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EFF Honors Chelsea Manning, an IFEX Leader, And TechDirt's Editor (eff.org)
An anonymous reader quotes the Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Whistleblower and activist Chelsea Manning, Techdirt editor and open internet advocate Mike Masnick, and IFEX executive director and global freedom of expression defender Annie Game are the distinguished winners of the 2017 Pioneer Awards, which recognize leaders who are extending freedom and innovation on the electronic frontier. This year's honorees -- a whistleblower, an editor, and an international freedom of expression activist -- all have worked tirelessly to protect the public's right to know.
The award ceremony will be held the evening of September 14 at Delancey Street's Town Hall Room in San Francisco. The keynote speaker is Emmy-nominated comedy writer Ashley Nicole Black, a correspondent on Full Frontal with Samantha Bee who uses her unique comedic style to take on government surveillance, encryption, and freedom of information.
The EFF describes Chelsea Manning as "a network security expert, whistleblower, and former U.S. Army intelligence analyst whose disclosure of classified Iraq war documents exposed human rights abuses and corruption the government kept hidden from the public." Their annoncement also notes that Annie Game has led the IFEX network of 115+ journalism and civil liberties groups around the world for over 10 years, and that Mike Masnick coined the term "The Streisand Effect" -- and is currently being sued by that man who claims he invented email.
The award ceremony will be held the evening of September 14 at Delancey Street's Town Hall Room in San Francisco. The keynote speaker is Emmy-nominated comedy writer Ashley Nicole Black, a correspondent on Full Frontal with Samantha Bee who uses her unique comedic style to take on government surveillance, encryption, and freedom of information.
The EFF describes Chelsea Manning as "a network security expert, whistleblower, and former U.S. Army intelligence analyst whose disclosure of classified Iraq war documents exposed human rights abuses and corruption the government kept hidden from the public." Their annoncement also notes that Annie Game has led the IFEX network of 115+ journalism and civil liberties groups around the world for over 10 years, and that Mike Masnick coined the term "The Streisand Effect" -- and is currently being sued by that man who claims he invented email.
So, leaking evidence of war crimes to a responsible organization is treason now? The founders were a bunch of elitists pricks, but one thing they did right was to specifically define treason in the Constitution so it couldn't be abused for purely political purposes.
Like what you're doing right now.
Except there isn't. The "proper" channels are based around properly shutting down information getting out about mass government lawbreaking and war crimes. Case in point:
Except she raised concerns within the "chain of command" and was blown off, just like Snowden, just like John Kiriakou. This talking point has as much behind it as the "blood on her hands" canard: nothing.
All these people took an Oath of Office to protect the Constitution, not cover up crimes against humanity. Which means Manning was following her oath, not being a traitor. Which also brings up other questions: why is it that you authoritarians calling Manning a traitor but DGAF about the torture and war crimes revealed by Manning. Why is Dick Cheney (and his staff) never called a traitor for outing a covert CIA agent, who worked to stop loose nukes, for purely political purposes?
If you believe Snowden has been allowed to live (and not die) in Russia all these years without turning over unredacted copies of all the classified information he stole...
Mr. Snowden gave Glen Greenwald, an editor for 'The Intercept' the data he had in order to have it parsed to eliminate PII etc and release the data, *before* he left for Shanghai and then was suddenly forced by the US State Dept. to remain stranded in a Russian airport terminal without a passport.
He carried none of the data with him, for obvious reasons.
This has all been public knowledge for a long time, but people still want to attempt to perpetuate this outright lie & fabrication in an attempt to smear Snowden and cover up blatant and ongoing illegal and unconstitutional activities against the citizens of the US with the full knowledge and consent of US leadership.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
The Iraq War documents revealed war crimes, re-classifying journalists as "enemy combatants", and the brutality of the new government and security services that were installed. There were details of how over 700 civilians were killed for coming too close to checkpoints, including the mentally ill and pregnant women trying to get to hospital. Much of the Blackwater scandal came from those leaks.
The Guantanamo Bay files revealed that prisoners were held to try to extract intelligence, rather than because they were thought guilty of any crime. That included British citizens. Attempts to gather intelligence on Al Jazeera were revealed, including the imprisonment of one of their staff for six years on bogus grounds.
Afghan War documents included evidence of US war crimes. They also included evidence of US contractors hiring child prostitutes.
The cables she leaked are credited with being the catalyst for the Arab Spring. Kind of hard to deny the significance of that.
Video of the Granai airstrike could have been extremely valuable if it hadn't been lost too.
Manning was unwise to trust Wikileaks to handle the documents. She did try to go directly to respected journalists first. Maybe it's hindsight, maybe it's justified, but there was justification for the leaks and when handled properly some good came of them.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
An ad-hominem based on the old "diversity hire" trope, pretty much the worst kind.
Also, since she is complaining about stuff that started in the Bush era and came to light in the Obama era, which she was still studying for her PhD by the way, it's a little unfair to criticise her for not being on TV at the time or not talking about it now when she clearly is.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Seems to be a lot of haters in the US on this one. It's probably worth mentioning, for the sake of balance and from a wider view (I'm not a US citizen), that without Manning US human rights violations would not otherwise have been acknowledged, and "A report written by the Department of Defense a year after the breach found that Manning's document leaks had no significant strategic impact on U.S. war efforts.[209, wikipedia]"
For US folks, you should be aware that US claims to moral superiority as a justification for world leadership, do come across as a little hypocritical at those times when the words don't match the deeds. The answer is to have the deeds match the words - it'd be great if you would do that. Truly.
[I'd post under my username but password forgotten and webmail service shut down! So AC will have to do]
The Pentagon themselves confirmed nobody was harmed by the release of the Manning leaks.
"We need to get over this notion, that, for Apple to win... Microsoft must lose." - Steve Jobs, 1997