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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.

13 of 108 comments (clear)

  1. Network Security Expert ? by x0ra · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What are his credentials, beside being able to hide a USB key / burnt CD ? Did he actually report any CVE or provide any exploit ? maybe reported an actual bug ? or any code review ? anything ?

  2. Re:Activist? You misspelled traitor by Rockoon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I agree.

    Snowden is a hero that responsibly leaked.
    Manning is a traitor that irresponsibly leaked.

    There is a right way to do things, sometimes even several right ways. Manning didnt do any of them.

    --
    "His name was James Damore."
  3. Just stopped sending money to eff by WindBourne · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Seriously, whistleblowing and treason can appear similar at times. Both release info on behavior that they have issues with. However, a whistleblower will make sure that classified legal actions are protected. Treason is when classified legal actions are released and was meant to simply harm the nation. Both Manning and Snowden are traitors. Manning never was upset about actions that he released. He was upset that he did not fit into the military. As such, manning simply dumped anything and everything. He is a traitor.

    --
    I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
    1. Re: Just stopped sending money to eff by WindBourne · · Score: 2

      Not only have I contributed for years to eff, and contributed OSS, but used to belong to aclu. I am a believer in supporting first amendments and whistle blowers. In fact, I support Snowden for when he blew the whistle on individuals spying on Americans, that was good. But he became a traitor when he told Russia, China, n. Korea, AQ, Taliban, etc how we spy on them. That later part made him a traitor.

      --
      I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
    2. Re: Just stopped sending money to eff by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Snowden's leaks were necessary, even if they did assist America's enemies. The US has not stopped breaking its own laws, and neither have any of the other FIVEEYS countries involved. The abuses continue, and the only way they will ever stop is if we fix the internet so that they simply can't continue.

      To do that we needed to know how they work, what the capabilities were. We are all better off for knowing that.

      And in the end, I doubt it provided much assistance to any other nation. I'm sure they had a pretty good idea how it worked, since they were doing it themselves. If anything the relative ease with which Snowden took that material and the frequency with which with NSA/CIA tools leak suggest that other nations probably pwned them long before Snowden did.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  4. Re:Activist? You misspelled traitor by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If you're going to start pointing fingers at traitors, take a look at a few past presidents. It's not like all those wars were necessary to the country as a whole, just to special interests.

    --
    "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
  5. Re:Activist? You misspelled traitor by TimothyHollins · · Score: 2

    Come on, at least read the article first. Not even Buzzfeed would maul the scientific contents that hard.

    1. The muscle gain is only skeletal muscle.
    2. The muscle gain is only compared to very low estrogen levels (and not in relation to testosterone at all) *in post-menopausal women*. We won't be seeing estrogen doping in our OS athletes.

    I would say that you're being disingenuous here, but I think you're closer to outright lying. Second, estrogen treatment for post-menopausal women is on the rise due to the many positive results, including the reductions you mentioned as well as overall cancer risk and other things.

  6. Re:Helpful non-bullshit translation service by x0ra · · Score: 2

    "negative criticism against a minority" != racism/islamophobia/misoginy/xenophobia/lgbtoqiaaphobia

  7. Re:Activist? You misspelled traitor by BlueStrat · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.
  8. Re:Activist? You misspelled traitor by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2, Informative

    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
  9. Re:Helpful non-bullshit translation service by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Informative

    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
  10. A wider perspective by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    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]

  11. Re: Activist? You misspelled traitor by fyrewulff · · Score: 5, Informative

    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