Bradley Manning case stretches credibility of US computer fraud law

The foreign relations hit was real enough. So was the hit to "human intelligence", and the threat to those collaborating with the U.S. in Afghanistan, Yemen, and other places.

So is the Arab Spring, which continues to kill people every day in Syria (and now Egypt, unless things change soon over there).

But either way, though the law is based on the effect of one's actions, the law is also often based on the actions themselves.

After all if someone were to come at me with a knife, swing and miss, they could still be charged with attempted murder or aggravated battery despite "no harm" befalling me.

If I drive around without insurance I can still be cited even though I haven't crashed into anyone yet.

So likewise, even if our allies in places like Afghanistan and Yemen had managed to be alerted and evade retribution in time that didn't change the existential threat they were living under.

And that's the problem with intelligence and counter-intelligence. Often the enemy won't realize that a successful attack against them had intel as a key; the Nazis went through all of WWII with nary a clue that the Allies were amazingly well-informed of their capabilities and intentions.

Now we have it on the reverse. The Taliban attack a U.S. base in Afghanistan and destroy 6 Harrier jets [1] in Sept. 2012. Was the day-to-day operational intelligence revealed by Manning completely useless for that? It's hard for the U.S. to tell on the other end.

How about the people killed, scores injured, and damage done to a Forward Operating Base in Aug. 2012 [2]? Did intel on how the U.S. Army responds to the many previous Taliban and AQ attacks really not help them at all in planning this assault?

The problem is that it is hard to conclusively prove that intelligence was useful for a given attack if you're only on the receiving end, especially if using the evidence you have would have the effect of divulging your sources. The same reasoning is behind the rumors behind Churchill allowing Coventry to be normally defended (and subsequently severely damaged by German bombing), because he didn't want to tip off the German that their Enigma was sometimes readable by the British.

But just because you can't prove something doesn't imply the opposite (that you've proven the intel was not useful). This still helps Manning as far as his trial goes, but history has shown that skilled opponents can utilize far less intel than was provided by Manning to great effect. And common sense would show that there's a reason OBL made an effort to get his hands on the leaked intel himself. Presumably the fact he still had it meant at least he found it useful.

But even if OBL had found it very useful, he'd hardly have issued a press release over it, so a lack of crowing about "real life effects" is hardly evidence in support of Manning, it's simply a lack of evidence to support either conclusion.

Edit: I suppose I could at least mention that I agree that using CFAA as a charge in this case is unfair. The best you can say is that downloading data for the purpose of divulging it is "exceeding authorized access" but that has nothing to do with whether you use a web browser or wget, and in any event is already covered by espionage changes and charges of mishandling classified data. Even worse, had Manning somehow managed to use that compilation he downloaded for statistical analyses that aided the Army in their operations it presumably would have been 'authorized access', despite being the same actions taken in either case.

[1] http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2012/09/6_harrier_jet... [2] http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2012/08/omani_jihadis...

Wow, this makes me want to punch the writer more than any other line, and I pirate regularly. It's obvious that the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act needs reform, maybe that's why the press is having their lamest hacks write about it?

Now imagine how stealing and revealing a few documents which don't harm anyone is multitudes worse than this. US criminal law is just insane.

The only think I can come up with is its some sort of replacement for the olde gunslinger vengeance of the wild west era which has yet to be civilized.

I also think there is an arrogance that says the US is the best country in the world, and how could any one possibly act against it since what ever it does simply must be good, pure and legal. Anything that dents that image to the rest of the world is treason, some how. It reminds me of extreme religion's reaction to criticism. Which to me it would do since I view the USA as pretty much a religion. So, heretics like Manning will be metaphorically burned at the stake. Such sentences are not justice, they are PR.

Interesting to me that Snowden, having witness the Manning case, still felt he had to whistle blow. Tell me how much he believed in his actions.

That's not the sentence. It's the maximum authorized by Congress. In the Anglo-American system, judges are primarily responsible for sentencing, not the legislature, though the legislature sets limits and guidelines.

Well, it was a lot of data, so he passed it to an organization that supposedly had people who could sift through it and post the relevant stuff in redacted form. Unfortunately, those people screwed up and published the encryption key for the unredacted data.

As far as we can tell, Snowden has also leaked things that haven't been published (e.g. most of the PRISM slide deck). It's hard to say how much he's actually leaked, versus how much the press is choosing not to publish for lack of relevance.

There was a massive pressure to get people with Manning's skills into the military jobs that required clearances. This was such that even the process of getting a clearance got oursourced to contractors (witness the furor around the company that handled Snowden's screening).

Even if Manning's immediate supervisor had tried to get him stripped of his clearance for any of the many "red flags", his supervisor would simply have got in trouble instead for doing something to get rid of a warm body in a seat that needed filled.

*Esoteric content may trigger filtering depending on jurisdiction and I do apologize for such if it occurs.

In general, I don't take seriously any comment that quotes the first line of an article and then rages against that one line. It makes me suspect that you haven't read the article and have no business dismissing the entire thing since you found the first line inappropriate.