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Meanwhile HN intelligencia will bury this off the front page and vote brigading will allow critical voices to raise u To the top and flag those critical. Discussion here is impossible.
Autodead comments, like I said, impossible to have a fair open discussion here.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's because the CIA and the Department of Defense worked around the clock to prevent that from happening. Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper wrote in his book, "Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence" > After Manning's arrest, Assange seemed intent on dumping as many classified documents onto the internet as he could, as quickly as he could. In my last few months as USD(I) and…
Kind of missing the punch line there. Who did they save through their efforts?
> But today Ellsberg is celebrated as the patron saint of whistleblowers while Assange is locked in a cell in London’s Belmarsh maximum security prison for 23 and a half hours a day. Ellsberg was charged with a bunch of crimes too, which would have resulted in 100+ years of jail time. He's considered a good person now because he defended himself and won. It should also be noted that he very much supports Wikileaks. I…
> Assange leaked documents that he had to illegally acquire first (either with help or without, but either way he was in possession of stolen goods). You can't get whistleblower protection for leaking information you didn't have legal access to. Should we charge the journalists who distributed Snowden's leaks as well? This seems like making a distinction to draw a line between the two, but I am missing the explanatio…
We don't need to, we know who their source was (Snowden). If Assange wants to claim he's a journalist, that's fine, but then he either needs to accept the consequences of protecting his sources, or out his sources.
> but I am missing the explanation for why this distinction has moral import.
It's a question of responsibility. When a journalist protects their sources, they accept responsibility for the consequences, and they they chose to reveal their source, they pass on the consequences to their source, but (usually) take a hit to their reputation as a journalist. Assange appears to not want to accept any consequences for his actions, nor pass them on be revealing his sources.
This seems like a good overview of the situation to me; I had previously heard Assange mentioned but never really knew what happened. Thanks.
> But today Ellsberg is celebrated as the patron saint of whistleblowers while Assange is locked in a cell in London’s Belmarsh maximum security prison for 23 and a half hours a day. Ellsberg was charged with a bunch of crimes too, which would have resulted in 100+ years of jail time. He's considered a good person now because he defended himself and won. It should also be noted that he very much supports Wikileaks. I…
Last I checked the only protection on classified information was for people that had a clearance at some point. Which is why journalists can generally publish classified information.
> But today Ellsberg is celebrated as the patron saint of whistleblowers while Assange is locked in a cell in London’s Belmarsh maximum security prison for 23 and a half hours a day. Ellsberg was charged with a bunch of crimes too, which would have resulted in 100+ years of jail time. He's considered a good person now because he defended himself and won. It should also be noted that he very much supports Wikileaks. I…
In what way is getting sent files illegal? Last I checked the only protection on classified information was for people that had a clearance at some point. Which is why journalists can generally publish classified information.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Assange leaked documents that he had to illegally acquire first (either with help or without, but either way he was in possession of stolen goods). You can't get whistleblower protection for leaking information you didn't have legal access to. Should we charge the journalists who distributed Snowden's leaks as well? This seems like making a distinction to draw a line between the two, but I am missing the explanatio…
> Should we charge the journalists who distributed Snowden's leaks as well? We don't need to, we know who their source was (Snowden). If Assange wants to claim he's a journalist, that's fine, but then he either needs to accept the consequences of protecting his sources, or out his sources. > but I am missing the explanation for why this distinction has moral import. It's a question of responsibility. When a journalis…
> After long research, his team of 120 counterintelligence officers hadn’t been able to find a single person, among the thousands of American agents and secret sources in Afghanistan and Iraq, who could be shown to have died because of the disclosures. Sounds like the NSA who couldn't point to a single instance of stopping any type of terrorist attack/operation despite collecting anything they could get their hands o…
This is kind of a misrepresentation of the situation.
Manning leaked mostly diplomatic cables, the contents of which he was unaware of, thereby harming his whistleblower credentials.
The contents were not what we would regard as 'intelligence information' - more aptly described as 'the e-mails of the US diplomatic foreign corps', some of which contained sensitive information'.
That gigabyte of private information was released and there wasn't a single scandal of it shows how tight the operation was, moreover any reading of the cables demonstrates how well the US diplomatic corps were actually doing their jobs.
Far from releasing damning information about Americans, the cables released inside information about Arab leaders and their systematic corruption.
To unearth that amount of private information, to have it combed over by thousands of journalists trying to find a juicy bit, and to come up with very little ... is frankly something Americans can be proud of.
It's ridiculously ironic that Manning, in his attempt to discredit America, ended up doing what US diplomats were unable to do within the constraints of their jobs, which is to speak truth to power about the corruption in the Middle East - which ignited the Arab Spring.
The real world is sausage making and grinding, any skeptical, decontextualized look under any rocks will always yield something to talk about - so in the end, it's really the details and context that really do matter.
The cables did truly pose a serious threat to the security and integrity of individuals in various ways, and obviously it compromised many programs. That there doesn't seem to be any deadly outcomes is wonderful, but it doesn't abnegate Manning from the inappropriate actions he took particularly on the cable leak.
What's far more interesting about this case, is the fact that the press used to be in love with Assange, and now they hate him. I wonder what caused them to turn. Obviously, his close ties to Russia are problematic, but it's hard to see exactly what it is. It's possible that he's just not contemporarily a social advocate in their view: we're now full-on into intersectional issues, matters of state etc. are 'old news' it would seem.
> But today Ellsberg is celebrated as the patron saint of whistleblowers while Assange is locked in a cell in London’s Belmarsh maximum security prison for 23 and a half hours a day. Ellsberg was charged with a bunch of crimes too, which would have resulted in 100+ years of jail time. He's considered a good person now because he defended himself and won. It should also be noted that he very much supports Wikileaks. I…
Broadly? I thinks that's a very American centric perspective. About the last system of justice I'd like to find myself at the mercy of outside those in totalitarian countries is the American one. It has earned itself an awful reputation, in Europe, at least. It's such a shame that countries like the UK appear to be behaving like client states of America.
> But today Ellsberg is celebrated as the patron saint of whistleblowers while Assange is locked in a cell in London’s Belmarsh maximum security prison for 23 and a half hours a day. Ellsberg was charged with a bunch of crimes too, which would have resulted in 100+ years of jail time. He's considered a good person now because he defended himself and won. It should also be noted that he very much supports Wikileaks. I…
I don't think that's quite correct, unless it can be proved that they somehow participated in the actual hacking of some target, they do have legal access to the docs, because receiving such is not illegal. Otherwise, the entire press to whom such things are leaked should be in jail with them.