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Chelsea Manning released from prison

cnn.com

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Re: Chelsea Manning released from prison

#261

Post by maxerickson »

IanDrake wrote: post #115
TheGirondin wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment is so loaded with strawmen and vitriol I don't think it meets our communities comment guidelines.

It's really not. Some people do feel this way and pointing it out isn't vitriol. The worst thing that can happen to a cause is some crazy jackass being held up by the media as the spokesperson. I was on board for the tea party until the media grabbed a few nut bags and made them the de facto spokespeople for the cause. It was purely about limited government until it got co-opted.

The only legitimate role of government is to protect capital!

Re: Chelsea Manning released from prison

#262

Post by jancsika »

mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #164
mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #127

Why is this on Hacker news?

Ah, I RTFArticle now. She stole documents (digitally I presume) and was tried and convicted a while ago. This seems like mainstream TV news, not really Hacker News.

She was an intelligence analyst, which meant she sat in front of a computer and queried U.S. intelligence databases all day.

She copied a lot of that data onto a CD and passed it to Julian Assange, who is the head of Wikileaks. Wikileaks publishes digital data it receives from whistle-blowers, both summarizing and analyzing the data itself. It also provided access to other journalists (Der Spiegel, The Guardian, etc.) in order to incentive scoops and increase the impact of the leaked material. Some of the material includes the "Afghan War Logs", which is essentially raw military data on the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, including estimates of civilians killed in raids. The data itself is available to the public as an SQL or CSV database.

One of the pieces of data was the so-called "collateral murder" video which shows a U.S. apache helicopter firing on unarmed civilians, including a Reuters journalist who died and two children who were injured. Reuters had filed a FOIA request (Freedom of Information Act) to get public access to the video, but was unsuccessful. Since Manning had access to database, and because digital data has a marginal cost of $0, he was able to copy the video onto the CD passed along to Assange, thus bypassing the stall tactics of the U.S. government in releasing the video.

Manning was caught after the FBI had apparently enlisted Adrian Lamo-- himself a former hacker (or I guess cracker to be exact) who apparently Manning trusted and chatted with over IRC.

Also-- and I admit this is a digression from actual "hacker news"-- the U.N. Special Rapporteur on torture publicly stated that the U.S.'s treatment of Manning while awaiting trial was "cruel, inhuman and degrading." In fact, when someone from the press finally got the nerve to ask about this, a U.S. state department official called Manning's treatment "ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid." (He then resigned.)

Anyway, we're talking about the release of a computer analyst who got caught confiding in a well-known hacker, and who was sent to prison for passing the largest collection of digital documents to someone who is at present probably the most well-known hacker in the world.

If this subject isn't relevant to a site called "Hacker News", what is?

Re: Chelsea Manning released from prison

#263

Post by pmarreck »

jimmyk wrote: post #186
arglebarnacle wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be surprised at how dangerous it is to be trans. Wikipedia maintains a list of unlawfully killed trans people at this page[1] I guess there are more trans people than informants so maybe there's some statistical point to be made there, but frankly I'm not sure why you picked this nit to begin with. I think it's important to recognize, rather than downplay the risks faced by marginalized groups in the US and…

It looks like it's particularly dangerous to be trans and black, and also very dangerous to be trans and hispanic, at least in the US over the past few years. It looks like Manning doesn't have much to worry about, at least for being trans.

my impression is that black culture (so as to distinguish it from race) is extremely homophobic

Re: Chelsea Manning released from prison

#265

Post by ceejayoz »

ng12 wrote: post #259
ceejayoz wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably most notable case is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Teena (the story was made into the movie Boys Don't Cry). You can find quite a few more on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unlawfully_killed_tran... .

It's the second part of his question that's the important one -- lots of people are murdered for lots of different reasons. There are estimated to be over a million trans people in the USA, do they have a disproportionately high rate of murder?

I can't find conclusive numbers on murders specifically. http://time.com/3999348/transgender-murders-2015/ says:

> Though a federal hate crimes law requires the collection of some statistics related to violence against transgender people, experts are dubious about the numbers they're getting. “A lot of jurisdictions report zeroes, even in places where we know there are hate crimes," Keisling says. Most state laws don't require the collection of such statistics, according to Minter.

Given the high incidence of sexual violence against transgender persons (https://www.ovc.gov/pubs/forge/sexual_numbers.html) it certainly seems likely the murder rate is similarly high. There's a "one-in-twelve" stat that appears to have gone around, but it's not true: http://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2015/may/13/garne...

Re: Chelsea Manning released from prison

#266

Post by [deleted] »

jMyles wrote: post #209
raverbashing wrote: post #35

Now the question is: will Assange follow up with his promise?

Do you seriously think that this half-measure is sufficient to call him out on it though? It seems to me to be too little (clemency instead of a pardon) too late (she already spent a horrific amount of time under torturous conditions in prison).

[deleted]

Re: Chelsea Manning released from prison

#267

Post by Aloha »

hectorr wrote: post #85

I have very mixed feelings about what Manning did. I also respect the moral courage it took to do them, and to face the consequences.

I think she served a more than adequate punishment for her crime (if anything, she should have only had serve something less than 5 years).. and I wish her all the happiness that life has to offer.

Re: Chelsea Manning released from prison

#268

Post by mattbrewsbytes »

jancsika wrote: post #262
mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, I RTFArticle now. She stole documents (digitally I presume) and was tried and convicted a while ago. This seems like mainstream TV news, not really Hacker News.

She was an intelligence analyst, which meant she sat in front of a computer and queried U.S. intelligence databases all day. She copied a lot of that data onto a CD and passed it to Julian Assange, who is the head of Wikileaks. Wikileaks publishes digital data it receives from whistle-blowers, both summarizing and analyzing the data itself. It also provided access to other journalists (Der Spiegel, The Guardian, etc.…

The subject of the hacking (aka copying docs to a CD in this case) was certainly hacker news.

The CNN mainstream news was that she is being released from prison and she wants to grow her hair. Okay. My opinion is that this isn't really hacker news... more pop-culture about someone who once was convicted of copying intelligence data to a CD and giving it to someone. The story of the hacking was a while ago.

Re: Chelsea Manning released from prison

#269

Post by beaconstudios »

GVIrish wrote: post #207
beaconstudios wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that the Collateral Murder videos triggered considerable controversy and criticism against the US military's attitude to airstrikes. The cable leaks also caused a fair amount of political embarrassment. So it depends on what you consider to be valuable - I'd say direct evidence of airstrikes being triggered against civilians with minimal oversight alone is valuable to a citizenry that wants to keep tabs on…

If Manning had only leaked the video in an attempt to bring light on what she perceived as a war crime, she would've had a case as a whistleblower. Indiscriminately leaking thousands of documents where she had no idea of the contents, is not whistleblowing. That's why she ended up with the sentence that she did.

and yet her sentence was commuted where Snowden remains a fugitive.

Re: Chelsea Manning released from prison

#270

Post by odbol_ »

SteveGerencser wrote: post #117
falcolas wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but it's still true, as my own conversations with conservative in-laws shows.

And in my case, quite false as a conservative with many conservative friends that disagree with your anecdote. This is always the problem, personal anecdotes rarely equal data.

Well unfortunately, you and your conservative friends differ in opinion from the conservatives elected into power, which is who we're talking about. People's anecdotes don't matter; it's the prevailing opinion fed to the masses through conservative politicians and media that needs to change.
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