyweight title in 1964, he was still going by his "slave name" of Cassius Clay; do you think it is reasonable - either for anyone or for someone who watched the matches at the time - to refer to the 1964 heavyweight champion as Cassius Clay, or should they just call him Muhammad Ali?
Women also frequently change their name, sometimes more than once, throughout their lives; if a woman marries and takes the name of her husband, or divorces and resumes use of her maiden name, would you continue to refer to her by her former name, even in reference to events that took place during her use of it, or would you simply update your nomenclature without complaint?
>this is an edge case where nobody is right or wrong
It's not some sort of edge case, the "right," (polite) way to refer to someone is the way they prefer to be refereed as. If someone named James introduces themselves as "Jimmy" and you refer to him as "James" and he says "it's Jimmy" and you say "Nuh uh your name on your birth certificate is James, you're wrong I'm right!!" you are just being a dick.
People change what they like to be called during their life all the time, that's not new nor is it an edge case. Kid nicknames go to the wayside of adult names/nicknames. I've known a "Peggie" who changed to "Margaret," an "Anthony" who changed to "Tony," and a "Robbie" who is now "Bob." In fact, many/most women change their name at some point in the future. It's normal/accepted/polite to call someone by their current name/pronoun even when referring to past actions.
If I recall a childhood story about my friend Tony I'm going to call him Tony in the story even if he went by Anthony at the time. It's weird/confusing/stupid to do otherwise and certainly not "rewriting history" or "changing the rules."
This only follows if the value of "not saying something that would be offensive to someone who isn't even party to the conversation" (a value which we violate without a second thought, sometimes even gleefully, when it doesn't involve an anointed "social justice" issue) outweighs the value of "communicating clearly and accurately". Chelsea Manning was named Bradley Manning. She was male, at least as far as anyone else was concerned.
It's one thing to request that people call you by a certain name and pronoun now - it's quite another to insist that everyone pretend it has always been thus.
Nobody is disagreeing with that. But using 'he' as a pronoun, even for things in the past, is weird and confusing. Do you call Marilyn Monroe 'Norma Jeane Mortenson' when talking about her childhood? No, of course not, because that confuse people.
Manning has been Chelsea and used 'she' for 4 years now, people now know her as a woman, and it makes sense to use that pronoun. Back in 2013, when Manning first came out as trans, maybe it would be alright to say 'Bradley' for a day or two when talking about her transition. But not now.
> it's quite another to insist that everyone pretend it has always been thus.
Quite frankly, it feel like you're just doing this to be transphobic and invalidate her identity.
I guess there are more trans people than informants so maybe there's some statistical point to be made there, but frankly I'm not sure why you picked this nit to begin with. I think it's important to recognize, rather than downplay the risks faced by marginalized groups in the US and elsewhere.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unlawfully_killed_tran...
As a Dutch person I was very confused for a minute, but then I remembered there are indeed lawfully killed people in other countries.
(And while writing this, I remembered euthanesia is legal here, but that's not killing in my mind because the person chose it for themselves and the given reason cannot be an external, solvable condition.)
Similarly, if you go on social media to make posts about how being trans is not as dangerous as people seem to be implying, even if it contains a grain of statistical truth, you are making a certain point. Again, I think it's important to "photograph" the oppression faced by marginalized groups than to highlight ways this oppression is supposedly exaggerated.
Your point about my poisoning the well suggests you think I was trying to "call you out" or attack you, but that's not the case. I think we have a reasonable meta-disagreement about whether there is a political knock-on effect of highlighting different statistics or narratives. It's a disagreement two people of good faith can have.
Here's some more reading: https://www.hrc.org/resources/violence-against-the-transgend... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unlawfully_killed_tran...
https://www.facebook.com/sophievlabelle/posts/18847957251286...
Who is gunning trans (just because they are trans)?
> Though a federal hate crimes law requires the collection of some statistics related to violence against transgender people, experts are dubious about the numbers they're getting. “A lot of jurisdictions report zeroes, even in places where we know there are hate crimes," Keisling says. Most state laws don't require the collection of such statistics, according to Minter.
Given the high incidence of sexual violence against transgender persons (https://www.ovc.gov/pubs/forge/sexual_numbers.html) it certainly seems likely the murder rate is similarly high. There's a "one-in-twelve" stat that appears to have gone around, but it's not true: http://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2015/may/13/garne...
Nothing good or interesting came from those leaks. And they were legitimate threat to US security. And Snowden ones were responsible, curated and only in the areas where rights of US citizens were infringed.
And yet he is stranded in Russia (1/6 of the world, so not bad).
What is the lesson - if you leak, leak more severe?
Manning was not pardoned, her sentence was commuted. She is still considered guilty on all grounds on which she was convicted.
> And Snowden ones were responsible, curated and only in the areas where rights of US citizens were infringed.
> And yet he is stranded in Russia (1/6 of the world, so not bad).
> What is the lesson - if you leak, leak more severe?
Snowden has not been sitting a in a US prison for years (in pretty difficult conditions) after a sentencing which many found excessive and unfair.
So the lesson is rather more "get sentenced to rank reduction to E-1, forfeiting of pay and allowances, dishonorably discharged and 35 years in prison and you may see the last part reduced to only ~6 years afterwards".
Oh don't forget the 6 years include a significant duration as POI at Quantico:
* checks by guards every five minutes
* not allowed to sleep between 5 am (7 am on weekends) and 8 pm
* required to remain visible at all times, no sheets, pillow built into mattress, and blanket designed for unshreddability
* sleeping attire limited to boxer shorts
* 6 × 12 ft (1.8 x 3.6 m) with no window, containing a bed, toilet and sink
* allowed to walk for up to one hour a day, meals in the cell, shackled during lawyer visits
Not to disparage Snowden, and his reasons for not coming back seem sound, but political asylum in Russia isn't exactly Manning's last 6 years.
Snowden thinks (and I personally agree) that the second step (of him going through a trial) would not work, because he wouldn't get a fair trial, and I agree with him.
And, as was pointed out to you, Manning hasn't been cleared of claims that she made. She still made a crime according the court and was still convicted of that crime. It's just that her punishment got reduced and she is now free.
It's nowhere even near the similar situation. Snowden's case is basically in the same stage where Manning's case was when she leaked the documents, so somewhere around 2011. Manning pleaded guilty to the charges in court in early 2013. Snowden still didn't go through that process.
1. Manning thought she was doing the right thing and didn't realize what she would cause. Snowden knew exactly what he was doing.
2. Manning leaked the docs to something that is probably a Russian front but something she didn't realize was a Russian front. Snowden, if he didn't turn over the leaks to the Russian and Chinese governments, certainly put them in great risk of being turned over.
You have a very narrow definition of Hackers.
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
[…]
If you think a story is spam or off-topic, flag it by clicking on its 'flag' link.
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
This seems like mainstream TV news, not really Hacker News.
She copied a lot of that data onto a CD and passed it to Julian Assange, who is the head of Wikileaks. Wikileaks publishes digital data it receives from whistle-blowers, both summarizing and analyzing the data itself. It also provided access to other journalists (Der Spiegel, The Guardian, etc.) in order to incentive scoops and increase the impact of the leaked material. Some of the material includes the "Afghan War Logs", which is essentially raw military data on the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, including estimates of civilians killed in raids. The data itself is available to the public as an SQL or CSV database.
One of the pieces of data was the so-called "collateral murder" video which shows a U.S. apache helicopter firing on unarmed civilians, including a Reuters journalist who died and two children who were injured. Reuters had filed a FOIA request (Freedom of Information Act) to get public access to the video, but was unsuccessful. Since Manning had access to database, and because digital data has a marginal cost of $0, he was able to copy the video onto the CD passed along to Assange, thus bypassing the stall tactics of the U.S. government in releasing the video.
Manning was caught after the FBI had apparently enlisted Adrian Lamo-- himself a former hacker (or I guess cracker to be exact) who apparently Manning trusted and chatted with over IRC.
Also-- and I admit this is a digression from actual "hacker news"-- the U.N. Special Rapporteur on torture publicly stated that the U.S.'s treatment of Manning while awaiting trial was "cruel, inhuman and degrading." In fact, when someone from the press finally got the nerve to ask about this, a U.S. state department official called Manning's treatment "ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid." (He then resigned.)
Anyway, we're talking about the release of a computer analyst who got caught confiding in a well-known hacker, and who was sent to prison for passing the largest collection of digital documents to someone who is at present probably the most well-known hacker in the world.
If this subject isn't relevant to a site called "Hacker News", what is?
The CNN mainstream news was that she is being released from prison and she wants to grow her hair. Okay. My opinion is that this isn't really hacker news... more pop-culture about someone who once was convicted of copying intelligence data to a CD and giving it to someone. The story of the hacking was a while ago.
Functional governments have a vested interest in not forgiving blatant disregard for their laws, regardless of the morality of the acts that led to the disregard. It's possible (but probably unlikely) that he could have been pardoned, found innocent, or had a sentence commuted had he turned himself in, but escaping the reach of American justice? There's very little incentive for a country to reward "Break the law then run from our jurisdiction," independent of the details.
Snowden's successfully attained a life probably free of American legal influence. His reward is a life free of American legal influence.
Unless you are high enough on the food-chain
Yeah, I'd have preferred the Arab Spring to be resolved more peaceably myself. It's not under Chelsea's control nor mine how that played out after the information was released. It's difficult to blame the person who released true information for the impact of the information. The content and the creators or subjects of the content are to blame for the revolutions. Chelsea just let the rebels and revolutionaries know what they had every right to know.