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At 8/21/13 05:57 PM, lapis wrote: Just to be sure: I didn't mention Ecuador and Russia with the intention of making them look like free speech havens compared to the US. I'm just saying that by clamping down on Manning the US authorities are actually incentivising whistleblowers who may have some doubts about the integrity of the American judicial system to leave the country. And that's something to think about. That is, unless CIA operatives are as I'm typing this putting Polonium-210 in Snowden's spaghetti.

It's funny you say that. Snowden said in an interview a little while back ago that the CIA could pay off the Triads in Hong Kong to kill him on behalf of the US government as if that was a real credible threat. About as likely as getting radioactive penne.

At 8/21/13 04:35 PM, lapis wrote: It's funny how the 36 years that Manning got is almost exactly ten times the three years, seven months and about eight days that Calley spent under house arrest for having his men slaughter at least 347 Vietnamese civilians at My Lai. Just to put things in perspective.

The horrific handling of the My Lai massacre is no grounds to screw up the handling of this issue as well. What happened at My Lai is tragic and the lack of any real punishment is even more tragic.

Another gem that I saw some user post in the comments section of a BBC article about this was: "when exposing a crime is treated as committing a crime, you are ruled by criminals".

Neither Manning nor Snowden were exposing crimes. They were releasing countless secrets into the open. That isn't exposing a crime, though crimes may be exposed as a result. If Snowden or Manning had gone the proper routes (i.e. toward the authority available to stop this) they would have actually been exposing a crime. However, what they did is nothing less than vigilante justice. They pulled a ZImmerman and acted as if they were above the law. ANd don't get me on their "higher motives" bullshit either. Evidence shows Snowden was merely a disgruntled worker, and Manning was getting back at his unit for treating him poorly. Any other claims are merely them legitimizing their crimes ex post facto.

At 8/21/13 05:10 PM, lapis wrote: Maybe Manning could have contacted a Congressman, and by doins so he would have completely stayed on the good side of the law. Maybe then three women would have come forward and say they've been raped by Manning, and he he would have gone to jail anyway, where he'd have been charged with taking part in a riot and in the end would have spent 36 years in prison anyway.

Two words: RAND PAUL.

There are always at least a handful of candidates, name libertarians, who would drool over these sort of scandals and would protect the person who came to them.

On top of that, Manning is gay. It is highly unlikely that claims of Manning raping women would hold water after the treatment he recieved for being gay.

I mean, you know that the adversaries of Manning and (especially) Snowden don't play by the rules, one of the revelations of the latter was specifically that they had broken the rules thousands of times. I'm really struggling to see why you believe that institutions (and by that I mean the whole US security apparatus) that don't care about violating the rights of millions of Americans would care even one bit about the rights of a whistleblower.

You don't understand. Those institutions rarely believe they are breaking any rules. They believe they are operating within the frame of the US Constitution and have valid and legally defensible reason for believing such (if you think the Constitution is black and white you are flat out wrong.)

The main lesson for whistleblowers here is that if you're going to take on the US security agencies, you'd better be in Ecuador or Russia when you do it.

You only need to go to Russia ro Ecudaor if you're afraid of a word called "responsibility"

At 8/21/13 05:10 PM, lapis wrote: I mean, you know that the adversaries of Manning and (especially) Snowden don't play by the rules, one of the revelations of the latter was specifically that they had broken the rules thousands of times.

Here's the difference. What Manning and Snowden intentionally broke the law, and those laws are pretty much black and white, whereas the NSA is governed more or less by the Constitution, which isn't a black and white document, but exists in different shades of gray. {2nd amendment comes to mind} These people who claim that the NSA is "taking away our rights" are either ignorant enough to truly believe that, or are simply misinformed about the whole thing, and it becomes a giant misunderstanding.

Or they have some serious skeletons in the closet that they go to lengths to hide, who knows?

I'm really struggling to see why you believe that institutions (and by that I mean the whole US security apparatus) that don't care about violating the rights of millions of Americans would care even one bit about the rights of a whistleblower.

Once again, the Constitution isn't black and white on it's own merits, which is why it means different things to different people and in different context, the NSA isn't violating our rights anymore than the anti-gun supporters or the NAACP are. This "violation of rights" is nothing more than a cheap strawman crutch used by certain liberals to rally support against it, and the ignorant simply eat that up as fact, which really annoys me to no end on a multitude of levels.

The main lesson for whistleblowers here is that if you're going to take on the US security agencies, you'd better be in Ecuador or Russia when you do it.

Yes, because those places are a haven for freedom and tolerance, never mind the fact that the Russians aren't exactly the type of people who take criticism lightly. In Snowden's case, it shows a lack of responsibility to face the music for his crimes, and the people who defend his behavior are either ignorant, myopic, hypocritical, or a combination of the 3.

Don't do the crime if you aren't willing to do the time, especially when you cross with the United States when you made an explicit oath not to.

I'll try to respond to both of you with one post.

Let's move this from Manning to Snowden: do you two both believe that what the NSA did deserved to be exposed? Sure, it's not clearly clear that they broke the law. After all, going by this article, they were allowed to procure relevant data under the Patriot Act, but if the phone metadata of every single American already qualifies as relevant then you could wonder what would be irrelevant. And sure, even though they're not allowed to read an American citizen's mail or e-mail under the FISA Amendments Act they were able to guarantee with 51% certainty that the e-mails they read were foreign --- although I'm actually under the impression that it's this rule that was intentionally or semi-intentionally violated thousands of times. But does it need to be be crystal clear that they broke any rules for whistleblowing to make sense?

I mean, didn't they lie to Congress about this? But is that alright as well if it does not violate the US Consitution (not sure if it does)?

In short, what do you two think about the following statements:

- What the NSA (or the US Army in the case of Manning) did deserved to be exposed, if for nothing else than for voters in a democracy to be able to judge the actions of their democratically mandated institutions.
- The American security apparatus in fact does not believe that what they did deserved to be exposed, regardless of whether people think voters have a right to know, regardless of whether they followed the law or not and regardless of whether the whistleblower completely followed procedure.
- The American security apparatus would want to disincentivise any whistleblower to come forward, again regardless of whether said whistleblower actually played by the rules laid out to him.

And now the more controversial one:

- The American security apparatus actually has the power to screw people over big time. In the mild sense that could mean knowing about minor offences such as, I don't know, insurance fraud for not completely filling out a form correctly, that could be blown up to great proportions by a sympathetic (military?) court. In the not-so mild sense that could mean planting drugs in a person's home or child porn on a person's computer, or even orchestrating a car crash (although I'm not saying that that's certainly what happened with Hastings, just checking whether you think some gropus within the US security agencies have the power to do so).

I think it requires a lot of confidence in the system to say that every whistleblower should abide by procedure even though there's simply no guarantee that all the people that he's going to piss off will do the same. I'm not following the Rand Paul thing raised by Camaro --- sure Rand Paul can raise the issue in Cpongress but he cannot protect Manning if (planted) child porn is found on his computer.

I mean, Camaro is actively questioning Manning's and Snowden's motives but one could question the motives of the US government (including the court that convicted Manning) as well. Did they go hard on him because he did not play by the rules or simply because he was a whistleblower? And if this is a serious issue then what do you think future whistleblowers are going to do?

At 8/21/13 07:08 PM, orangebomb wrote: Don't do the crime if you aren't willing to do the time,

Did James Clapper 'do the time' for lying to Congress?

At 8/21/13 02:41 PM, Camarohusky wrote: Manning and Snowden are not whistleblowers. They held items of national security. So unlike a corporate whistleblower, or even a generaic governmental whistleblower, they are not allowed to indiscriminately give these serets out. There is one better way to get these secrets dealt with without jeoprdizing national security. That is the reveal them to a congressmember. Even though many Congress members are complicit, there are always a select few who are not. Manning and Snowden could have contaced...

Drum roll...

RAND PAUL. [...]

That's actually really interesting. I suppose that really would be the most sensible thing to do, and send someone trusted the documents for safe keeping. Given, Bradley Manning was farrrr from mentally stable, so you probably couldn't expect him to do something so rational but another Snowden, maybe. I really think people should be told though, it might at least minimise the damage another whistleblower could manage (assuming they don't want to cause damage).

At 8/21/13 04:50 PM, orangebomb wrote: At least Manning is taking his punishment, whereas Snowden is hiding in Russia where they have far less rights and liberties than America. Ironic isn't it?

I'm really not sure this is that ironic. Snowden's obviously in the position now where he either swallows his high moral code or becomes a martyr, and, given his rap sheet, he's not going to get another chance to make a difference. If I was in the same position it wouldn't make any difference to me. If I'm in a country that's just the lesser of two evils and taking a shot at making it a little less evil means I have to go live in a different one, taking that shot would still be the right thing to do.

Of course, whether or not that's what Snowden achieved is highly debatable.

Look like he... I mean she, got 35 years. But new plot twist, this topic should be renamed Chelsea Manning.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/22/bradley-manning-woman-chelsea-gender-reassignment