There is no record of any individual being physically harmed, but the leaked diplomatic cables were highly embarrassing, hurt the interests of the US, and were completely unjustified. They weren't exposing malfeasance or war crimes. They should not have been released.
The fact that the US murdered innocent civilians was highly embarrassing and hurt the interests of the US, not the fact that Manning leaked that information itself. Punish the murderers, not the messengers. The only people were actually harmed were the innocent children and journalists on the receiving end of US machine guns.
This exactly. Governments do need to be held accountable for secret crimes, secrecy should not be allowed to enable continuing those crimes. Exposing them was necessary, even if it was illegal.
I do think Manning was naive and sloppy for handing the whole thing over to Assange, though in her defense, Assange seemed fairly reasonable and responsible at the time. It's only after this enormous leak that he seems to have gone mad with power.
I can sleep a lot better tonight having read this thread of thoughts after some of the awfulness I just read over at reddit.
With this issue there is a remarkable degree of misinformation, as well as fascist ideology supporting the the surveillance state. These neverending, unechecked powers undermine civil rights and allow human rights abuses to go continue. And it's all wrapped in this package of 'a good liberal just supporting the good guys like Obama and Hillary that evil Assange is trying to destroy.' Assange is far from perfect, but I cannot understand how people do not fight back in solidarity with outrage against human and civil rights abuses.
It's called mortality :) people have X years to live and try to make the best of it and not everyone is ready to sacrifice that time for doing the right thing.
The simple fact that other people are unjustly suffering means that my mortality of x years is not the best. I think this alone should make everyone want to help make the world the best it can be. But empathy and love loses to selfishness and greed.
Thank you for your comments. You have it exactly right, re-affirming my hope that the world is not doomed. Another example in line with what you said, having secret prisons that we kidnapped people and took them to and tortured them during the second bush war in Iraq hurt the US. It hurt because because we had secret prisons.
In my opinion the solution to not being embarrassed is to not do embarrassing things. The person exposeing those things isn't in the wrong, you are.
Keep in mind all of the recent leaks have been from individuals and organizations that have supported domestic spying under the rationale "if you've got nothing to hide". Yet they hide in shadows and evidently misbehave when the public isn't looking.
"In my opinion the solution to not being embarrassed is to not do embarrassing things. "
That was the government's position against Snowden, Wikileaks, etc. Also called the "Safe if Nothing to Hide" fallacy. What secrets can cause damage in what ways is pretty broad and arbitrary. Interestingly, it applies to the government's schemes much like people's, private lives. We have to keep them in check more but that should be done by citizens leaning on various branches of government. Including groups doing something about problems in GAO reports.
Really easy to say, though, to never piss off any important person in any foreign country or company with one's private decisions or actions. Really hard to do, too.
I see what you're saying here but it might not be so simple. These types of countries are all competing doing all kinds of evil stuff to do so. All or most would have to be hit with whistleblowing & often for what you say to matter. What we've seen is large scale whistleblowing in some countries but not others. A few of those crying "Foul!" are almost certainly doing equivalent or worse but benefit from being the moral, high ground.
The result: a whistleblower for one just gives a competitive advantage to the others. So, both the country's policy and the whistleblower shifting people or investments to other scheming countries or companies are each causing damage.
A country is hit by whistleblowers when these people find their government doing things that are against their principles. That's much harder to happen when the people employed has no such thing.
The country is hit by "leakers" when arbitrary people on inside leak secrets for arbitrary reasons. Even the leakers themselves disagreed on morality of various things at various points. The problem is much broader and more subjective than you're hinting at if we adopted a policy of letting anyone leak anything they personally thought was bad. Especially if only one country in a world of nations competing was doing it.
The people of any country where would-be leakers are summarily executed for treason will not know what its government is hiding from them. Sometimes governments hide things for good reasons but, sometimes, the very crimes the government commits in order to protect the country's principles end up undermining those.
I dont disagree. Im pro leaking of evidence of crimes. That's whistleblowing. Manning did a lot more than that, though. So, your point is a strawman better suited for someone like Binney who only discussed corruption instead of huge, raw dump.
The more important question is: did the US murder innocent civilians? It's not about the cables or the messenger or the medium or the style and presentation, it's about the murdered innocent civilians.
The debt we owe Manning for exposing the fact that the US murdered innocent civilians far outweighs the damage she did by releasing the cables. The prosecution couldn't identify anyone who was harmed, beyond those innocents harmed by the US government machine guns, which wasn't Manning's fault.
When I was a kid, they were never innocent. They were all Russian agents and the puppet dictators put in place by the US were protecting their countries from communism.
A people deserves to know what their government did on their behalf.
AFAIK, both Manning and Snowden released large quantities of information without reviewing all of it in detail for public interest vs. potential harm, and released it not to the public but to third parties that managed public release. The difference is that Manning released it to Assange and Snowden released it to more responsible journalists.
Snowden released his information to journalists who carefully vetted each item for newsworthiness with the participation of the US government. Then that data was parceled out over many months, so it would remain in daily news cycles and continue to generate commentary over that time, staying in the public's mind.
Manning gave her data to Wikileaks, who posted it online in its entirety.
The Guardian ran everything by the US government first before publishing. Every responsible journalist does. They're looking for a response or comment to the story, to make sure they didn't get anything wrong, and to see if there's a any reason to withhold details (a reason beyond "It's classified so don't").
In fact, in Greenwald's book No Place to Hide, he describes how they held off publishing for several days while waiting for a response from the government. Greenwald was so frustrated with the delays that he considered quitting the Guardian and going on his own. I think that's the idea that eventually turned into The Intercept.
If that's the case, how did they get almost everything wrong? Reading the original stories on The Guardian, I couldn't find any response from the US government.
"The difference is that Manning released it to Assange and Snowden released it to more responsible journalists."
Sort of. They're more responsible in the general sense but also foreign journalists receiving U.S.'s spying capabilities on foreign persons. The aiding and abetting concept is quite appropriate given they published all kinds of NSA attack strategies & subverted companies while the foreign attacks & companies... including in their own countries... didn't get the same treatment. Both attack and defense on the other side got a great boost while U.S. companies simultaneously lost market share.
Quite a bit of damage giving stuff foreigners shouldn't know to foreign journalists. I might be happier if there was a Snowden in all 20+ countries involved in economic and industrial espionage. Instead, it was just what mainly two (U.S. and U.K.) were doing outside the many eyes partnership that extends to Europe. Quite asymmetrical.
Your comment is simple trolling. Most nations in the Snowden leaks spy on each other with humans and hacking. Only a few had their tools leaked by Snowden. Others, with spy & surveillance programs still running. immediately used that as political and economic leverage. That leaks damaged one set of countries while giving others benefits is a fact.
The real question is whether there is a greater good to that damage justifying it. I think there was for the domestic leaks but not the foreign ones outside a few. Far as that few, the Belgacom attack is a good example where taking down allies' telecoms over bullshit could have consequences for America past the usual info collection the spies do. Americans should have a conversation about that kind of thing before those acting on our behalf do such acts.
Absolutely. Whether you attribute his superior strategy to learning from Manning's mistake or his own native intelligence, there's simply no doubt that Snowden leaked his data in a more effective and less damaging way.
Snowden took personal responsibility for a single reason-- so the news would talk about the leaks, rather than the effort to find the leaker. He didn't want the conversation to be about Edward Snowden. He was largely successful.
When you go around doing reprehensible things, you deserve humiliation and embarrasment.
More over, if some of those reprehensible things you did, you happen to have done to your own allies, it means they are entitled to have second thoughts about whether they will want to continue aligning their interest to yours, or if they should be more assertive in the future to compensate for the cost of doing business with you.
So, you can keep shooting at the messanger all you want, but any bad outcomes comming out of this, you brought to yourselves.
Manning did it wrong, Snowden did it right.