Bradley Manning Trial: Is Our Future an Orwellian Nightmare Or Info Anarchy?
policymic.com
policymic.com
Likewise, (and I hate to sound like the ski instructor) if Manning hadn't wanted his trial to be "shrouded in secrecy" then he shouldn't have leaked classified information while under arms. Closing a trial is something that can be done in a court-martial, and that was true since far before Manning had raised his right hand to fight the war in Iraq and signed his DD-4.
Even with the secrecy though, the article itself answers the question of how Manning might be sentenced to life imprisonment: The charge of "aiding the enemy" requires only that Manning knowingly leak the information knowing that it could be directly or indirectly provided to the enemy.
If even one page of that had ended up in any AQ or Taliban hands that would seal the deal. As it turns out a bunch was found in Osama bin Laden's possession. Case closed, as far as that goes.
I think it's important to note again that Snowden was quite clear in his initial interview that his actions were materially different from Manning's. He went so far as to note that he leaked only a few specific issues, and not just anything that he could grab, which he certainly could have done had he wished.
The biggest enemy of the US at the moment would appear to be the US itself, goodwill built up over half a century has evaporated in a decade.
I mentioned that Manning volunteered to fight the war in Iraq to point out that there is a certain lack of nobleness in his actions by your own standard. But the 'enemy' he aided was OBL as the article and myself both mentioned. Note that I never said OBL had anything to do with Iraq, or even that there was any justifiable reason for the U.S. to be in Iraq.
But none of that gave Manning a reason to help AQ or the Taliban.
I think people need to understand "authoritarian logic" more. Because even behind the most ruthless dictators and most oppressive governments in the world there is a logic. They may want to keep the country "unified", or "secure", or whatever.
Of course they aren't going to just go the public and say they are doing something "because we say so". That would make revolutions way too easy to happen. They need to give them some kind of "logic", no matter how ridiculous it sounds, to keep the people docile.
That's why they still keep laws around. It's just that they pass whatever the laws they want, and then simply say "what you did was illegal". And that's how they keep the rest of the population docile, and making them think: "hey, maybe that guy deserved it - he shouldn't have broken the law".
I mean just look at Aaron Swartz. Even he had quite a few critics, that thought he "shouldn't have broken the law", no matter how insane those laws were to begin with.
I don't think most Americans realize it yet, but the US law is so complex, and has so many crazy laws, that they could arrest pretty much anyone over anything at this point.
It isn't accurate to say that any leak is "aiding the enemy" or "the enemy is the whole world". The US does not have a dictator. Laws are still passed by the legislature in the same old way they have been, and are not being applied ex post facto. It isn't actually true that "they could arrest pretty much anyone over anything at this point."
If a government had wanted every other government to know what they were saying they were make a public announcement, not send a diplomatic cable. As far back as 1929 Secretary of State Henry Stimson had said that "gentlemen do not read each other's mail", so there was certainly an expectation of privacy.
As it turns out the world is not full of gentleman; code-breaking became the norm, and was directly responsible for much of the Allied success during World War II, both against Germany and against Japan. This should further reinforce why nations take such care even nowadays to protect their diplomatic communications.
So for Manning the stuff he's getting in trouble for is not new, and it's not ginned up just for him. If he'd done anything approaching what he did in WWII, for instance, he'd have been actually executed. Any later decade he'd have been imprisoned for life, just like the Navy radiomen in the Walker ring who leaked secrets to the U.S.S.R.
We'll see what happens to him in 2013 but the charges are very serious, and it's disappointing to me how much people are treating this as a tribal issue, where they support Manning for no better reason than that he has embarrassed the U.S. government that they hate so much.
This is a tech website after all; if you knew that somewhere in YourEmailSite.com was evidence that "the public deserved to see", would you leak every email that you were hosting to the public? Would you leak just the ones of public interest? Or would you keep your promise to your customers and not leak any at all?