Sounds like the NSA who couldn't point to a single instance of stopping any type of terrorist attack/operation despite collecting anything they could get their hands on.
This can’t be true - there are plenty of sources citing foiled plots and we see similar publications from other governments (EU and beyond) citing similar justifications. A quick google yields:
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/nsa-director-50-potential-te...
https://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/nsa-leak-keith-alexan...
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/gchq-foiled-terr...
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/nsa-program-stopped-no-te...
A panel member claimed the phone metadata collection program hadn’t saved any lives/foiled any attacks - not that the NSA itself hasn’t.
Additionally they present this as being at odds with the Obama administrations documentation, not a refutation (they didn’t find them to be false claims).
Lol the article you list was published before the documentation cited was presented (and before my articles were even published) - additionally you are moving the goalposts - the op claim is that the nsa hasn’t foiled any terror plots - not about metadata collection
The more pressing issue is that the NSA is a group of people. Nobody knows exactly what they are doing, or why, and the only information that comes out is "trust us, we're the good guys". They have a huge budget. Odds are they are massively corrupt and doing stupid things that either do nothing or make America less safe (like mass wire-tapping).
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/nsa-chi...
How is it hard? "Based on our data collection we found that these people were planning X and arrested them" doesn't sound hard... Unless it never happened.
Or of assisting a hacker?
If he's not accused of doing the first, then this is hardly relevant to his case.
We are in an historical moment when transmitting the COVID-19 to someone else could cost you lifetime jail, I don't think they will go easy on revealing the secret identities of operatives.
As for covid, that's simply a false equivalence.
What? This hasn't happened.
It has some bearing on the sentencing.
This is kind of a misrepresentation of the situation.
Manning leaked mostly diplomatic cables, the contents of which he was unaware of, thereby harming his whistleblower credentials.
The contents were not what we would regard as 'intelligence information' - more aptly described as 'the e-mails of the US diplomatic foreign corps', some of which contained sensitive information'.
That gigabyte of private information was released and there wasn't a single scandal of it shows how tight the operation was, moreover any reading of the cables demonstrates how well the US diplomatic corps were actually doing their jobs.
Far from releasing damning information about Americans, the cables released inside information about Arab leaders and their systematic corruption.
To unearth that amount of private information, to have it combed over by thousands of journalists trying to find a juicy bit, and to come up with very little ... is frankly something Americans can be proud of.
It's ridiculously ironic that Manning, in his attempt to discredit America, ended up doing what US diplomats were unable to do within the constraints of their jobs, which is to speak truth to power about the corruption in the Middle East - which ignited the Arab Spring.
The real world is sausage making and grinding, any skeptical, decontextualized look under any rocks will always yield something to talk about - so in the end, it's really the details and context that really do matter.
The cables did truly pose a serious threat to the security and integrity of individuals in various ways, and obviously it compromised many programs. That there doesn't seem to be any deadly outcomes is wonderful, but it doesn't abnegate Manning from the inappropriate actions he took particularly on the cable leak.
What's far more interesting about this case, is the fact that the press used to be in love with Assange, and now they hate him. I wonder what caused them to turn. Obviously, his close ties to Russia are problematic, but it's hard to see exactly what it is. It's possible that he's just not contemporarily a social advocate in their view: we're now full-on into intersectional issues, matters of state etc. are 'old news' it would seem.
He published Clinton's emails. After that he was no longer on the same "team" as American journalists.
No, it just shows how subservient to U.S. foreign policy the American press is (they did not undertake any widespread publishing of embarrassing details from the cables), and how uninterested and easily misled the American public is about our government's actions overseas.
> What's far more interesting about this case, is the fact that the press used to be in love with Assange, and now they hate him.
The American press was never that in love with Assange -- the smear jobs and carping about his character started very soon after the Manning leaks, as Cockburn points out. The nail in the coffin was publishing the DNC emails, which despite containing a great deal of newsworthy details and indications of corruption, became a convenient scapegoat for Clinton's loss in the 2016 election and are now viewed almost exclusively in that light. (I think some legitimate criticisms can be lodged against Assange for electioneering in his timing of the leaks, but Clinton did joke about assassinating him and did all she could to put him in prison, so ....)
This is demonstrably false.
Forst - the press loves a scandal, it's what they live on. They were happy to talk about Snowden, Assange etc. for quite a long time.
You're literally saying the press is acting against their own best interest and purpose which is upside down.
Second - we don't need the press to find wrongdoing. It's all there for you to see. Where is the scandal?
The cable releases prove that the American diplomatic corpos is doing a good job by any measure.
Are you suggesting that them acting a certain way shows that acting that way is in their best interest (because they wouldn't act that way otherwise)? Are you sure they know what cause of action is in their best interest? Are you sure they consider "their best interest" to be the same you consider it to be?
Is the 24/7 news cycle hype in the best interest of "the media"? Was the war-drumming with barely any skepticism about the Iraq war(s) in their best interest?
> Second - we don't need the press to find wrongdoing. It's all there for you to see. Where is the scandal?
What? The public at large gets their information from the press. If the press does not report, it does not happen for large parts of the public. That's why taking control of the press is usually the first thing during any coup and for any authoritarian state.
He wanted Trump to win the 2016 election.
> After Manning's arrest, Assange seemed intent on dumping as many classified documents onto the internet as he could, as quickly as he could. In my last few months as USD(I) and my first few months as the fourth DNI in five years, my time and attention were also taken up by the efforts at DOD and CIA to deal with these document dumps. Teams were on standby in both places to sort quickly through whatever was exposed in an effort to find names and identifying details for people in Iraq and Afghanistan who were helping the US war effort, and then try to rescue them before the Taliban or Iraqi insurgents could find and kill them.
More important to know than which Americans were 'saved' by the NSA's efforts, is: what are the names of the innocent people murdered by American forces, and why are we being prevented from knowing more about them?