It's interesting he brought up My Lai (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre), there are more recent examples from Iraq that could be used just the same. Immunity from war crimes seems such a weird concept. I think it is the flip side of aggressively prosecuting whistleblowers, it sends a signal to the rest of the people in the employ of the government. 'Even if you do this, we'll protect you' and 'If you do this, we'll hound you forever'. It would be quite refreshing to see a nation-state prosecute its military and contractors (mercenaries, really) suspected of war crimes with the same zeal with which they target whistle-blowers.
Regarding the charges relating to computer fraud: This is like wire fraud. It's apparently pretty hard to do anything illegal in the USA without getting a charge of mail / wire fraud attached to it. I figure anything that involves a computer and that displeases someone in an official position is grounds for a computer fraud case. So I think the writers assertion that mailing the same documents in paper form would have had a different effect is wrong. The only thing that I think would change is that computer fraud would be replaced by mail fraud.
Manning is being charged with all this mostly because he embarrassed the US administration, not because of any fraud or real life fall out (contrary to earlier claims of lives put at risk and deaths related to the leaks no specific death has been positively linked to the leaks and any such claims were retracted during the case). The Image of the USA has been damaged, the recent NSA leaks damage it further. Instead of asking itself how to remedy the root causes an example is made out of those that stood up. Business as usual, unfortunately.
It's not really any different with any other laws. I've seen police just lie about wearing seat belts and other things. If someone in power in the government wants to get you on something and they can get away with it, they'll do it.
> Manning is being charged with all this mostly because he embarrassed the US administration, not because of any fraud or real life fall out
The foreign relations hit was real enough. So was the hit to "human intelligence", and the threat to those collaborating with the U.S. in Afghanistan, Yemen, and other places.
So is the Arab Spring, which continues to kill people every day in Syria (and now Egypt, unless things change soon over there).
But either way, though the law is based on the effect of one's actions, the law is also often based on the actions themselves.
After all if someone were to come at me with a knife, swing and miss, they could still be charged with attempted murder or aggravated battery despite "no harm" befalling me.
If I drive around without insurance I can still be cited even though I haven't crashed into anyone yet.
So likewise, even if our allies in places like Afghanistan and Yemen had managed to be alerted and evade retribution in time that didn't change the existential threat they were living under.
And that's the problem with intelligence and counter-intelligence. Often the enemy won't realize that a successful attack against them had intel as a key; the Nazis went through all of WWII with nary a clue that the Allies were amazingly well-informed of their capabilities and intentions.
Now we have it on the reverse. The Taliban attack a U.S. base in Afghanistan and destroy 6 Harrier jets [1] in Sept. 2012. Was the day-to-day operational intelligence revealed by Manning completely useless for that? It's hard for the U.S. to tell on the other end.
How about the people killed, scores injured, and damage done to a Forward Operating Base in Aug. 2012 [2]? Did intel on how the U.S. Army responds to the many previous Taliban and AQ attacks really not help them at all in planning this assault?
The problem is that it is hard to conclusively prove that intelligence was useful for a given attack if you're only on the receiving end, especially if using the evidence you have would have the effect of divulging your sources. The same reasoning is behind the rumors behind Churchill allowing Coventry to be normally defended (and subsequently severely damaged by German bombing), because he didn't want to tip off the German that their Enigma was sometimes readable by the British.
But just because you can't prove something doesn't imply the opposite (that you've proven the intel was not useful). This still helps Manning as far as his trial goes, but history has shown that skilled opponents can utilize far less intel than was provided by Manning to great effect. And common sense would show that there's a reason OBL made an effort to get his hands on the leaked intel himself. Presumably the fact he still had it meant at least he found it useful.
But even if OBL had found it very useful, he'd hardly have issued a press release over it, so a lack of crowing about "real life effects" is hardly evidence in support of Manning, it's simply a lack of evidence to support either conclusion.
Edit: I suppose I could at least mention that I agree that using CFAA as a charge in this case is unfair. The best you can say is that downloading data for the purpose of divulging it is "exceeding authorized access" but that has nothing to do with whether you use a web browser or wget, and in any event is already covered by espionage changes and charges of mishandling classified data. Even worse, had Manning somehow managed to use that compilation he downloaded for statistical analyses that aided the Army in their operations it presumably would have been 'authorized access', despite being the same actions taken in either case.
All of these things in the Arab Spring have multiple causes, not just Syria's. So to the extent that people are going to say that Manning's straws broke the camel's back, then they should also attribute at least partial responsibility for what goes along with that.
You're exactly right that there's more going on with these than just Manning's leaks, but all the same no single drop of rain believes that it's to blame for the flood.
Is there really anyone who somehow denies the evidence of smoking causes harm? I think a better example here would have been cellphones causing cancer. That's still up in the air(though personally, I'm assuming that cellphones are harmful and do my best to keep mine a couple of inches away from my body..... just in case).
There is no debate that smoking causes harm. However assume for the sake of argument that smoking increases one's chances of getting cancer from 10% to 90%. If someone smokes, then gets cancer you cannot definitively link that specific case of cancer to the smoking. When you have a large sample, you can demonstrate the link, but you could still only say X% of people who smoke and got cancer got cancer from smoking; you cannot say who the X% are.
Ah, okay. I think I get that. So OP was saying that we'll never know if anyone got killed by the leaked cables, but someone probably did. I'm not sure I agree, but now I understand. I think some operations may have needed to be changed up a bit, but in the world of espionage... yeah, kinda hard to say exactly what particular action leads to someone getting discovered and killed. It's usually a chain of events, all important in their own way leading up to the conclusion.
That said, I think the path of smoking tobacco --> illness/failing health is more clear than leaked-info --> death.
There is a theoretical way they could cause problems, though, which needs more investigation. DNA can conduct. It may be possible for DNA molecules to act as antennas and have a current induced in them from electromagnetic waves passing through.
Some researches believe that part of the mechanism used to detect and repair damage to our DNA involves sending a current through the DNA and looking for anomalies. Externally induced currents could interfere with that damage detection and repair.
There are some pretty amazing and subtle things going on in our cells.
Note that I'm not presenting the above link as absolute proof but merely as something that causes one to think about it. It is not 100% clear cellphones are safe. Maybe 99.999999%, but not 100%.
If you are tryiing to persuade people to join a particular issue, it doesn't help when you alienate parts of your readerbase.
The first paragraph:
> I'm not just thinking of the country's dysfunctional Congress, pathological infatuation with firearms, addiction to litigation, crazy healthcare arrangements, engorged prison system, chronic inequality, 50-year-old military-industrial complex and out-of-control security services.
Right there you've already excluded persons who are pro-gun and want to support your cause.
This kind of issue transcends a lot of traditional barriers, so it would help if they weren't reconstructed around the argument.
Yeah, the "pathological infatuation with firearms" bit struck me as out of place among the other issues. I don't own guns, but I'm not afraid of people that do.
Wow, this makes me want to punch the writer more than any other line, and I pirate regularly. It's obvious that the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act needs reform, maybe that's why the press is having their lamest hacks write about it?
The punishment for leaking classified info has always been a life sentence and usually in solitary confinement too like the guys convicted of treason and spying doing life in supermax prison beside the unabomber. Selling weapons to the enemy, wholesale massacre of civillians and pillaging is a slap on the wrist. Manning didn't leak anything top secret either, wonder what is in store for Snowden if they ever catch him. He'll probably get more time than the guy who got 1000 years + life for running a dungeon.
What's up with the excessive ridiculous sentences in the US? 136 years... do they keep your corpse in the prison after you die of old age to finish the time?
Compare this to Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people (overwhelmingly teenagers). He got 21 years in prison with the possibility of indefinite custody if psychiatrists conclude he is still a danger to society at the end of it. And most Norwegians appear to agree to this sentence, which is the maximum permitted by law. There were few calls for harsher sentencing laws when he was convicted.
Now imagine how stealing and revealing a few documents which don't harm anyone is multitudes worse than this. US criminal law is just insane.
I too wonder about the comedy sentencing in the US, which clearly is not working it terms of prevention at all.
The only think I can come up with is its some sort of replacement for the olde gunslinger vengeance of the wild west era which has yet to be civilized.
I also think there is an arrogance that says the US is the best country in the world, and how could any one possibly act against it since what ever it does simply must be good, pure and legal. Anything that dents that image to the rest of the world is treason, some how. It reminds me of extreme religion's reaction to criticism. Which to me it would do since I view the USA as pretty much a religion. So, heretics like Manning will be metaphorically burned at the stake. Such sentences are not justice, they are PR.
Interesting to me that Snowden, having witness the Manning case, still felt he had to whistle blow. Tell me how much he believed in his actions.
The U.S. does have ridiculous sentences, but maybe by a factor of 2x from what you'd find in other countries. The maximum sentences quoted in news articles are just gibberish.
Two women were sentenced to 10 years and 20 years, respectively, for raising money for a Somali terrorist organization. That's probably too harsh by a factor of 2-4x, but the theoretical maximum sentence for the first case was probably 100+ years (a dozen counts of providing material support to a terrorist organization).
Is it really only a 2x factor? I'd have to dig up some numbers, but my impression was more like a 5-10x differential, even going by actual sentences, not maximums. For example, 98% of sentences in Denmark are 24 months or less; it's very difficult for the prosecution to get a multi-year sentence except in exceptional circumstances (serious violent crimes, career criminals on their 3rd or 4th trial, etc.). My impression (possibly incorrect?) is that the U.S. much more frequently makes use of severe sentences in the 5+ year range, even for nonviolent property crimes, or drug-possession offenses.
I think I recall a study arguing that the massive disparity in sentence lengths, rather than rate of arrest/conviction, was the main contributor to the U.S.'s very large prison population. I.e. Europeans also arrest and convict people, but they don't keep them in prison for multi-year lengths nearly as often.
The U.S. is generally less than 2x relative to Australia, 2-3x relative to the U.K., and 3-5x relative to Finland. The sentences for assaults show the most differential, I'd imagine because of very strict sentencing for sexual assaults.
I think the averages skew higher in the U.S. than typical sentences than it does in other countries. Initiatives like California's "three strikes law",[1] that result in life sentences for three potentially non-violent felonies dramatically skew up the averages in the U.S. I don't think any of the major European countries have anything comparable. If you took out the ridiculous sentences handed down as a result of those laws, I think the differential would be much less.
Those 30+ years sentences for small crimes do sound scary when they try to get people to accept the plea bargain. My guess is this is one of the main reasons why these sort of silly sentences are kept.
I'm not sure what the solution might be. I think its an excellent feature of the system that a judge, who can see the whole situation in front of him, is empowered to set sentences instead of a legislature that must necessarily speak in general terms. My preferred solution would be to get rid of statutory sentences and sentencing guidelines and instead just have a couple of maximums (20 years for a non-homicide crime, life/death for homicide). But that wouldn't stop prosecutors from bullying a defendant into accepting a plea deal by arguing "the judge could sentence you to up to 20 years!"
The other solution, less discretion in the hands of the judge is, I think, worse. Americans are not a compassionate people to criminals. It's easy for a voter and a legislator to call for 20 years or 30 years for a crime. Much harder for a judge sitting in front of a real human being to do that. So if you move discretion more to the statutory process, I think you'll get the opposite of the desired result.
The concept of a plea bargain (as far as I understand it) is quite messed up but so entrenched in the American legal system that to make that suggestion I assume would get either blank stares or calls of one's insanity and possibly 'subversive commie associations' or whatever...
What the hell though. "We're going to throw the book at you and show no mercy, but if you say you did it you'll go a bit lighter." Seriously that has no place in a trial.
The plea bargain is the result of a couple of forces in the criminal justice system:
1) The vast majority of people accused are, factually, guilty. You hear about the edge cases in the news where someone is convicted on flimsy evidence, but for each one of those there are a dozen people who did what they are accused of doing, and the police have ample proof. They blew a 0.20 on the breathalyzer while driving, they were found with a pound of cocaine in their trunk, the police were called to the scene while they were beating up their wife, etc. The premise of plea bargaining is that it makes sense to allow those people to plead guilty and save the public the expense of a trial.
2) There are too many criminals and not enough public defenders and prosecutors. If 90% of cases didn't end in plea bargains, the system couldn't process all the accused. Part of the problem is that we've criminalized too much behavior--thank the drug war for that. But it's not just drugs. Large and medium-sized U.S. cities have 5-20x the murder rate of major European cities. New York, the safest big city in the U.S., had 5.6 murders per 100,000, while comparably-sized London has 1.6. Chicago is at 18.5 versus comparably-sized Madrid at 1.0 per 100,000. There is something severely dysfunctional in the social fabric of the U.S. that necessitates a much more aggressive policing and prosecution function.
I think the original justification of plea bargaining (1), has been severely distorted in light of the pressures created by (2). It makes sense to a degree, but it has been stretched, often out of necessity, far beyond reasonableness.
I was going by murder rate, defining "big city" as over 1 million people, and forgot San Diego exists. That said, it's not really fair to compare a city with the population density of 4,000/square mile to cities in Europe with population densities of 10,000-20,000/square mile. It's harder to manage crime in a real city versus a quasi suburb.
> What's up with the excessive ridiculous sentences in the US? 136 years...
That's not the sentence. It's the maximum authorized by Congress. In the Anglo-American system, judges are primarily responsible for sentencing, not the legislature, though the legislature sets limits and guidelines.
the US does have excessive sentencing in some cases but citing figures like 136 years isn't really evidence, as they represent a theoretical maximum sentence which isn't necessarily anywhere near what the suspect will actually receive.
Here's the thing: Bradley Manning made a promise and signed a contract to protect classified information. He broke that promise and was found guilty. Unlike Snowden or Daniel Ellsberg, he was indiscriminate in his disclosure. He basically grabbed a bunch of secret stuff and mailed it to Wikileaks.
The computer fraud law may need changing, but using Manning instead of Swartz as the poster boy wins absolutely zero hearts and minds.
> Unlike Snowden or Daniel Ellsberg, he was indiscriminate in his disclosure.
Well, it was a lot of data, so he passed it to an organization that supposedly had people who could sift through it and post the relevant stuff in redacted form. Unfortunately, those people screwed up and published the encryption key for the unredacted data.
As far as we can tell, Snowden has also leaked things that haven't been published (e.g. most of the PRISM slide deck). It's hard to say how much he's actually leaked, versus how much the press is choosing not to publish for lack of relevance.
> Well, it was a lot of data, so he passed it to an organization that supposedly had people who could sift through it and post the relevant stuff in redacted form. Unfortunately, those people screwed up and published the encryption key for the unredacted data.
That is exactly what was illegal. When Manning couldn't be bothered to even choose what data to leak or not he lost the ability to claim any kind of moral high ground over what happened to it. Unless he personally knew and could trust everyone with access in the WikiLeaks organization he had no way of even truly knowing what would happen if he leaked data that was dangerous to the U.S. or other people.
That's not just a theoretical tweak either; WikiLeaks has had at least two major instances of insiders in the news that don't fully agree with Assange, including the one of their higher-ups, Daniel Domscheit-Berg.
Additionally, whether a leak has been published is completely orthogonal to the question of whether that leak was discriminate. You're right that it's hard to tell that Snowden's leaks are discriminate until the extent of them has been published, but it's at least possible that Snowden chose each leaked briefing judiciously and precisely.
Yes, because blunt analysis of the Mexican government is a war crime.
>U.S. Ambassador Carlos Pascual left Mexico in May 2011 amid furor over leaked cables that angered the Mexican government. Mexican President Felipe Calderon had publicly criticized a cable in which Pacual complained about inefficiency and infighting among Mexican security forces in the campaign against drug cartels.
If Manning only released information about war crimes then he would be a true whistle-blower. Instead he released a whole bunch of information, mostly diplomatic cables which had no relevance to war crimes. He has set back protection for genuine whistleblowers because of his actions.
To be uncharacteristically charitable to the US government, Im not sure any government has credible computer/internet policies. Certainly not here in the UK at least.
Partly, I think this is because of the general ignorance of the population. And that is because the mass media see the internet as a threat to it's businesses and demonize the internet at every opportunity. So the general population see shed loads of scare stories which they believe because the have (or had) more trust in the mass media than the internet.
How often have we heard the sarcastic phrase: "It must be true, its on the internet"? (Of course my reply is always an equally sarcastic: "It must be true, I read it in a newspaper".)
"I'm not just thinking of the country's dysfunctional Congress, pathological infatuation with firearms, addiction to litigation, crazy healthcare arrangements, engorged prison system, chronic inequality, 50-year-old military-industrial complex and out-of-control security services. There is also its strange irrationality about the use and abuse of computers."
Wow. He pretty much summed all what's wrong. He didn't mention rampant software patents and copyright explicitely but I guess that can be in the "irrationality about the use and abuse of computers".
What bothers me most about this case is the total absence of responsibility of his superiors. Private in the military do nothing by themselves, should have no access to anything or make any decisions without someone telling them what to do. Basically if a private screws up, the chain of command screwed up. Of course in reality the big guys get away with it, but still someone was in charge of this private and gave him access to top secret information and failed to pay attention to what he was doing. That is the definition of dereliction of your duty as a leader. Yet I've heard nothing about anyone else's punishment (which could be the press simply sucks).
That's true. But the problem is that this particular failing goes essentially all the way to the top.
There was a massive pressure to get people with Manning's skills into the military jobs that required clearances. This was such that even the process of getting a clearance got oursourced to contractors (witness the furor around the company that handled Snowden's screening).
Even if Manning's immediate supervisor had tried to get him stripped of his clearance for any of the many "red flags", his supervisor would simply have got in trouble instead for doing something to get rid of a warm body in a seat that needed filled.
I was disappointed to read that part, as it omits the Congressional portion of the equation as well as fails to make note that said complex is a lot older than 50 years.
Really? I'm under the impression that it really became a "complex" and gained power post WW2, hence Eisenhower's warning about it. Previously there wasn't that large of a standing army nor that large of a defense contracting industry afaik.
The military industrial complex isn't "corporatism" specifically. It addresses the relationship between defense/arms companies and the military/congress. Prior to WW1 the US was very isolationist and furthermore, lacked arms manufacturers on a large scale (as percent of gdp) so it seems unlikely they were able to direct significant policy or spending via contributions and bribes.
I'm not really seeing any evidence that it predates WW1 (and in significant size, WW2) in the United States from the links you posted. Butler's book appears to be more of an attack on profiteering and the futility of war in general. Given "beforeitsnews" also has "Reptilian Caught Hissing On MSM TV" as its top story, I'm inclined to wonder about the factual basis for what it says.
Compare information (metadata) collected on criminal scofflaws working under the cloak of US government contract against the acts the government finds reason to prosecute others of.
I highly recommend ProjectPM[1] started by folks including the US government prosecuted Barrett Brown[2]. As well as Blue Cabinet[3], started by Telecomix, the folks that strove to provide free dial-up to dissidents under digital/physical attack[4] while leaking[5] gigabytes upon gigabytes[6] of BlueCoat surveillance/ISP proxy logs from equipment illegally acquired by Assad.
Both sites work under the same premise, from ProjectPM:
"Project PM operates this wiki in order to provide a centralized, actionable data set regarding the intelligence contracting industry, the PR industry's interface with totalitarian regimes, the mushrooming infosec/"cybersecurity" industry, and other issues constituting threats to human rights, civic transparency, individual privacy, and the health of democratic institutions."
From Blue Cabinet:
"The Telecomix Blue Cabinet is a working wiki project to document vendors and manufacturers of surveillance equipment that are used in dictatorships and democracies around the internets."
Stored within is a wealth of information of the US government and others hiring mercenaries to spy on children as an example of technical skill for a deal with private entity US Chamber of Commerce as retaliation against Wikileaks[7], amongst other things.
The data sources involved include the aforementioned BlueCoat leak as well as the HBGary leak[8]. The data being the excuse to prosecute Barrett Brown of ProjectPM[9]. So do be careful unless you like being on an absurd amount of lists.
Activity such as deploying exploits on an unknowable amount of users, hacking of dissidents, _the government itself referring private entities like US Chamber of Commerce/Bank of America to the same firms it uses for surveillance work, as to target journalists like Glenn Greenwald[7]_. Makes using wget to ex-filtrate files quicker seem downright saintly.
Ask HN: What are we doing here, guys? We're just going to submit anything anti-NSA, no matter how shit it is?
>Do you think that, as a society, the United States has become a basket case?
You ... do not live here, nor do any of your readers, nor is it reasonable to diagnose entire societies, though I'm sure it makes you feel smart. How do you work for the media and not understand how the media works? Everything you know about the United States, somebody wanted you to know. Which is what makes your list of grievances so disturbing... it reads like the UK media's primary objective is to boost the national ego.
I'm an American and agree with the basket case diagnosis.
In general, I don't take seriously any comment that quotes the first line of an article and then rages against that one line. It makes me suspect that you haven't read the article and have no business dismissing the entire thing since you found the first line inappropriate.
Regarding the charges relating to computer fraud: This is like wire fraud. It's apparently pretty hard to do anything illegal in the USA without getting a charge of mail / wire fraud attached to it. I figure anything that involves a computer and that displeases someone in an official position is grounds for a computer fraud case. So I think the writers assertion that mailing the same documents in paper form would have had a different effect is wrong. The only thing that I think would change is that computer fraud would be replaced by mail fraud.
Manning is being charged with all this mostly because he embarrassed the US administration, not because of any fraud or real life fall out (contrary to earlier claims of lives put at risk and deaths related to the leaks no specific death has been positively linked to the leaks and any such claims were retracted during the case). The Image of the USA has been damaged, the recent NSA leaks damage it further. Instead of asking itself how to remedy the root causes an example is made out of those that stood up. Business as usual, unfortunately.