Hacker News Reader

Comment by sschueller | Hacker News Reader

Free Manning, free Assange and free Snowden.

These 3 individuals have shown the world the corruption and criminal activity our governments engage in and no matter how hard they try to silence them, eventually the truth will show through.

View on HN

I agree with free Snowden. But Manning and Assange had a history of leaking unredacted personal information that is indefensible. In the case of Manning, I might add that the leak didn’t show any major wrong doing. It illustrated some case of collateral damage, which we always knew (and the US military keeps public records of). It showed the underbelly of the US diplomacy, which turns out to be rather clean (some ambassadors commenting that the memos look generally very insightful and professional). And it caused some red faces of people who shared thoughts with US diplomats in confidence, and I don’t see how that could possibly be a good thing. Assange and Manning is really leaking for the sole purpose of leaking.

Manning revealed war crimes, yet the only person who went to prison was Manning.

That's all we need to know really. The system is broken und unable to fix itself.

Edit: Free Reality Winner

The system is not perfect, but the reason Manning went to jail is because she made an indiscriminate leak of secrets of which she did not review before she released them.

Had she only released material on stuff she had thought to be a crime, then there would have been a much stronger case to be made as a whistle blower.

It would be like if someone working at a hospital exposed a medical fraud scheme but leaked all the patient records of thousands of people who had nothing to do with scheme. They'd probably get hit with criminal HIPAA violations.

The reason Manning is in jail right now is because she refused to testify to a grand jury about WikiLeaks and got hit with contempt of court. She had been given immunity to testify so the jail time is purely on her.

>The system is not perfect, but the reason Manning went to jail is because she made an indiscriminate leak of secrets of which she did not review before she released them.

And what gives a government a right to have secrets in the first place? Except itself of course...

Normal operation of government is going to require some secrets.

One of the things leaked by Manning was blunt assessments of foreign figures by diplomatic staff. That's exactly the sort of thing that needs to be kept secret for international relations to function.

You mean like if manning had done as Daniel Ellsberg, she would not have been charged and put on trial?

Not saying she wouldn't have been charged anyway, just saying she would've had a stronger case that might have been winnable.

That Manning matter is settled. She has immunity and double jeopardy protection. Sitting in jail in protest of a grand jury is a futile gesture that says more about Manning’s need for attention than anything else.

I don't understand how you can claim this is a futile gesture. If she doesn't want to talk on the record, or state things which might involve snitching on someone I find that to be an admirable action to take.

By the end of the grand jury she will be freed, and she will be freed with the moral high ground. If you think having morals about not snitching is 'futile' that is your choice but many people take it very seriously.

Manning is willing to talk on the record and "snitch". She just doesn't want to do it behind closed doors. But all grand jury proceedings are done behind closed doors for good reason. Manning has no moral high ground here.

Secret proceedings simply shouldn't exist. I think personally that grand juries that are allowed to hold people indefinitely because they don't want to talk in a secret proceeding is wrong. Also, if she talks in a secret proceeding nobody will know if she deliberately said something incriminating aka 'snitched' or just gave innocuous information.

Since her giving secret testimony would raise doubts as to whether she snitched or not, she wants to do so openly in order to maintain her public good-will as a non-snitch. I think you are mistaken in saying that she doesn't have the moral high ground here. These proceedings should be illegal in this country, you shouldn't be allowed to hold someone for unspecified sentences to torture them into talking. That isn't how testimony should be gotten. I'm appalled by some of the opinions here.

I think it is far more defensible than illegally collecting this information and making the leak necessary and required in the first place. Since there are no repercussions for the latter, I don't see how you could call it indefensible. Since allegedly nothing happened.

You don’t think gunning down journalists and innocent civilians from a helicopter is “major wrong doing?”

War is messy, imprecise, and inevitably involves unintended (or possibly intended) civilian casualties. It’s a great argument for avoiding wars that aren’t absolutely necessary.

Thanks for the reminder - Manning is currently not free

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/08/chelsea-mann...

Clearly Manning is the most simpathetic of all mistreated 'leakers'. Truly, what does anyone gain by having her locked up?

I think the intent is to make life hard for whistleblowers to discourage others from doing the same.

And germany is thinking about creating laws to make the life of whistlelowers easier...

Just let that sink in..

au contraire!

There is EU wide whistleblower protection on its way. The motivation is to save money.

More details:

https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2019...

The quote in the article mentions Cambridge Analytica so political whistleblowing could be part of the deal:

"Recent scandals such Cambridge analytica or Lux Leaks have demonstrated the importance of whistleblowers. That is why we need to provide them with a high level of protection across the Union. We should not expect anyone to risk their reputation or job for exposing illegal behaviour."

- Ambassador Luminița Odobescu, Permanent representative of Romania to the EU

> whistleblowers will first have to use internal channels within their organisation before calling on external ones (set up by public authorities) and, eventually, going for public disclosure.

Not helpful. The most important cases are the ones where blowing the whistle will incur reprisals and prevent the whistleblower ever reaching the other two steps.

(I don't see how "The motivation is to save money" though?)

In most cases I can remember, including the most high-profile ones, internal channels were indeed used. They were just ignored. It's the act of going outside those channels which triggered the disloyal reprisals.

I don't see much of a problem with making it mandatory.

You seem to be agreeing with the GP, so why do you say "au contraire"?

I mean, Manning is in jail because Manning chooses to be in jail. Manning had an immunity deal to testify in front of a grand jury and refused to do so, leading to the contempt of court charge that currently has her in jail.

She says she doesn't believe in the concept of being compelled to testify, which is fine, but the penalty for that is jail.

She is being held in solitary for 22 hours at a time. Isn't that a bit harsh for contempt of court?

Manning has been moved out of solitary confinement. https://thehill.com/homenews/437454-chelsea-manning-removed-...

depends upon the security stuff she holds secret...yes it sounds bad...but the other prisoners do not have security clearances and this the solution military justice came up with..is the best solution? probably not but tis the on they went with

She's not locked up for leaking, she's locked up for flagrant contempt in an active grand jury investigation, one which otherwise poses her no legal jeopardy, since she has both immunity and, for much of the subject matter, double jeopardy protection since she's been tried, convicted, and served her sentence for her involvement.

I'm rather struck by the realization here that if a person has spent significant amounts of time in prison being locked up for following their principles, they may start looking at getting locked up for their principles as, well, just something they do.

Is this a traumatic response to the initial experience or something more? After all, being willing to go to prison for your principles underlies much of 'real' activism.

Probably a mix of both.

There's also a certain sort of immunity brought about by the initial exposure.

There are a lot of reasons to not want to be in jail: not wanting to be confined, fear of physical violence... but as a middle-aged person with a family, friends and a job, being in jail for any length of time would just wreck my life. I'd lose my job, my relationship with my family would be strained, and I'd probably lose touch with most of my friends. Rebuilding afterwards would be difficult or even functionally impossible.

If I did have my life burned down around me once, my personality would probably tend towards not wanting it to happen a second time, but I could see another person saying "you can't burn ashes" and leaning into it.

I suspect she holds a tremendous amount of resentment towards her government and basically wants to give them the middle finger because she doesn't respect their legal process after it failed her so miserably

What about this "perjury trap" thing?

https://shadowproof.com/2019/03/21/chelsea-manning-believes-...

Either she committed perjury earlier or she didn't.

That's a thing in the past.

If she has perjured herself she certainly has no legal right not to be punished for it. Immunity agreements come in the form "come clean and tell us all". If she didn't, well, that was a stupid decision.

If she did not perjure herself there is no trap to be laid.

Principles aren’t principles if you only have them when they’re easy.

The US government shoved her in isolation for years. Even with immunity why should she help them now?

> Even with immunity why should she help them now?

Because if her previous testimony was not perjury, and the government is looking to probe around it, she is likely withholding exculpatory evidence that, were it in the hands of the government, they would be subject to sanction if they failed to turn over to the ultimate target of the prosecution and which might, simply by existing, result in abandonment of some or all of the charges being pursued.

Of course, if the prior testimony was perjury, the calculus is different.

She has actually just been released from a months stay in solitary confinement to general prison - for refusing to testify against Wikileaks and Assange

https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/d3mnjz/chelsea-manning-i...

"The judge said she will remain jailed until she testifies or until the grand jury concludes its work."

Wow. Not even some specific number of months or anything. Appears not as a punishment but a blackmail. (edit: yes I miss the right word for this is, there is certainly a better one, I'd be happy to read a better one; edit2: right, extortion, thanks).

Its not a penal sentence, no; insofar as it is a pinishment it is a punishment for an ongoing offense, and continues as long as the offense continues.

And, blackmail is threatening to reveal a secret to get someone to comply, so, no, it's not that.

Yeah, those insignificant pedantic reasons make it not a punishment and not blackmail /s

I didn't say it's not a punishment.

But it's far closer to extortion than blackmail.

But that's true of compulsory legal process generally, not a special feature of confinement for contempt.

What happened to that whole fifth amendment thing?

> What happened to that whole fifth amendment thing?

Hence the immunity.

“But the Fifth Amendment doesn’t provide an absolute right to remain silent and not answer any questions. Rather, it protects people from having to answer incriminating questions about themselves.”

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/immunity-exchange-te...

That's literally how contempt of court works. The alternative is chaos, as people would just refuse to participate in the legal system with no repercussions.

There are all kinds of ways the justice system can induce compliance with legal orders, from fines to imprisonment, and none of them constitute extortion.

Did they change anything? Did anything they do matter in the end?

Yes, and by a great deal.

And what pray tell have you done?

I think we all got caught up in wiki leaks and the seemingly good fight for truth, but to me, their truth looks biased.

I mean, you have to wonder why wiki leaks helped Trump win the election and then pretty much stopped their American leaks. Did the American military stop using murder drones? Wouldn’t Trumps taxes or the Mueller report be interesting? Why have all the abundance of White House leaks ended up in traditional media instead of on wiki leaks?

I’m not American though, so I’m not really that interested in your domestic politics. I prefer you to be working well with Europe, so it’s fair to say I don’t like Trump, but it’s not like your democrats were really a beacon of freedom and justice internationally either.

Living rather close to Russia, so close that they practice airplane bombing runs on our yearly political summit (folkemødet) and regularly fly on the border of our air space, I do wonder why wiki leaks never houses any Russian leaks. The Ukraine was invaded by the Russian military. Sure they dress up and use local militias to be able to deny it, but that’s exactly what happened. They even hacked the entire power grid, and left fallout which is still effecting Maersk because Maersk happened to use similar software. Yet not a single word on anything on wiki leaks?

Maybe it didn’t start out that way, and maybe Assange is not involved with it, but it sure seem like wiki leaks turned into something anti-democracy.

Pretty much the whole Russia angle was a big pile of crap for democrats to save face.

In my opinion, this hysteria is a big scandal for parts of the media, US institutions and the democratic party.

Not saying that Putin is our friend or that republicans are the better choice in the US (not from there).

What about all the actually guilty?

> Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team indicted or got guilty pleas from 34 people and three companies during their lengthy investigation, which is now complete.

> That group is composed of six former Trump advisers, 26 Russian nationals, three Russian companies, one California man, and one London-based lawyer. Seven of these people (including five of the six former Trump advisers) have pleaded guilty.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/20/17031772/m...

Not relevant to the accusation in my opinion. I also have trouble with indictments for making false statements to the FBI, since this institution has become part of a problem itself.

Comparatively, these people don't seem to be clean but I am lacking a reference here.

If you spend two years investigating _anyone_, chances are you can find a law they violated sometime in their life.

What a strangely disingenuous comment. If the FBI investigated me for two years they wouldn't be able to charge me with high profile financial crimes lol. How absurd.

You're 100% certain you've complied with all 70,000 pages of federal tax law and regulations? You've paid sales or use tax on all of your online purchases?

I said "high profile financial crimes" not obscure and rarely enforced legal technicalities.

Could it be that no Russian citizen is leaking because reasons? If there are no leaks from Russia what can they do?

I remember that the leaks about money hidden in the paradise countries contained a lot of russians too.

There are leaks from Russia though, like when their entire Olympic athlete program was outed in the doping scandal, or when they hacked the Ukrainian power grid, or the troll factories.

The leaks just never make it to wiki leaks.

So was those leaked by local press or other institutions? Were those leaked documents also sent to Wikileaks and they refused to analyze or host them? If not I see no problem in the fact that you have many options on how/where to leak, especially if you are in Russia/China you will have a better reach tif you expose politicians and corruption if you use local (in your native language) press, the local journalists can also have the advantage they do not need translates,they are already in the country and can travel and verify things, they have contacts.

Free Ross Ulbricht as well. I feel more for him, to be honest. https://freeross.org

He was akin to a one man cartel, why shouldn't he be locked up? I'd guess there is a high risk he'd do it again if he had the chance. Unless you think it was OK because he was 26 years old and first time offender...

He definitely should have been locked up, but a double life sentence plus forty years without the possibility of parole for selling drugs on the internet seems like overkill

Sure, if "selling drugs on the internet" were his only crime.

I vaguely recall reading he (unsuccessfully) paid to assassinate people.

Edit:

Read it here https://www.wired.com/2015/04/silk-road-1/

  Later that day, DPR messaged Nob.

  DREAD: ok, so can you change the order to execute rather than torture?

  DREAD: he was on the inside for a while, and now that he’s been arrested, I’m afraid he’ll give up info.

That was never proven, yet they used an unproven accusation in the case against him and nobody seemed to think that was an issue.

That's part of the controversy, everyone vaguely recalls that but is unaware that those accusations weren't even brought to trial (https://freeross.org/uncharged-crimes/). He was convicted of money laundering, computer hacking, conspiracy to traffic fraudulent identity documents, and conspiracy to traffic narcotics by means of the Internet.

Why would anyone support this, the man is a psychopath willing to make money any way he can

Snowden and Assange are not being detained.

The very second Assange walks out of the embassy he will be.

Snowden too. He can't go anywhere outside Russia without the threat of capture and extradition, and Russia is only keeping him 'safe' because it pisses off the USA.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com