There are a lot of bullet points there, but not many seem to be actual crimes committed by the USA. Isn't that what whistleblowing is about? Specific crimes related to the agency you are directly blowing the wistle on? Not wholesale release or everything you can get your hands on?
I think they're all things that the public should know. Unless it's crucial to national security these should not be hidden from the public. We should know what our employees are doing on our behalf. I think that is what whistleblowing is all about. It doesn't have to be a specific crime, just a revelation of behaviour that was previously being kept secret for unjust reason.
Do you think that diplomats in foreign countries should have any channels of communication that aren't monitored by the host government? I suspect that most diplomatic cables aren't classified to keep US citizens in the dark--they're classified because candid assessments of situations and personalities are essential to good diplomacy.
The government already has people whose job it is to ensure that material is classified appropriately. There is most likely both a volume issue and a err on the side of caution issue.
While many of us disagree with all items that are classified I doubt you will find any organization which we would all agree upon that could make good decisions. Any such organization not within government would have to thoroughly vetted to insure their integrity and that all documents until accepted as non classified are treated as classified
I had the opposite feeing so I went back and combed through. Imho it is 12 US crimes vs. 9 non-crimes. Sometimes I had a bit of trouble deciding whether it can be constituted a crime or not. Here's my list of decisions (a = crime, b = non-crime):
a b a a a b a b a b b b a b a a a a b b a
There is no way a person at Manning's level could be expected to cherry pick effectively. How can he decide what is in the public interest, know what evidence is enough, know what evidence is dangerous, and so on. Yes to a point, but we must accep that its a highly complex set of decisions that have to be made. For a low level person to whistle-blow the only effective way to do it is to grab as much as possible, and give it to a person or people who can do that sorting for him.
Now, in a decent open democracy, there should be such people who do have the authority, clearance and moral independence, who we can all trust to do that for a whistle-blower. But, the problem is two fold, 1) who do we trust, and 2) the content of the documents proves that the US government could not be trusted.
So, he had to give the lot to some one he trusted would do morally the right thing, and release what was necessary. At that point in time, wikileaks was big and had a decent reputation. His case was, AFAIK, the first to go wrong, and the first to show that wikileaks was not robust and smart enough to do the job properly. Of course after the even, people slag wikileaks off and say he shouldn't have gone there. In hind sight, yes.
With Snowden, I guess that the Guardian and its lawyers are being very damn careful about what they release. I guess they have information that would be dangerous and they are probably rightly sitting on it. But here were possibly see a much better filtering and vetting process. No, not one governments like, but one that give us enough information to point fingers, but not enough to get people killed.
But, for a "simple" whistle-blower, they have no choice but to grab all they can, and trust people who know what they are doing to filter the material to a) prove a case or accusation, and b)protect the innocent and vulnerable. In that I include agents and what not legitimately intelligence gathering. Manning's mistake was a reasonable one. He was right at the time to think wikileaks was a reasonable route, but obviously that has since been tarnished.
Of course what we really need is this independent, trust-able, official route for whistle-blowers. But Im not sure how that can really happen satisfactorily. Hence the incredible value of decent journalists.
> There is no way a person at Manning's level could be expected to cherry pick effectively. How can he decide what is in the public interest, know what evidence is enough, know what evidence is dangerous, and so on.
This is exactly what whistleblowing is about. You understand and have evidence that a specific crime is being committed, and you release info about that specific crime.
If you don't have a grasp of what is going on, then the proper response isn't "hey I'm not sure what I'm doing or looking at, so let me publish everything I can get my mits on because I think there is something fishy."
Let me ask a question from a different angle.. since the rationale for classifying these was "to protect national security", how many actually met this criteria, crime or no?
That's the main issue I'm trying to wrap my head around. Did he release the equivalent of 500 pounds of information and a few grams of it turned out to be bad? Or was it a larger percentage?
> U.S. tried to get Spain to curb its probes of Gitmo torture and rendition.
> U.S. knew all about massive corruption in Tunisia back in 2006 but went on supporting the government anyway, making it the pillar of its North Africa policy.
> U.S. pressured the European Union to accept GM — genetic modification, that is.
> -U.S. used threats, spying, and more to try to get its way at last year's crucial climate conference in Copenhagen.
Some people here were speculating that NSA spying on the world means US will be able to blackmail all the world's leaders to do what's in the interested of US instead of their own citizens.
> US will be able to blackmail all the world's leaders to do what's in the interested of US instead of their own citizens.
I am very interested to see how much longer the world will tolerate this nonsense, before they eventually tell the US to fk off and get out of their affairs. Obviously Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, etc. are doing it, but I really want to see a whole stack (all?) of the OECD countries stand together and make the US irrelevant.
I think it would be pretty effective if they all agreed to sever all trade with the US, and stop using the US dollar for anything (gold, oil) etc. This can't continue.
The internet, one of the world's most powerful emerging resources, is largely routed through and controlled by US companies.
It seems trivially obvious (in hindsight) that intelligence agencies would seek to leverage this to further US interests globally. One might argue that this is what the intelligence agencies were created for...
(as a non-US citizen, I'm not praising or defending this state of affairs, but instead I recognise this as the nature of things)
Not trying to be obtuse, but it is in the best interest of countries not to owe other countries favors or have skeletons that can be used against them.
In simpler words - cry me a river that the US is able to use human rights abuses, corruption, etc., against you because, if not the US, someone else will. But the same goes for the US. If you don't want to be embarrassed by facts that are revealed as leaks, don't do what you did in the first place.
Wow and so far the death toll from the Arab Spring is only ~127,000... there's a long way to go until it matches Afghanistan + Iraq.
Perhaps before he's out he'll make that grim milestone.
Not to say that he is responsible, only that the chaos introduced by his massive classified data expose contributed to uncorking that unrest. And to think, he was hoping to stop war.
