Slashdot Mirror
Thomas Drake Innocent of All Ten Original Charges
decora writes "NPR, and dozens of other media sources, are reporting that NSA IT whistleblower Thomas Andrews Drake is innocent of all 10 original charges against him; including the 5 Espionage Act charges for 'retention' of 'national defense information.' Drake stared down the government to the last minute, rejecting deal after deal, because he 'refused to plea bargain with the truth.' The judge had even recently ruled that there was no evidence that Drake passed classified information to a reporter. In the end, he has agreed that he committed a misdemeanor: 'unauthorized access to a computer.' It is unknown what this means for the other non-spy espionage cases that Obama's DOJ currently has pending (Kim, Sterling, Manning), or the Grand Jury that is currently meeting to discuss Espionage Act charges related to WikiLeaks."
FYI, since it wasn't in the summary and people will inevitably ask: the charges carry a max of one year in jail, and the prosecution agreed not to pursue any jail time at all.
As you should be made to know !!
OJ was not guilty, but NOT innocent !!
that all is not lost for the U.S.A.
But the pessimist in me is pretty convinced this will not have the effect of a call to rationality, but rather a doubling down to ensure that the next case can be held up as an example to those who would dare bring light to the misdeeds of those in power. Maybe they will feel they need to have an execution for maximal effect.
Here what I found
not guilty is not equal to innocent.
Even despite attempts to bully the jury!
Sadly, the story on the National Politburo Radio site doesn't say how much taxpayer money was wasted on this useless prosecution. I'm sure, though, that, just like in the equally-useless-but-with-a-sadder-ending prosecution of Bernard von NotHaus, the U.S. Attorney's office will have a press conference to proclaim how they obtained justice against an evil “domestic terrorist.”
Just a month ago there was a story about a guy that was charged with spying although he claims he just reported gaping security they had in software.
I found the following article from the New Yorker to provide considerable information about what led up to the charges:
New Yorker: The Secret Sharer
But what about the impact? There's no denying our (the US) enemies are happy about it.
I was reading an article, I'm pretty sure it was on MSN, about this guy. It's not that there wasn't evidence, it was more that the prosecution felt that releasing the evidence (further classified information) was not something they were willing to do just to stick charges on him.
They had no case. He was a source for Congress and others within our government on a massive NSA wiretapping program to make government recording all of our plaintext emails look like the the purest product of enlightenment and benevolence, probably the creepiest secret surveillance program of the modern era.
The only upside compared to other systems is that because we live in the US, and we have a strong federal judiciary and some strong de jure personal freedoms, the results of the surveillance are only rarely if ever actually used against our citizens, to justify torturing or imprisoning them, etc...--it's not like Chechneya, for example, where everyone is afraid someone else is one of the secret police, and the Russia-backed head of state goes around personally torturing people. Ask a reporter there if they would feel comfortable criticizing him and they respond "there'd be no need to ever do that!"
This guy may be an ass, I don't know--but the NSA went too far, and someone had to expose that in a way which did not betray the country, as to Congressional oversight. I am sure the NSA meant well and I can imagine how much pressure they were in post-911. I don't blame them for going too far, I blame them for not pulling back on their own as it became more obvious they were violating the Constitution. The problem is whether the next guy will mean as well, whether they always will, and whether rules will come more and more to reflect a disconnect between the morality of individuals and the ethics of government, causing a schism contrary to the ideals of democracy and the free world.
agree with artor3 KVM Switch
If they stuck him down he would have become more powerful than they could ever imagine.
Just a month ago there was a story about a guy that was charged with spying although he claims he just reported a bunch of security holes
No one is reporting he is innocent. They reached a plea deal. The government dropped the 10 charges because a judge decided the prosecution would have to show classified material to the jury. Dropping the charges because you don't have enough evidence to make a case (i.e. without using classified material) is not the same as deciding he is innocent.
Move. Fast!
May the lies we live by make us strong, healthy, happy and wise - Kurt Vonnegut.
If you shine a light on government waste, incompetence or malfeasance be prepared for the government to use its unlimited checkbook and unaccountable law enforcement types to make your life a living hell.
Not that I have anything against Mr. Drake (and I applaud him for being a whistleblower), but there is nothing in the case that indicates a judgement of innocence. It is juvenile, subjective, and pretty much fucking stupid to use both wikipedia and ./ to pass an Op.Ed as a statement of historical fact.
Someone (Decora) who tell others to find their own references
you can find that in the various secondary sources im just too lazy to go re-reference them. i am going to edit and put back
in the wiki talk page when confronted with the lack of good reference materials, it someone I would take his words from with a grain of salt.
Why is the article treating this guy like some sort of innocent? If he is indeed innocent of passing classified information, then I'm glad justice did not miscarry. If he did indeed pass the data, he isn't a hero, he is most likely a traitor, or at the very least guilty of espionage, wire fraud, or some other similar charge. That makes him an enemy of the US.
When we'll finally have Bushitler out of the White House!
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
America is turning into a police state.
The authority is actually violating the laws in this case.
Instead of innocent until proven guilty, the authority is using that "traitor" bait to paint Mr. Drake as if he is guilty of treason against the United States of America.
Shame on Uncle Sam !!
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
This is a big fat witch hunt by bureaucrats with too much ego and power at their disposal. There (was) a good complete article on this complete story over at the New Yorker. Short recap: the NSA has had running for a number of years a project called Echelon which sucks in every bit of email, cell phone, satellite and any other type of electronic communication and tries to process in (they called all the electronic eavesdropping "total information awareness") --Carnivore and Omnivore installations at AT&T sites are part of this--. Now this left them with a great big haystack and finding needles turned into a big pain. One crypt analyst came up with a solution and called it 'thin thread'. It was rejected by the current bureaucracy because they had another project already underway called trailblazer. So this 'thin thread' project was on the shelf. People got re-assigned and it time passed. Trailblazer failed after a few years and a few hundred million dollars. Thin thread was pulled off the shelf, but since the original team had already been reassigned, new people were working on it. Some careful controls that limits spying on Americans was built into the original version. The powers that be went out of their way to spy on Americans (even though thats not part of the NSA mandate, and illegal). The original developers protesters complained, then left. The witch hunt that followed is part the Thomas Drake trial. ---sorry for the long blurb, the New Yorker piece is 10 pages, and there is a lot of dirt I left out--,
Sincerely (hello you NSA people!),
Anonymous Coward.
I edited wikipedia , to make it hopefully much more neutral. Thanks for the tip.
As for the slashdot story, I believe that Thomas Drake's innocence is not opinion. I believe that it is a fact. If you have 10 counts against you, and they are all dropped, then you are innocent of them. Several readers have pointed this follows from the 'innocent until proven guilty' meme (which i hadn't thought of, but is a good argument...) do you disagree? Just because I am biased does not mean I am factually wrong, does it?
I believe the slashdot headline compares favorably in accurate to the other mainstream news headlines that are currently crowding around cyberspace.
The other headlines on other news sites typically say something like "NSA Leak case reaches plea deal", or "NSA spy espionage case pleads out" or "Spy-Agency Leaker pleads guilty to lesser charge" or "classified leak case reaches bargain" or whatever.
Many of these statments are misleading, or flat out wrong, and most of them imply things that are factually incorrect. Thomas Drake was never, ever, not even once, charged with 'leaking'. There is no law against 'leaking'. There are several laws covering 'disclosure' or 'delivery' of information, but he was not charged with one of those laws either. Why? Because they had no good evidence that he ever delivered any classified information to anyone. He specifically took precautions against divulging classified information to anyone - that was part of his agreement with Gorman of the Baltimore Sun - that he wouldn't give her any information.
Now, the DOJ indictment of him contains a lot of statements about 'giving classified information to a reporter', but when they actually brought criminal charges, none of those charges was for 'leaking' or 'disclosure' or 'delivery' of information. A statement is a totally different thing from a charge. Thus, any headline that says he was 'charged with leaking' or 'charged with disclosure' is misleading at best and flat out wrong at worst.
As for this word 'classified', it is also wrong. The Espionage Act 793(e) does not even use the word 'classified', it uses the phrase "national defense information". This is an important distinction, because only a jury can decide if a defendant's information counted as 'national defense information'. And this typically refers to serious military stuff, like diagrams of ships or something - that is what the law was refering to when Congress created it in 1917, and when Congress created its forefather the Defense Secrets Act in 1911, and what Congress intended when it amended the Espionage Act in 1950. And as Schmidt and Edgar point out in their famous 1973 Columbia Law article, Congress has repeatedly refused or failed to blanketly criminalize the posession or delivery of classified information - as Elsea points out in her 2010 CRS article, there is a 'patchwork' of laws, because Congress itself, and the President, love to leak classified information to the media. Thus, every headline that uses the word 'charged with leaking classified info' in relation to Drake's case is factually incorrect. He was never, not even once, charged with any law that contains the word 'classified' anywhere in it.
Again, the indictment makes a lot of statements about 'giving classified information to a reporter' (Which the judge ruled there was no evidence of). Even the headline of the DOJ news release might say things about 'classified information'. It is not my fault that the DOJ lawyers cannot read the Espionage Act. And again, a statement in an indcitment is a totally different thing from a criminal charge.
Lastly I'd like to cover the implications, the sort of tone and demeanor, of the language of the many articles floating around the web.
They seem to imply the story here is that a 'leaker' had to 'plead to a lesser charge'. That is utterly misleading. Another view of the story, one that I believe will be in the history books, is that the government, after a case that started when Bush demanded the FBI find the NS
the court could not convict? not a problem. congress critter is already working on something to make sure the next guy will be staring at life sentence or firing squad. just mention the word "terrorism" and "unpatriotic" and all the congress critters will fall in line.
I'm relieved.
The fact that this is such a news and a relief in this country, I'm deeply worried.
But for now, thank you Mr. Drake. You will not be forgotten.
Thomas Drake has a lot of stuff in his head. The state has a lot of power to make his life miserable. Right now, it's a standoff. He's let go, for now, and well into the future - when no one is looking anymore - he'll have an accident. Poor guy.
Just look at his home page, where he claims he has "done so much more than
the average American". What kind of nutcase makes such claims ? That's some
scary stuff, which sounds frighteningly close to the claims a "supremacist" would make.
Furthermore, people who have actually accomplished things don't sit around making
claims, they are too busy actually doing things.
Next, go to the "contact" page and notice how "Hylandr" attempts to censor your email
before you even write it. This is straight out of the fascist training manual, folks.
You can and should draw your own conclusions, but IMO this "Hylandr" is a seriously
weird individual.
When agreeing to a plea bargain, you have to say not only that you agree to the bargain, but that you are doing so because you actually are guilty. This is coercing a lie from innocent people who simply can't risk adding to their jail time if they have a weak case.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
In the US courts of law you never have to prove innocence. It's the default starting position. Unless proven otherwise, that's what the defendant is. If the prosecution fails to prove you guilty, that's what you are.
This is factually correct, no "Um, no" about it. If you're not being tried for anything, no one describes you as "not guilty." If you've been tried and acquitted, you're just as innocent as someone who hasn't been tried. There's no middle-of-the-road legal status that applies to people who have been acquitted versus those who have never been prosecuted. Both sets of people are simply legally innocent, as the GP said, period.
Shouldn't the headline read 'Thomas Drake Not Guilty...'?
He was innocent to begin with according to the law of the land.
Your argument fails at your definition of "guilty". Someone isn't guilty because you think they are. You can only ever be guilty of a crime if you are found so in a court of law. It gets interesting when you appeal (IANAL - will you end up in a sort of "suspended guilty" state?), but that's not the case here.
Until such time as there is a formal conviction, someone is assumed innocent. A lesson the assorted press still hasn't learned either, leading to the destruction of lives of people that *were* innocent.
In this case, the subject is guilty of one crime - the one he has been convicted for. Not of anything else. To state otherwise is AFAIK actionable as libel or defamation.
Insert
Why is it that President Obama was so determined to do nothing about President Bush's illegal warrantless wiretaps? That was certainly a breach of law.
Oh, wait. The law doesn't apply to our political elites, only to those who stand in the way of their authoritarian power grabs.
if they whont be able to drage him into court becouse it based on classfyed info they dont whant to share they will just make this guy go away very soon. they whont do it right away becouse the media is all over this but when they get bord and find something else to report on they will get rid of this guy in there own silent way. and trust me if there acting like there going to back down thats when you leave the country forever and prey they never find you.
Using "until" means that you're implying "we haven't shown you're guilty, but we will", and implies you will always be looking to find evidence of something. Harassment, in other words.
Unless means that there's no reason to even look for evidence unless you have a reason and that you remain and always were innocent.
Unless proof is supplied otherwise.
I edited wikipedia , to make it hopefully much more neutral. Thanks for the tip.
As for the slashdot story, I believe that Thomas Drake's innocence is not opinion. I believe that it is a fact.
In that case, express it as a opinion (that YOU believe it is a fact) instead of putting it as a fact (as a legal judgement) being reported in the media and in the references you previously provided (none of which made that statement.) I do believe the man is innocent as well, but there has been no legal judgement expressing so. And none of the references you made in the media claim "innocence" as a piece of news.
You misrepresented (pretty much lied) the statements made by NPR and other news outlets to prop out your opinion (which I think is right.) That's dishonest. When you submitted your article to /. , you should have said very clearly:
1. NPR and other news outlets broke the news that Mr. Drake's case has been dropped in exchange for pleading for a much minor charge, and that he won't face jail time.
2. That YOU, based on x, y, z or whatever, strongly believe in Mr. Drake is innocent.
And then you should have refrained from putting #2 on the wikipedia entry because that has never been wikipedia's purpose (even if a million dishonest slimeballs do so on a daily basis.)
If you still don't get this and why, you are still a dishonest slimeball independently of what you believe about the case. It's not just your beliefs that define you, but also your actions.
They can invent an ex post facto law if you're a foreigner. See Gary McKinnon. The law that allowed extradition wasn't in place when the act McKinnon is accused of making in breech of that law took place.
Is this just a feeble attempt to imply that Barack Obama is riding roughshod over the Constitution in his pursuit of Stalinist USA?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
The US Senate used to serve a very similar role to the House of Lords. It was appointed by the state legislatures without the advice or consent of "The People(tm)" because it was supposed to represent the interest of the individual states as whole bodies against the federal government's authority. That's one of the reasons why you didn't see a major rejection of the 10th amendment and expansive police powers within the states by the federal government until the popular election of senators turned them into federal politicians as opposed to representatives of their state governments with authority over the federal government.
Repealing the 17th amendment and undoing the arbitrary size limit on the House of Representatives would do wonders to reign in the power of the federal government by changing the entire political culture.
For example, one can very well be guilty but not found as such by a court of law. This is why the courts do not generally attempt to answer the question "is the defendant innocent?" Rather, the courts try to answer the question, "is there enough evidence to prove the defendant did this?"
This is why, at least in the US, you will sometimes see someone win a criminal case (get judged not-guilty) but then lose a civil case that presupposes that the defendant is, in fact, guilty. The criminal and civil courts tend to use different standards (reasonable doubt vs. preponderance of evidence).
So, in other words, if the case is dropped (or the defendant is acquitted of all charges), that really says nothing about guilt or innocence. Rather it only says something about the amount of evidence in play. In this case, the amount of evidence is being limited by government fiat. They aren't willing to diclose certain evidence. Consequently, the courts do not have sufficient evidence to convict. That is a far different decision than the court determining that someone is innocent.
Which is why he lost that wrongful death civil case. Or, in other words, there are gray areas where people might be "legally innocent" in some contexts but not in others.
The presumption of innocence is not the same thing as being innocent. Only in very rare cases will a court contain a determination of innocence as part of a finding of fact. It's a bit like the position of an agnostic compared to a hard atheist. Just as the agnostic states "I don't know if God exists", the courts state "I don't know that the defendant is guilty." This is a different judgment in kind than if the courts stated bluntly, "I know that the defendant did not commit the crime" which is pretty comparable to the hard atheists' position "I know that God does not exist."
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Govs at all levels quite often find another set of charges to go after someone they want to nail.
There are plenty of laws to choose from, and they don't even care if they lose, as the goal is to make an example of someone, and bankrupting them with legal fees is a good way to do that.
You all may recall that entrepreneurs stopped taking Microsoft their ideas and companies because MS was dishonest, there was a good chance of getting ripped off. MS hasn't done so well following that loss of trust.
The same kinds of lost opportunities are certainly happening to the US already, and for the same reason. We citizens can't trust our government in any way, why should foreigners?
The US is becoming anti-democratic, of course : The wholesale abandonment of the Rule of Law and Constitution, the hounding of whistle-blowers, the many ways the gov operates entirely outside of the Constitution (national surveillance state is here), the public calls by political leaders for assassinations of everybody from Assange through OBL, the cooperation of private businesses in all of this, e.g. AT&T's feeding all of the internet traffic to NSA and Amazon/VISA/MC shutting off services to Wikileaks, ...
Get the books and watch Youtube for Naomi Wolfe for a good Progressive's view of all of this. Read lewrockwell.com for a Libertarian/TeaParty view. It isn't exactly a secret that political trends in the US are strongly authoritarian, pro-ruling-class/oligarchy. Which certainly is anti-democratic.
This is the most important political issue facing voters here in the US, and our media's take is always some version of Left/Right propaganda/distraction to avoid the issue.
This is bad news. It means the media will no longer pay attention to this DOD mismanagement. The more people pay attention to fraud the less often it will take place. For other examples of fraud in the DOD see here: http://natsecurityeb.blogspot.com/2010/10/top-secret-america.html
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A court does not find one "innocent" ... although there is a presumption of "innocent until proven guilty." the point of court proceedings is to attempt to prove guilt, that burden is on the prosecution, if that can't be accomplished then the individual is either acquitted (charges dropped) or found not guilty.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index.php/t-6612.html
http://www.databaserecords.com/pdf/criminal_definitions.pdf
the prosecutor claimed that but the claim is very questionable, since two of the documents Drake is accused with were UNCLASSIFIED.
many other documents were 'retroactively classified'.
the judge in a previous writing described how there was 'no evidence' the hushmail emails contained classified info, nor that the newspaper articles contained classified info from Drake's house as the government claimed.
assuming that the government is accurate is not a good way to be 'neutral'.
you can read a bunch of the case files, motions, petitions, etc, by googling 'thomas drake selected case files fas.org'
thanks
My main problem was implying that NPR + other news sources used the word 'innocent'. Well, they didnt use that exact word. Sorry for implying that. I wrote it out of anger, because nobody else was pointing out that blatant fact. The point of their stories is that all charges are dropped, which makes him innocent. . . ergo they are writing that he is innocent. If i had written "NPR reports Drake Case collapsed", when NPR had really said 'all charges dropped', would that have also been SLIMEBAG DISHONESTY? or would it simply be accidentally implying a word was used when it wasnt?
If you would like to present your case please feel free to provide more details.
as for wikipedia....
will you revisit each one of my dozens of past edits to the article, and scream at me about each one, that i am a DISHONEST SLIMEBALL for each edit? because each of my previous dozens of edits on his article also contained mistakes, and i corrected them over time. It happens all the time on wikipedia, that is just the nature of the beast. That's why i like editing wikipedia actually, because people correct my mistakes, or they suggest corrections for me, or i can fix my mistakes later on. I have re-done entire articles because of people's criticisms of my writing. That, to me, is what wikipedia is about, not about 'refrain from editing for fear you might get two words wrong'. Is that your position? that nobody should write anything on wikipedia because out of thousands of words, two words might be 'too positive' towards a person in a biography of living person article? What is your position on wikipedia? do you ever write there? why or why not?
now the day he got freed, i read dozens of headlines about the case. were those reporters all all DISHONEST SLIMEBALLS when they put false and misleading statements in their headlines about him 'leaking classified information'? thats borderline defamatory, and false.
As for slashdot...
Why just scream at me? why not scream at the slashdot editors? they have changed my headlines before... in one of my previous stories, i wrote "Bush" in the headline, they replaced it with 'Government'. Good for them. But in this case, they chose to leave 'innocent' in there. Slashdot editors have posted and tweaked tens of thousands of stories in their time - why is their journalistic judgement invalid while, say, the New York Times is valid? Do you know what the New York Times did in the Wen Ho Lee case? That he won a massive lawsuit against them later on for harming him and writing lies about him?
After Drake's reputation has been run through the mud, is it not someones job to stand up and state the fact that he is innocent? How is it accurate or responsible to hide this fact from the public? I will admit that i got a little carried away in the moment, it would have been 'more neutral' to write 'all 10 charges dropped'. But slashdot is not wikipedia. It is slashdot.
I will need a lot more evidence before i can accept that i am a DISHONEST SLIMEBALL.
there was no evidence he passed any classified information to a reporter.
the charges against him were not for passing information to a reporter.
they were for 'retention'.
having it in his basement.
which, by the way, is what the government IG office had told him to do - keep the IG documents for your records. they neglected to mention that some of the documents would be retoractively classified later on