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Bradley Manning Convicted of Espionage, Acquitted of 'Aiding the Enemy'
crashcy sends word that a verdict has been handed down in the case of Bradley Manning. Quoting:
"A military judge on Tuesday found Pfc. Bradley Manning not guilty of aiding the enemy, but convicted him of multiple counts of violating the Espionage Act. Private Manning had already confessed to being WikiLeaks’ source for a huge cache of government documents, which included videos of airstrikes in which civilians were killed, hundreds of thousands of front-line incident reports from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, dossiers on men being held without trial at the Guantánamo Bay prison, and about 250,000 diplomatic cables. But while Private Manning had pleaded guilty to a lesser version of the charges he was facing, which could expose him to up to 20 years in prison, the government decided to press forward with a trial on a more serious version of the charges, including 'aiding the enemy' and violations of the Espionage Act. Beyond the fate of Private Manning as an individual, the 'aiding the enemy' charge — unprecedented in a leak case — could have significant long-term ramifications for investigative journalism in the Internet era."
Aiding the enemy carries the death penalty, but they can't really murder Manning if they want Snowden extradited, can they?
" But when you agree to join the military and have a security clearance you make promises to protect that information. With your life, if necessary. He not only went against that promise, he blatantly gave away that information!"
" I, (NAME), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."
What happens when the first half is at odds with the second?
...for the crimes that he's convicted of.
When leaks like this one happen, a lot of attention and effort is spent on punishing the leaker, but we seldom hear about punishment for those that should have protected the data. Why did Manning not only have access to this sensitive data, but was able to download it and walk it out of the office?
In my company, the receptionist isn't supposed to tell anyone what's in our sensitive financial documents and really has no reason to read them. So he can't - his login doesn't have access to those files and if he persists in trying to get access, his username will come up in IPS alerts.
While I suppose it's publicly comforting to go after the leakers once they are caught, what about the spies that steal the data and hand it over quietly to their keepers? If the data is so easy to access that an Army Private can walk in and download thousands of documents, does anyone really think that spies from other nations aren't doing the same thing? The Army should thank Manning for exposing their security flaws.
The same applies to Snowden - he shouldn't have been able to download thousands of pages of classified documents and walk out with them unnoticed.
So who's getting fired over lax security?