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Comment by libertyhouse | Hacker News Reader

It's likely that the sentence wouldn't have been as harsh had there been evidence that he tried official channels first.

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There is a mountain of evidence of official channels being tried by government whistleblowers with evidence of crimes committed where they were subject to the grossest retribution.

I frankly quite flatly don't believe the judge. The very fact that we know about so many of these crimes, which to my knowledge, none have been prosecuted shines the light of truth on this claim.

Judges have a very strong institution bias because they are by and large products of the insitutions. You climb high in legal circles by generally expressing a fairly high level of belief in cops, courts and the like.

And sometimes, to call something like official whistleblowing channels the nonsense that they are, you imoly something very damaging about the whole system. I think it's too much to chew. And it's much easier to profess belief.

If he'd gone through the official channels first, he wouldn't have gotten the chance to do it another way when inevitably official channels did nothing.

They'll ruin your life either way, at least this way the info makes a splash.

You mean he wasn't capable of gaming out the consequences of the Government reacting poorly to the use of official whistleblower mechanisms and wouldn't therefore be able to go to the press in the manner in which he did?

He would have lost access to all the files, and been shown the door. Without proof no one cares what you claim.

You believe that the Government could hide/destroy all archival Target Development packages, SIGINT Reporting, Full Motion Video, Tactical Reports, Collateral Damage Estimates, Judge Advocate and other leadership decisional communications, Battle Damage Assessments, Political Communications, and other material about any particular strike in question to prevent the investigation of a whistleblowers claims?

https://www.npr.org/2014/07/22/333741495/before-snowden-the-...

Working within the system to blow a whistle is... risky, you'll end up like Bill Binney, or Thomas Drake, and almost no one will hear about you.

I disagree. He could have taken copies of the files as insurance before whistleblowing, allowing him to then go public if nothing resulted from the official inquiry.

Taking the files is already committing a crime, so the moment he tried the proper channels they could have arrested him preventing his insurance.

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