Bradley Manning verdict today

[Mr Bean]

Rather than dig up an old thread I'm creating a new one. Today Bradley Manning will be found guilty or innocent on multiple charges the most important of which is aiding the enemy.
The Guardian

Manning found not guilty of aiding the enemy

Manning has been found not guilty of the most serious charge of "aiding the enemy". However the private has been found guilty on five counts of violating the espionage act.

[Mr Bean]

And not guilty on the most important charge of aiding the enemy. Keep in mind Manning went first to the media who turned him down. The first "enemies" he went to were the Press. So very good on the court for not finding him guilty on that charge.
Still more charges being read

[Mr Bean]

First reports are that aiding the enemy is the only thing he was not found guilty of. Pretty much everything else which puts him in the over a hundred years in jail size. However if they give him more than six months he gets an appeal which they seem sure to do.

[Borgholio]

It seems to me that lately, the government has been having a hard time keeping secrets. First Snowden and his escape from the authorities, then the not guilty verdict of aiding the enemy for Pvt Manning.

[Grumman]

It seems to me that lately, the government has been having a hard time keeping secrets. First Snowden and his escape from the authorities, then the not guilty verdict of aiding the enemy for Pvt Manning.

Not hard enough. It's hard to see a concession that the New York Times is not a declared enemy of the United States of America as much of a victory. John Kiriakou is still in prison because Obama thinks going public about a rogue organisation committing war crimes is worse than committing war crimes.

[Patroklos]

First reports are that aiding the enemy is the only thing he was not found guilty of. Pretty much everything else which puts him in the over a hundred years in jail size. However if they give him more than six months he gets an appeal which they seem sure to do.

The CM's convening authority also gets a review and can drastically alter the sentencing or even vacate some or all of the rulings if he wishes. There are rumors that the convening authority may commute some of the sentence based on time/harshness of time served if the judge doesn’t.

[Thanas]

I'll bet they throw the book on him on the other charges.

[Simon_Jester]

Part of the question here is: what constitutes "whistleblowing?" Simple cases like a corporate employee reporting fraud committed by his boss give us an easy way to answer: someone sees a specific case of something wrong, and releases evidence to the public or the authorities.

On a more general level you have things like the Pentagon Papers- the biggest point of the scandal over those was that the entire strategic premise of US involvement in Vietnam wasn't what the public thought it was. Presidents who had run for election on the strength of their Vietnam policy turned out to be lying to the American people about the war on a day to day basis, and to be quite aware that they were lying.

Now, the Pentagon Papers were a much broader document. But again, we can point to a specific sin of the powerful and say "this is what they were doing, this is what the whistle was blown about." The person who released the papers to the media already knew what the problem was.

Snowden, likewise- he knew perfectly well why he was blowing the whistle, and what he was blowing it on.

In Manning's case, did Manning have anything specific in mind? Was there something in particular about what Manning found in SIPRNet that motivated the massive leak? Or do the wrong acts revealed by the Manning leak simply represent the product of later people's trawls through an enormous datadump?


In the far-out limiting cases:

If Jane Smith recognizes a specific government plan to dump radioactive garbage into a reservoir as part of some bizarre experiment, document it, and goes public, she's clearly a whistleblower. Whether or not the plan was classified is irrelevant. The plan is obviously wrong, the public obviously has a huge interest in knowing, and no real harm is going to be done by not letting the experiment proceed.

But if John Doe somehow released literally every classified document the US has, which people would want to hail or protect him as a whistleblower? Obviously he hasn't read them all and identified the dirty ones. And mixed in with the dirt are things that probably shouldn't be general knowledge, like the design details of nuclear bombs, or techniques used to catch genuine criminals (and, by implication, how to counter them).

This sort of thing simply couldn't happen before the Internet and the ease with which modern computers can keep track of thousands or millions of documents. But I'd be interested to see various people's ideas about this.

[Thanas]

Yes, we know what caused him to leak - the abuses and illegal activities of the US. It is completely illogical to expect from every whistleblower to sift through what he leaks before leaking. Heck, Ellsberg didn't read what he was leaking (Pentagon Papers) and he too leaked all he could get his hands on, based on the suspicion that there was toxic material in there. How is he different than Manning here?

[Patroklos]

It is absolutely reasonable or you don't know what you are blowing the whistle on. If not you are just tryingt to cause damage, any damage, for some nebulous moral feeling and it may have nothing to do with what you object to.

If he was releasing the records or COBRA or the SS you might have a point as there is a reasonable expectation everything will be damning. Or even the folder "CIA Black Site." However, for all Manning knew he was releasing the SSNs or his division or their medical records or any number of things concerning legitimate activities that should be secret.

[Thanas]

It is absolutely reasonable or you don't know what you are blowing the whistle on. If not you are just tryingt to cause damage, any damage, for some nebulous moral feeling and it may have nothing to do with what you object to.

Oh please. He knew details about atrocities and lies and then went "if this is in files A-B, it stands to reason that files C-D also have similar stuff". This is exactly what Ellsberg did.

If he was releasing the records or COBRA or the SS you might have a point as there is a reasonable expectation everything will be damning. Or even the folder "CIA Black Site." However, for all Manning knew he was releasing the SSNs or his division or their medical records or any number of things concerning legitimate activities that should be secret.

Yeah, right. Source for this "he is leaking indiscriminately" stuff?

http://www.salon.com/2011/12/24/the_int ... s_critics/


And you might also take notice of Manning's own statement in court:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_zC44S ... BycUk/edit

[Patroklos]

Your salon articles makes no claim that Manning had knowledge of what was contained in the vast majority of what was released. In fact it confirms he had no idea what he was releasing.

[Simon_Jester]

Yes, we know what caused him to leak - the abuses and illegal activities of the US. It is completely illogical to expect from every whistleblower to sift through what he leaks before leaking. Heck, Ellsberg didn't read what he was leaking (Pentagon Papers) and he too leaked all he could get his hands on, based on the suspicion that there was toxic material in there. How is he different than Manning here?

...I was under the honest impression that he had read the Pentagon Papers. Oops.

What I meant to get at is that one might reasonably see a difference between "leak evidence of a criminal/unconstitutional act," "leak masses of data on a subject where you know something is specifically wrong, but can't pin it down," and "leak everything you can find assuming there's something wrong with it because it's American classified information."


We should at least pause for a moment's thought about what we'd do, say, if the next leaker reveals information about a secret abusive government program... AND at the same time actually does release something like the blueprints for nuclear weapons, or the names and addresses of all pro-democracy advocates who'd been sounded out by the CIA in a genocidal dictatorship.

Or even something less... grandiose, like the social security numbers of everyone working for the FBI. They have their own classified files and are involved in domestic counterterrorism, so they might very logically be targeted by a megaleak some day.

It's at least conceivable that something like this might happen given the trends- we're talking about gigabyte-sized masses of information, which no person could conceivably read all of in a reasonable amount of time. So I don't think it's an unreasonable hypothetical.

Is the leaker in any way responsible for the consequences of revealing these secrets, if such consequences should arise?

[Borgholio]

In an ideal world, the leaker would be punished for releasing info that causes harm, such as nuke blueprints, but lauded for uncovering government corruption or dishonesty.

But yeah, like anybody in the government would be ideal about that.

[Thanas]

Your salon articles makes no claim that Manning had knowledge of what was contained in the vast majority of what was released. In fact it confirms he had no idea what he was releasing.

Yes. What I am arguing is that your basic premise is wrong.

[slebetman]

Your salon articles makes no claim that Manning had knowledge of what was contained in the vast majority of what was released. In fact it confirms he had no idea what he was releasing.

His quoted Salon article is presumably the original source of the rumor that Manning had no idea what he was releasing. A claim that you repeated in this thread.

Contrast that with actual court records that shows that the rumor started by the Salon article is bullshit.

[Gandalf]

In an ideal world, the leaker would be punished for releasing info that causes harm, such as nuke blueprints, but lauded for uncovering government corruption or dishonesty.

But yeah, like anybody in the government would be ideal about that.

Is there an existing legal definition of harm?

[Terralthra]

To my mind, the issue is this: Bradley Manning's release of classified documents could conceivably be traced as the proximate cause to any number of perceived harms - increased AQ recruiting, a major hit in the US's perception as a nation which obeys rules of war, etc., but the ultimate cause of those harms are actions taken by the US government and soldiers in its service. Releasing documents which lays those actions bare for the world to see "harms" the US only because the US allowed those actions in the first place, then covered them up with secrecy. If the US (and its soldiers) hadn't done things like Collateral Murder portrayed, etc., then the release of documentation of them would have no harms associated with them.

[Borgholio]

In an ideal world, the leaker would be punished for releasing info that causes harm, such as nuke blueprints, but lauded for uncovering government corruption or dishonesty.

But yeah, like anybody in the government would be ideal about that.

Is there an existing legal definition of harm?

I don't think there's one that is as precise as is needed. I would say this:

1. Releasing blueprints for a nuke - could allow someone to murder thousands of innocents, doesn't provide any benefits.

2. Leaking secret and possibly illegal government files that could cause soldiers and spies to be killed or damages the national reputation, but has the benefit of preventing said government from committing (possibly serious) crimes.

So I guess harm could be defined as the intended result. Does the leaker want a terrorist organization to have access to the bomb, or does he want to stop his own government from spying on, torturing, and possibly murdering innocent people?

[cosmicalstorm]

Is the fact that he leaked at all a sign of quality for the US government? In other countries I imagine that Mannings entire family would have been under the threat of torture and execution if he did this.

[Patroklos]

His quoted Salon article is presumably the original source of the rumor that Manning had no idea what he was releasing. A claim that you repeated in this thread.

Contrast that with actual court records that shows that the rumor started by the Salon article is bullshit.

The claim that Manning didn't know what he was releasing is supported by the fact it is physically impossible for him to have even skimmed all that data let alone anyalyzed it enough to gleen what even the topic of most of it was.

The diplomatic cables alone consisted of 251,287 cables from 271 embassies worldwide and are not restricted to any particular topic/department/location/persons. Do you honestly think he had any idea what any other than a fraction was actually about? That he had even browsed let alone read and comprehended more than a pitance? Is the State Department so dispicable that we have to assume any and all information that can be sourced there is supsect?

[eyl]

In an ideal world, the leaker would be punished for releasing info that causes harm, such as nuke blueprints, but lauded for uncovering government corruption or dishonesty.

But yeah, like anybody in the government would be ideal about that.

Is there an existing legal definition of harm?

I don't think there's one that is as precise as is needed. I would say this:

1. Releasing blueprints for a nuke - could allow someone to murder thousands of innocents, doesn't provide any benefits.

2. Leaking secret and possibly illegal government files that could cause soldiers and spies to be killed or damages the national reputation, but has the benefit of preventing said government from committing (possibly serious) crimes.

So I guess harm could be defined as the intended result. Does the leaker want a terrorist organization to have access to the bomb, or does he want to stop his own government from spying on, torturing, and possibly murdering innocent people?

I don't think you can go only by intent; if he accidently leaked nuclear weapons plans in the mass of data, would we hold him blameless for the results?

Also, there's a third category of data between "will get people killed" and "expose illegal activity", which is "not illegal but makes the government's* job harder". For example, what effect do you think it will have on a US ambassador's ability to deal with an important foreign diplomat if both of them know the ambassadro considers the diplomat a corrupt dumbass?

Not to mention that not everything here is US information - imagine of the cables included information on back-channel contacts between Israel and, say, the new Iraqi government? It's not a military secret nor is it illegal, but exposure of such a thing could have delterious effects.

*Mainly the US State Deprtment, in this case.

[Patroklos]

Thats part of the problem with Manning's intent as well, that he did not restrict his data dump to even the nebulous domain of "Iraq War Related." If you consider the entire Iraq war a corrupt enterprise I may disagree with you that releasing anything about it is beneficial, considering even that too broad a stroke to be a whistle blower, but at least you are being internally consistant. The diplomatic cables, however, by and large had nothing to do with the Iraq War whatsoever so are not even supported by his own stated purpose.

[Simon_Jester]

To my mind, the issue is this: Bradley Manning's release of classified documents could conceivably be traced as the proximate cause to any number of perceived harms - increased AQ recruiting, a major hit in the US's perception as a nation which obeys rules of war, etc., but the ultimate cause of those harms are actions taken by the US government and soldiers in its service. Releasing documents which lays those actions bare for the world to see "harms" the US only because the US allowed those actions in the first place, then covered them up with secrecy. If the US (and its soldiers) hadn't done things like Collateral Murder portrayed, etc., then the release of documentation of them would have no harms associated with them.

The question is, what happens on some hypothetical day when that isn't the only class of thing being released?

I have no right to punish someone for 'harming' me by releasing evidence that I've committed a crime. But what if, along with that evidence, they also release something like the personal identifying information of everyone who works for a the State Department?

Or what if they release documents on "this is how the FBI catches money launderers." Those might be classified at a low level just to make sure they aren't released to the general public and thus become common knowledge among money launderers. Suddenly, boom, common knowledge among money launderers. Oops.

[Gaidin]

I have no right to punish someone for 'harming' me by releasing evidence that I've committed a crime. But what if, along with that evidence, they also release something like the personal identifying information of everyone who works for a the State Department?

Emphasis added. I'm just gonna say that this would likely be a different bag of snakes than what Manning was charged for. Just casually browsing Wikipedia reveals that this kind of information is classified as 'sensitive but unclassified' information. He could probably be charged for it, but it'd likely be under a different law than the Espionage Act if I had to place a bet. I'll let anybody educated in law extrapolate on that one further.

As for the espionage act, as misplaced as it sounds, isn't it just as simple a line in that law as him revealing classified information to someone not cleared to know it, whatever the context of those people may be? We can go back and forth on the revelations about the military actions he revealed, but a pretty good point was made about the diplomatic cables by Patroklos I think.