I agree completely. Surely noone here is so naive that they think that prosecution and punishment for ‘crimes’ like this are at least partly political decisions. Doesn’t the fact he was ‘assisting’ in the publication and revelation of horrific crimes not matter at all? Obama pardoned manning, and it’s purely for political reasons that Assange will end up dying in a US prison for allegedly assisting a pardoned crime.
Watching a bunch of US liberals turn into Javert all of a sudden is disappointing, but I guess shouldn’t be surprising after they became huge fans of the CIA and russiaphobes as soon as it became politically convenient (not directed at anyone here specifically).
The reason that this isn’t an “attack on journalism” is that the crime he’s being held for isn’t about journalism. It’s about him conspiring to commit a crime.
This isn’t something that they can just hold some journalist from the Washington Post for, because they print something they don’t like. It has nothing to do with what he published.
Being a journalist (and I’m being charitable in my use of the term here) doesn’t immunize you from prosecution for crimes.
If i break into your house and steal stuff from you, i can’t publish a story about it and then say, “hey, you can’t put me in jail! That’s an attack on the freedom of the press!”
If the stuff you steal from the house documents how the owner caused 200,000 innocent people to be murdered, I would not want to see you jailed either.
You are suggesting that it’s ok to commit crimes, if they are done to achieve ends you like.
At that point, the rule of law doesn’t mean anything at all then.
Publishing such documents would not be illegal… But the crime of stealing then still is. Crimes don’t become legal because you think the result of those crimes was actually good.
You can absolutely provide legal protection for whistleblowers. You can say that employers can’t take action against employees who bring things into the public eye.
But you can’t say that crimes suddenly become legal.
As opposed to yours, where it’s ok to commit crimes if the guy in power thinks that it’s cool?
Have you SEEN the guy in power?
A reasonable judicial system can have discretion, but you’re pushing that when you say that it’s ok to hack into DOD systems because you think maybe there’s stuff there that’s bad.
Or i guess that’s fine? Is there some situation where it’s actually not ok to hack into some system of the government? I mean, you might find evidence of wrongdoing! So hey, that’s just the act of a whistleblower!
Can i have into YOUR stuff Tim? I might find evidence of wrongdoing. I won’t know until i do it, of course. But that’s fine, right?
Laws don’t mean anything if they only apply other folks.
At the very least, whistleblowers leak confidential information, which is a crime. They sometimes have to break other laws in obtaining this confidential information (in this case, hacking into a server).
I’m glad we agree, now the only disagreement is whether manning and assange (assuming he did assist manning in any way technically) qualifies as a whistleblower.
Aren’t you describing how presidential pardons work? For the record, I think that individuals should receive legal immunity from crimes that don’t directly hurt other individuals, IF they were committing those crimes to expose much greater crimes (that do directly hurt other individuals) or prevent greater crimes.
I don’t think this is an alien concept either, as whistleblower protections are legislated in most advanced countries. It’s only that governments don’t like to enforce them (surprise surprise) when the whistleblowing has political ramifications against the government in power.
I don’t think it is acceptable to hack any government system unless you are doing it (as above) to expose greater crimes that directly hurt other individuals or prevent greater crimes when you have some sort of fore knowledge of those crimes. Manning worked for the army, he wasn’t completely unaware of what was going on, he knew what he’d find even if you may not know the complete details.
I have some steam keys of games you might be interested in and are most welcome to take, hit me up in the PMs.
The only thing that was known was that this was classified defense data.
You can’t just hack into defense department systems because you think you may find evidence of some crime.
Hell, why are we even bothering to go after those guys who hacked the DNC? They revealed embarrassing stuff, providing more information to the voting public! It shouldn’t even be illegal, right? Trump’s right, the Russians were doing us a favor!
We should probably end this exchange here, as I think a fair reading of my previous posts (i.e. search ‘directly hurt other individuals’) would not lead you to suggest that this is a natural evolution of my previous logic. Assange himself would likely agree with this, but I am capable of disagreeing with a person and still not want to see them jailed.
Manning violated his oath of duty, and did so purely for his own selfish reasons. He wanted to feel big and important, was unhappy in his position, and so he released a mountain of classified data that he didn’t even know the contents of. In doing so, he endangered the lives of his fellow soldiers.
Even if no direct harm was caused to those soldiers as a result of the actual data breech, Manning’s total ignorance of that data’s contents means that he did not make a measured assessment of what kind of harm he was going to do. He took his action with the only goal being to cause generalized harm to the US military.
Manning is not a hero. He’s a traitorous piece of shit, an opinion which had been only further supported by his actions taken since his release.
A spy steals information for an employer, and by most common definitions that employer is a country’s government. The definition of a whistleblower includes exposing information from either private or public organizations, so that is what I would call them.
Is the Iraq War not a large enough crime for anyone to deserve this whistleblower status? I wonder if you guys would feel differently if you were one of the countless people in Iraq who had no idea what had happened to a loved one who had been murdered during the war, and through this leak was able to find out.
At least Timex has this idea that Manning had no idea what she was taking, and that’s his line for deciding whether that person deserves zero ramifications or a horrific future of a lifetime of solitary confinement. I disagree strongly, but at least it’s understandable.
Please point me to a reputable source that indicates that the Iraq War files/logs compromised the identity of a US asset and put them in harms way as a result of publication?
It’s like you guys have huge surpluses of straw just laying around waiting to be used.
