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Bin Laden Raid Member To Be WikiLeaks Witness
the simurgh writes in with the latest in the court-martial of Bradley Manning. "A military judge cleared the way Wednesday for a member of the team that raided Osama bin Laden's compound to testify at the trial of Pfc. Bradley Manning charged in the WikiLeaks massive classified document leak. Col. Denise Lind ruled for the prosecution during a court-martial pretrial hearing. Prosecutors say the witness, presumably a Navy SEAL, collected digital evidence showing that the al-Qaida leader requested and received from an associate some of the documents Manning has acknowledged leaking. Defense attorneys had argued that proof of receipt wasn't relevant to whether Manning aided the enemy, the most serious charge he faces, punishable by life imprisonment. 'The government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the intelligence is given to and received by the enemy,' Lind said. The judge disagreed."
The mass surveillance and mass interception that is occurring to all of us now who use the internet is also a mass transfer of power from individuals into extremely sophisticated state and private intelligence organizations and their cronies like Google. The Pentagon is maintaining a line that WikiLeaks inherently, as an institution that tells military and government whistleblowers to step forward with information, is a crime. They allege we are criminal, moving forward. Now, the new interpretation of the Espionage Act that the Pentagon is trying to hammer in to the legal system, and which the Department of Justice is complicit in, would mean the end of national security journalism in the United States.
This would basically mean that nobody could report on wars, because anyone doing so could be accused of aiding the enemy. Imagine a version of this where Bin Laden said, "Get me a copy of the New York Times!" and the government accused reporters of aiding the enemy.
Palm trees and 8
The prosecution is alleging that the document leak perpetrated by Bradley Manning directly aided the enemy (al-Qaeda) in their operations against the United States. So what's the problem with including testimony that documents leaked by Bradley Manning were present during the Bin-Laden raid? It's common sense.
You can harp on for days about how "the documents revealed war crimes" or "it was the right thing to do." Ultimately, the documents were classified, Bradley Manning signed a document stating that he would not reveal classified information when he enlisted in the Army, and did it anyways. He did not release the information the the DOD Inspector General, to a member of the House or Senate intelligence committee, or even to a legitimate member of the press corp. He released it to some foreign website with no press credentials. That makes it a crime. He's not a protected whistle-blower because he did not send the information to any of the above whistleblower channels. Even the NSA warrantless wiretapping whistle-blower had enough common sense to go through the New York Times, which meant he was protected as a whistle-blower.
sudo make me a sandwich
He swore to uphold the laws of the United States and the international law the government have treaties to uphold.
NO Non-Disclosure agreement or secrecy act can be used to force the concealment of the commission of a crime. And trying to do so makes you an accessory before and after the fact.
There's a big difference between classified documents that are meant to be secret and classifying every single thing in case something embarrasing is in them.
"He is not being prosecuted for releasing weather reports, stock values, or a crossword puzzle"
What he HAS released hasn't been shown to be of any more aid to OBL than these would be.
Classified information cannot, repeat CANNOT, be used to hide criminal acts.
Classified information incorrectly classified is NOT validly classified and almost all classified information SHOULD NOT be classified. If the rules for classification AS APPLIED are "Classify everything", then the classification cannot be of any guide as to whether the information SHOULD be classified and kept secret.
Manning is on trial for exposing the criminal acts of his superiors.
Something his superiors predecessors insisted should be done in all cases. cf Nuremberg.
BS.
His conversations with that douchebag LAME-O were mainly a discussion about his personal moral dilemma. He wasn't bragging about his "hacking skills" one bit. He had access to the information so there was no technical prowess required.
He recently made a statement in court (which of course the government didn't want the public to hear) that was surreptitiously recorded. You should listen to it.
Who cares about his motivation? He's done a right thing and now he risks his life, as if he lived in Iran.
If everyone know teh secrets ... then the secrets are not secrets and as such become null and void of any value in being secret.
So how do you aid an enemy with a secret that is not secret? You don't, but only fool those who believe its a secret.
I do recall that some judge ruled that the US government, though the secrets are no longer secret, can still pretend they are.
So who is fooling who here?
While I think it is the right decision to allow testimony on whether they found the documents at the compound, it seems to be missing a key component. They charge is "aiding the enemy". Shouldn't they also have to prove it actually aided them? What if Bin Laden read through the documents and they were all stuff he didn't care about? Or what if he just was interested in them and wanted to read them (as many people did). Possession of the documents doesn't prove that they aided the enemy anymore than a copy of Twilight would.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
This is how America treats it's patriots, those who swore to protect the nation against domestic threats. The corruption that eats away at America is almost complete. The fear of the government in America has turned most of the population in to unquestioning slaves that beleive whatever they are told.
Greed and the desire for material gains has turned that beacon of democracy into a parody of it's aspirations. Anyone who tries to fight this corruption and greed will have their unalienable rights trampled.
How long will the average American citizen tolerate this bastardisation of ideals that the rest of the world looked up to and once America sinks into despotism (as Benjiman Franklin said of the constitution) which world power will take it's place?
I don't really like the alternatives.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
"The Official Secrets Act is not to protect secrets, it is to protect officials." - Sir Humphrey.
It doesn't need to proven that Manning personally handed a copy of the release to an al Qaeda agent to make him guilty. This charge should absolutely stick. Let's say John Doe is a disgruntled Armed Forces intel agent working in Afghanistan. He's sick of his job, and takes a huge stack of classified targeting mission profiles and drone photos and scatters them in the air in Kabul's marketplace out of protest. Agents of the Taliban or al Qaeda collect the papers and peruse it. Regardless of the timeliness or utility of the info, he's (unwittingly and stupidly) gone against explicit orders and policy and aided and abetted the enemy efforts. Trying to draw a ridiculous line of causality for "proof" between release and someone getting killed is not needed at that point.
Quit idolizing Manning. Just because Manning exposed some of the seedy underpinnings of international diplomacy doesn't make him a hero. No, there were no explicit war crimes that weren't already being exposed by the MSM (Abu Ghraib being the best example). I've read through the wiki leaks releases, and there is little to nothing within them that couldn't be found in the MSM or inferred through a basic knowledge of international affairs. He's a Kevin Mitnick of this decade.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
That's why they and the rest of the security organs take great pains to prosecute / persecute the most well-known 'criminals' like Aaron Swartz beyond any semblance of justice in high-profile show trials, in order to keep the 'rabble' compliant.
What a free country we have.