Bradley Manning verdict to be announced Tuesday
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This is a terrifying precedent and opens the door to charge any whistleblower with "adhering to [the United States's] Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort," and thus treason. Even if Manning is not given the death penalty, depending on tomorrow's verdict, we may see one of the final nails in the coffin of investigative journalism. I am honestly very nervous right now.
Snowden: Did he leak information he was supposed to protect ? Yes. Did he do so indiscriminately, no. He knew exactly what he was leaking and believed it would not cause damage.
How about Daniel Elsberg? Leak info he was supposed to protect. Most certainly. Did he do so indiscriminately?An even more resounding no.
Manning, on the other hand literally leaked stuff he never read and which he had no way of knowing couldn't do damage. Is that an absurd standard to apply to a random person, to a journalist even, sure. Not to people under obligations to protect classified information. Certainly not someone subject to the UCMJ.
If he had just leaked the "collateral murder" video or anything else that he had read and found damning, it would be a hell of a lot harder to argue he was reckless. But he leaked everything and is lucky that there wasn't anything in there that would have gotten someone killed.
Seen collateral murder [1]?
> Its hard to say that that is not treason.
Really? It's so easy to kill the messenger. Not to bring in the emotional aspect of this typical power structure vs. single human issue here, but then treason would be the last word I'd want to use for the guy who uncovered killing of innocents and wrong doings of some (I think most soldiers are not trigger-happy rather good people who love peace) stupid crazy soldiers in our army (who should be behind bars instead!).
Let's not forget that we pay the bills for all this.
When you join the military you are pretty much agreeing to proactively aid in this whether you are aware of the reality of America or not. Lots of information about how the US behaves is readily available.
He just released tons of classified information with very vague intent because he didn't like what the US does. This was not really a whistle blower situation because we basically already knew this stuff was happening and it isn't unconstitutional. We voted for the Iraq war because the populace is not really very smart. It is what it is though.
The more I read, the more I was fascinated with the way that we dealt with other nations and organizations. I also began to think the documented backdoor deals and seemingly criminal activity that didn't seem characteristic of the de facto leader of the free world.
Up to this point,during the deployment, I had issues I struggled with and difficulty at work. Of the documents release, the cables were the only one I was not absolutely certain couldn't harm the United States. I conducted research on the cables published on the Net Centric Diplomacy, as well as how Department of State cables worked in general.
In particular, I wanted to know how each cable was published on SIRPnet via the Net Centric Diplomacy. As part of my open source research, I found a document published by the Department of State on its official website.
The document provided guidance on caption markings for individual cables and handling instructions for their distribution. I quickly learned the caption markings clearly detailed the sensitivity of the Department of State cables. For example, NODIS or No Distribution was used for messages at the highest sensitivity and were only distributed to the authorized recipients.
The SIPDIS or SIPRnet distribution caption was applied only to recording of other information messages that were deemed appropriate for a release for a wide number of individuals. According to the Department of State guidance for a cable to have the SIPDIS [missed word] caption, it could not include other captions that were intended to limit distribution.
The SIPDIS caption was only for information that could only be shared with anyone with access to SIPRnet. I was aware that thousands of military personel, DoD, Department of State, and other civilian agencies had easy access to the tables. The fact that the SIPDIS caption was only for wide distribution made sense to me, given that the vast majority of the Net Centric Diplomacy Cables were not classified.
The more I read the cables, the more I came to the conclusion that this was the type of information that should become public. I once read a and used a quote on open diplomacy written after the First World War and how the world would be a better place if states would avoid making secret pacts and deals with and against each other.
I thought these cables were a prime example of a need for a more open diplomacy. Given all of the Department of State cables that I read, the fact that most of the cables were unclassified, and that all the cables have a SIPDIS caption.
I believe that the public release of these cables would not damage the United States, however, I did believe that the cables might be embarrassing, since they represented very honest opinions and statements behind the backs of other nations and organizations.
In many ways these cables are a catalogue of cliques and gossip. I believed exposing this information might make some within the Department of State and other government entities unhappy. On 22 March 2010, I began downloading a copy of the SIPDIS cables using the program Wget, described above."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/01/bradley-manning-...
What exactly is unconstitutional that he is whistleblowing about here? Where are the American people being lied to?
Most, if not all of these cables have nothing to do with unconstitutional actions taking place behind the backs of the American people.
What exactly is unconstitutional that he is whistleblowing about here?
That said, I don't think he should have leaked as much as he did.
[1] http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-cia-s-el-mas...
I said "poke at the garments covering the underbelly of power". Nothing more, nothing less. Debate or accept that, not strawmen.
Manning just seemed to bulk download info and release it directly to an organisation he knew would widely disseminate it without examining it. In theory what he did was better than Snowden, but in practise he endangered a lot of lives.