This isn't a question of a list, but of methods and goals.
There is a correct method for addressing any problem, which is "to question the actions and orders of those over them and escalate them up the chain if needed" as AC said above.
If his goal is to fix a problem, he needs to use the correct method.
On the other hand, corruption, incompetence and sheer lawlessness due to lack of oversight also severely undermine the necessary order and discipline an effective military needs.
If you subvert the hierarchy, you introduce total chaos and dysfunction, which makes it less likely that they'll become less corrupt and incompetent. To use your word, "lawlessness" is the result of illegal and disproportionate acts like the one Bradley Manning did.
The US Army intelligence analyst, who is half British and went to school in Wales, appeared to sink into depression after a relationship break-up, saying he didn't "have anything left" and was "beyond frustrated".
In an apparent swipe at the army, he also wrote: "Bradley Manning is not a piece of equipment," and quoted a joke about "military intelligence" being an oxymoron.
and
Mr Manning, who is openly homosexual, began his gloomy postings on January 12, saying: "Bradley Manning didn't want this fight. Too much to lose, too fast."
At the beginning of May, when he was serving at a US military base near Baghdad, he changed his status to: "Bradley Manning is now left with the sinking feeling that he doesn't have anything left."
Five days later he said he was "livid" after being "lectured by ex-boyfriend", then later the same day said he was "not a piece of equipment" and was "beyond frustrated with people and society at large".
His tagline on his personal page reads: "Take me for who I am, or face the consequences!"
Of all the words used to describe him, "stable" doesn't come to mind.
He's having a prolonged temper tantrum at the military for not accepting him how he wants them to accept him.
He also had a relationship break up, and then his mental state deteriorated, and then he released these documents.
The statements about "war crimes" are after-the-fact justifications.
Manning was a private (a grunt) and yet he held a clearance and, as we've seen, access to a huge amount of classified information. And in the Navy field which I experienced, rising above the level of grunt (that is, being promoted to E4 and deployed) required only diligently completing one's language studies at DLI and short follow-up training with limited contact with superiors who would notice and take issues with one's "mindset".
Gays, like women and minorities, are a protected group.
Employers are reluctant to not promote people from protected groups because if those people sue, there will be an assumed violation on the part of the employer and barring serious document instances of misconduct or incompetence by the employee, it's hard to prove they needed to be kept from the promotion.
As his manager, I would have promoted him. No use having a lawsuit destroy my career!
After someone with a security clearance leaves the military, they are expected to continue to honor the secrecy of the documents they worked with. You don't talk about what you've seen and done. Putting in an FOIA request for classified information is publically announcing the existence of that information.
This could be true. However, I'm not sure that it is, because you're not compromising the secrecy of any documents. You're asking about a topic or an event. If what some people here are saying is true, and this was about alleged war crimes, you FOIA all documents related to those incidents. That reveals nothing about a specific document.
The reason for publishing secrets is simple, sunlight is the best disinfectant.
It doesn't need disinfecting.
1. Government needs to keep some secrets. 2. It wasn't clear that in this case the alleged war crimes would not be prosecuted.
Further, I'm not sure it is.
Sunlight has been shining on a lot of facts for years without people acting on them. If anything, throwing the judgment back to the unruly mob of the general citizenry who are your "sunlight," leads to a lynch mob mentality which is less likely to find truth and more likely to jump to conclusions.
lives would not have been at risk if the newpaper wasn't stupid enough to publish the krypto keys to the archive.
Actually, Wikileaks approved the release of the password:
"Our book about WikiLeaks was published last February. It contained a password, but no details of the location of the files, and we were told it was a temporary password which would expire and be deleted in a matter of hours.
"It was a meaningless piece of information to anyone except the person(s) who created the database.
"No concerns were expressed when the book was published and if anyone at WikiLeaks had thought this compromised security they have had seven months to remove the files. That they didn't do so clearly shows the problem was not caused by the Guardian's book."
Manning is not the police. The government is not a person.
They're both parties. The treatment doesn't vary.
Evidence is not merely "reason to suspect".
As I said above, "reason to suspect" is needed for a search for evidence. We don't allow cops to publish the contents of your hard drive because you might have some illegal content on it. Instead, we have a legal process.
This is a case of the system of military justice failing due to institutional corruption
Did it fail, or was it moving slowly?
Bradley Manning took extreme but justified measures to expose it.
So, if I think you're breaking the law, and you haven't been arrested yet, we can publish the contents of your hard drive as "extreme but justified" measures.
The world needs good people to stand up and fight against evil! Sticking your head in the sand and saying, "lalala.... I don't know what my government is doing and since I don't know I'm not responsible" is silly, irresponsible, and in my opinion still leaves you complacent.
The point is how we fight against evil. More great evils have been introduced in the fight against evil, throughout history, than in any other way.
Here, we're looking at huge amounts of government information being released, not an investigation. If Manning had found some incriminating information, brought it to the attention of his superiors, and insisted they fight it out in military court, he would have been acting legally and sensibly.
Instead what he did is to sabotage the entire process.
Result: in the future, people will cover up any war crimes that happen, but they'll do it at the point of origin. Meaning that if you accidentally shoot one villager, you'd better shoot them all and leave no witnesses.
Further, it's unclear to me that his motivation was prosecuting war crimes. It seems he was discontented and wanted revenge. Same with Assange.
The idea that individual citizens are going to monitor government by stealing bulk secrets is a fallacy. No one has even managed to go through all of the Wikileaks files yet.
Further, what I'm saying is not "discard responsibility" but to apply it through a hierarchy and to do it sensibly. Government, espionage and war is a rough business. Some secrets must be kept; for this reason we have internal investigations which, as I understand it, were slowly responding to the incidents in question, like they have to several before and since.
You're making a moral crusade out of a common theft, and suggesting a course of action that will make everything worse.
Think about it this way, if the police pull you over for speeding, they don't have the right to publish the entire contents of the hard drive on they laptop in your car or the contents of all your email, IM and SMS accounts as well. Just in case you might have talked about speeding via email. or IM.
Exactly.
These leaks weren't evidence, but fishing for evidence, with a lot of collateral damage besides.
They weren't secrets, it was evidence. Evidence of the crimes committed by military personnel. Anyone else who knew of the evidence, that didn't speak up, that didn't bring it forward, was aiding and abetting criminals.
I think you have purchased the services of an underage prostitute.
Therefore, I release all of your financial records from the past 15 years online for the world to see.
If you published that article about the king of Burma - perfectly legal to do here in the US. Should we then send you over there to die for blasphemy because what you did was illegal in a country 4000 miles away.
We wouldn't do that because their system of law doesn't comport to our basic notions of due process. There may also be other extradition issues, since in general the US is unwilling to extradite people to places where they'll get a show trial and immediate execution.
Our laws end at our borders.
Not really, if you think about it. We have numerous extradition treaties and are part of several international standards groups that seek to equalize our law with that of other country.
They had evidence of a crime and a mountain of material that likely contained more evidence of crimes, but was so vast that no one person could vet every bit of data.
So they sought assistance in combing through that mountain.
There's a reason we don't work this way.
Imagine that the police have reason to suspect you might have committed a crime; do they then have the ability to just walk into your place and take every single thing you own, make those public, and then ask the public to sort through them for evidence of a crime?
You wouldn't want that.
There's a reason the legal system operates as it does.
I merely object to the way it has been handled and the idea that it would never be appropriate for this sort of thing to occur.
I think our government gave the leakers a pass during Watergate because that was perceived as a gross violation of the purpose of government. Not so in this case. What do you object to about how it has been handled?
Once a society is corrupted who is left to protect its citezens, if not themselves?
Your idea is broken on a technical level.
In your view, every citizen reads through everything that its government does and polices it.
That's going to create a huge bottleneck for each person; it's too much.
The other way to do this is to get people who are of superior ability and character into these roles so that they will do what is right.
Every day you delegate trust to millions of people. You're trusting them not to crash into you, not to poison your food by letting it sit out overnight, not to leave a gas valve open in the smoking area, etc.
You're going to have to delegate this too from a sheer information overload.
Further, I don't see the citizens self-policing... starting with themselves. Most people seem to be in the process of getting their act together. I'm not sure I see this civilian force as capable of keeping its lawns mowed, much less overseeing government.
I'd prefer to have people of superior character and ability in government taking care of these complex problems, because I don't think the average person can.
And you would get a nice sheet of paper 90% black after the redactions. No one would care and no one would ever know.
If that's the case, it implies a secret being kept.
If no one cares about that, then no one cares that a secret is being kept.
This is the situation we have now: most of us are fully aware that our government keeps secrets, and has to do some bad stuff to keep up with the bad guys. (Think of some of the nasty stuff we did during the Cold War, for example.)
It seems that only a few of you want government to publish all of its secrets, and you seem to have no reason why except for some mythology that you'll monitor it all.
Releasing classified documents to an uncleared foreign national is NOT "properly released", it's illegal and punishable by imprisonment and in some cases death. The illegality of his actions and the resulting punishment were VERY well known to him, as it is to every single soldier that holds his clearance level. There were proper ways for him to handle himself, which he was retrained on every single year, but he made very specific decisions to break serious laws. He knew what he was getting into.
If I found wrongdoing in the military, I'd get out of service and then use the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to get the information I needed. That way, it would be publicly released and either reveal what was going on, or what the government was covering up.
Slashdot Mirror
This isn't a question of a list, but of methods and goals.
There is a correct method for addressing any problem, which is "to question the actions and orders of those over them and escalate them up the chain if needed" as AC said above.
If his goal is to fix a problem, he needs to use the correct method.
Those are protected and classified communications.
Agencies (even the military) share information with each other provided its classified status can be preserved.
If you subvert the hierarchy, you introduce total chaos and dysfunction, which makes it less likely that they'll become less corrupt and incompetent. To use your word, "lawlessness" is the result of illegal and disproportionate acts like the one Bradley Manning did.
and
Of all the words used to describe him, "stable" doesn't come to mind.
He's having a prolonged temper tantrum at the military for not accepting him how he wants them to accept him.
He also had a relationship break up, and then his mental state deteriorated, and then he released these documents.
The statements about "war crimes" are after-the-fact justifications.
Bradley Manning is gay.
Gays, like women and minorities, are a protected group.
Employers are reluctant to not promote people from protected groups because if those people sue, there will be an assumed violation on the part of the employer and barring serious document instances of misconduct or incompetence by the employee, it's hard to prove they needed to be kept from the promotion.
As his manager, I would have promoted him. No use having a lawsuit destroy my career!
This could be true. However, I'm not sure that it is, because you're not compromising the secrecy of any documents. You're asking about a topic or an event. If what some people here are saying is true, and this was about alleged war crimes, you FOIA all documents related to those incidents. That reveals nothing about a specific document.
It doesn't need disinfecting.
1. Government needs to keep some secrets.
2. It wasn't clear that in this case the alleged war crimes would not be prosecuted.
Further, I'm not sure it is.
Sunlight has been shining on a lot of facts for years without people acting on them. If anything, throwing the judgment back to the unruly mob of the general citizenry who are your "sunlight," leads to a lynch mob mentality which is less likely to find truth and more likely to jump to conclusions.
Actually, Wikileaks approved the release of the password:
They're both parties. The treatment doesn't vary.
As I said above, "reason to suspect" is needed for a search for evidence. We don't allow cops to publish the contents of your hard drive because you might have some illegal content on it. Instead, we have a legal process.
Did it fail, or was it moving slowly?
So, if I think you're breaking the law, and you haven't been arrested yet, we can publish the contents of your hard drive as "extreme but justified" measures.
You're confusing two concepts:
1. The ends justify the means
2. The ends, not the means, determine the goal
You'll notice they're incompatible.
For starters, #2 doesn't involve any justifications and in fact is hostile to them. It's goal-based, not justification-based.
The first seems to me like an after-the-fact justification, which makes no sense if you're planning policy at all.
These concepts are visually similar but quite different when you put them to analysis.
I think what matters is the end result, and whether your "idealistic viewpoint" actually achieves its goals, not how you feel about it.
The point is how we fight against evil. More great evils have been introduced in the fight against evil, throughout history, than in any other way.
Here, we're looking at huge amounts of government information being released, not an investigation. If Manning had found some incriminating information, brought it to the attention of his superiors, and insisted they fight it out in military court, he would have been acting legally and sensibly.
Instead what he did is to sabotage the entire process.
Result: in the future, people will cover up any war crimes that happen, but they'll do it at the point of origin. Meaning that if you accidentally shoot one villager, you'd better shoot them all and leave no witnesses.
Further, it's unclear to me that his motivation was prosecuting war crimes. It seems he was discontented and wanted revenge. Same with Assange.
The idea that individual citizens are going to monitor government by stealing bulk secrets is a fallacy. No one has even managed to go through all of the Wikileaks files yet.
Further, what I'm saying is not "discard responsibility" but to apply it through a hierarchy and to do it sensibly. Government, espionage and war is a rough business. Some secrets must be kept; for this reason we have internal investigations which, as I understand it, were slowly responding to the incidents in question, like they have to several before and since.
You're making a moral crusade out of a common theft, and suggesting a course of action that will make everything worse.
Exactly.
These leaks weren't evidence, but fishing for evidence, with a lot of collateral damage besides.
I think you have purchased the services of an underage prostitute.
Therefore, I release all of your financial records from the past 15 years online for the world to see.
Does that strike you as fair?
If you published that article about the king of Burma - perfectly legal to do here in the US. Should we then send you over there to die for blasphemy because what you did was illegal in a country 4000 miles away.
We wouldn't do that because their system of law doesn't comport to our basic notions of due process. There may also be other extradition issues, since in general the US is unwilling to extradite people to places where they'll get a show trial and immediate execution.
Our laws end at our borders.
Not really, if you think about it. We have numerous extradition treaties and are part of several international standards groups that seek to equalize our law with that of other country.
They had evidence of a crime and a mountain of material that likely contained more evidence of crimes, but was so vast that no one person could vet every bit of data.
So they sought assistance in combing through that mountain.
There's a reason we don't work this way.
Imagine that the police have reason to suspect you might have committed a crime; do they then have the ability to just walk into your place and take every single thing you own, make those public, and then ask the public to sort through them for evidence of a crime?
You wouldn't want that.
There's a reason the legal system operates as it does.
Because we'd do the same if an American citizen published a secret horde of Australian government or military papers.
This is how civilized nations interact, whether formally or informally.
I think our government gave the leakers a pass during Watergate because that was perceived as a gross violation of the purpose of government. Not so in this case. What do you object to about how it has been handled?
Your idea is broken on a technical level.
In your view, every citizen reads through everything that its government does and polices it.
That's going to create a huge bottleneck for each person; it's too much.
The other way to do this is to get people who are of superior ability and character into these roles so that they will do what is right.
Every day you delegate trust to millions of people. You're trusting them not to crash into you, not to poison your food by letting it sit out overnight, not to leave a gas valve open in the smoking area, etc.
You're going to have to delegate this too from a sheer information overload.
Further, I don't see the citizens self-policing... starting with themselves. Most people seem to be in the process of getting their act together. I'm not sure I see this civilian force as capable of keeping its lawns mowed, much less overseeing government.
I'd prefer to have people of superior character and ability in government taking care of these complex problems, because I don't think the average person can.
I'm assuming sarcasm.
I don't think systems self-police well.
I think having good people in those systems means that those people make correct moral choices.
Now you're just waffling.
What evidence exists to suggest this stuff would have been buried 25 years from its creation?
None.
Exactly.
They didn't go looking for evidence.
They released a ton of information, and then looked back through it to find a justification for releasing it.
If that's the case, it implies a secret being kept.
If no one cares about that, then no one cares that a secret is being kept.
This is the situation we have now: most of us are fully aware that our government keeps secrets, and has to do some bad stuff to keep up with the bad guys. (Think of some of the nasty stuff we did during the Cold War, for example.)
It seems that only a few of you want government to publish all of its secrets, and you seem to have no reason why except for some mythology that you'll monitor it all.
Are you monitoring it now?
Do you work within government? That's generally the accepted way.
If you know, you're complicit in approving this stuff, most of which goes on in morally murky areas.
Espionage, counter-terrorism, military strategy and other areas contain a lot of stuff that must necessarily be secret.
Do you want to be responsible for knowing where all the nukes are? Didn't think so.
Guess I didn't "speak for myself (only)" after all.
If I found wrongdoing in the military, I'd get out of service and then use the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to get the information I needed. That way, it would be publicly released and either reveal what was going on, or what the government was covering up.