This isn’t even close to whistleblowing. The info had zero to do with any supposed malfeasance by the USA, and was instead simply a classified intelligence report about foreign activity. Even though the current administration is stonewalling any real investigation into Russian influence on the election, that hardly makes this a case even remotely in the same ballpark as Snowden (and I am not a fan of his actions either, for the record, but at least you can make a viable argument for him).
If this person is indeed the person who sent the info to the press, this is just a case of someone forgetting, or choosing to ignore, that there are laws and rules they agreed to that govern how and when classified information can be released. Hint: junior contractors don’t get to make that call.
Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates, furnishes, transmits, or otherwise makes available to an unauthorized person, or publishes, or uses in any manner prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United States or for the benefit of any foreign government to the detriment of the United States any classified information—
The statute results in a ten year prison term, but I don’t see how leaking this (misguided though it is) demonstrates a threat to the US or aids a foreign nation. Guess I’m hoping she doesn’t get a prison term.
I don’t agree, in the sense that to be whistleblowing as I understand it she would have had to leak something about or from the President or the White House indicating, directly, how the President or his people were obstructing justice. A memo from his chief of staff, say, to another staff member, that outlined how they would stonewall, that would be a whistleblowing leak. This is just release of classified information that, while related in content to the issue, does not materially indicate any malfeasance per se.
By your logic, pretty much any classified info is fair game because you can always link it back to something you don’t like. That’s a recipe for disaster.
Yes and no. Of course. Breaking the law has to have some sort of consequences. But a society need to defend the people that defend the society. If the society is moronic and put his back to the people fighting to protect democracy and freedom, is highly unfair and impractical and make me really sad.
For leakers, very short sentences make sense. Except if there cause life loss.
I am not a religious person, but I think the bible say that it took jesus 3 days to respawn, because was in hell paying for his sins.
Reality Winner’s problem is going to be that the document she stole doesn’t hurt or benefit anyone that could take her side. Russia trying to hack voting machines and take a direct hand in the election is interesting, but ultimately not anything that gives an advantage to anyone in power. No one is going to stick out their neck for Winner other than people that are sympathetic to leakers in general for moral reasons.
“The concerns were, ‘The guy won’t pay and he won’t listen,’” said one lawyer
Other factors, the lawyer said, were that it would “kill recruitment” for the firms to be publicly associated with representing the polarizing president and jeopardize the firms’ relationships with other clients.
Others mentioned potential conflicts with clients of their firms, such as financial institutions that have already received subpoenas relating to potential money-laundering issues that are part of the investigation.
Agreed. Lying to the public, while odious, is not criminal wrongdoing. If it was, all of Congress and the Administration would be in jail.
The thing is, someone in her position has a limited idea of what potentially could lead to lives lost. Allowing for individual judgment on what’s “okay” to leak and then having the end results dictate the terms of punishment is a dangerous approach relying largely on luck, imho. That’s not to say I don’t appreciate leaks. Aside from any ethical or legal value, I personally love them in part because it gives me a tiny bit of an insider’s view on a part of the world I wouldn’t otherwise be able to see. But if someone leaks classified info in a non-whistleblower manner, I think there has to be at least some modestly strong, minimum penalty involved.
And then the whole “War Room” idea has turned into:
Trump has decided that media inquiries would best be handled by his outside lawyer in New York instead of a team inside the White House, the magazine reported late Tuesday.
Questions about the probe are being referred to his long-time attorney Marc Kasowitz. Kasowitz has so far had no comment on the investigations, leaving those questions unanswered.
I’m going o hypothesize here, based on my experience with Gen Z students and their immediate predecessors. Information for these folks is not hierarchical, nor does it exist within a matrix of structured access or hierarchical worth. They have trouble distinguishing between, say, a scholarly article in a peer-reviewed journal, and someone’s blog, in terms of why one might be preferable to the other as a source in an academic paper. They also, I suspect, have real difficulty grappling with the idea of classified information per se. It’s the “information wants to be free” mindset run up to 11. The idea that there exists a body of information that is important, interesting, and not free, or even available at all to them or the general public, is anathema. More, it simply does not fit their world view. When they come across stuff that they feel is interesting, valuable, important, or whatever, their natural and first inclination is to share it, like they do everything else in there lives. It’s not that they are consciously rejecting the rules they agreed to, it’s that the rules simply never really registered with them because they referred to a way of thought that is alien to this group.
I’m usually very skeptical of generation or age-based assumptions, but I think in this case it applies. This wave of people releasing classified information seems to be composed mostly of twenty-somethings, and the releases are categorically different than other security breaches from the past. I really do think i has something to do with this view of information that the social media generation internalizes.
Anecdotally, I’ve witnessed the same thing with employees at my company and social media. We have fairly frequent problems with younger employees sharing things on social media that should not be shared. Project greenlights, major milestones, etc.
For us it’s an annoying but not huge problem. But for the government, dealing with an entire generation that has been conditioned to share everything is an interesting challenge.
Well, there’s also the fact that she had been emailing the Intercept from her work computer. IMHO, this speaks volumes more to the lax security of the company with regards to its government contract, and the process of the government using so many contractors for this kind of work.
