Hacker News Reader

Comment by wurst_case | Hacker News Reader

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

View on HN

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.

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

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"?

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...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com