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I was at HOPE and saw this talk. The irony of "Stop Snitching" shirts appearing on crowds of people who have almost undoubtedly spent zero minutes being interro
by sofuture 16y ago
I was at HOPE and saw this talk. The irony of "Stop Snitching" shirts appearing on crowds of people who have almost undoubtedly spent zero minutes being interrogated by even local police was not lost on me.
It's a well-worn topic, but I was disheartened to see so many people launch into tangential rants that really skirted (avoided, even) the reality of the situation.
- aw3c2 16y agoFrom what I know about this, Adrian Lamo initiated the contact. It has nothing to do with being interrogated by anyone. He himself decided to rat on the whistleblower.
- Alex63 16y agoWhistleblower? Which US law is the "whistleblower" accusing the government of breaking?
- mcantelon 16y agoUS law may permit killing non-American civilians (as shown in the "Collateral Murder" video), but international law frowns upon it.
- confuzatron 16y agoInternational law does cover treatment of civilians during conflicts, but I'm afraid you are wrong - international law doesn't automatically class any and all civilian deaths as war crimes. This is pretty basic stuff.
- mcantelon 16y agoDuring "Collateral Murder", an Apache gunship shot up, with no warning, a civilian van that exhibited no aggression. Would this be legal under international law?
- Alex63 16y agoArticle 5 of the 4th Geneva Convention states (in part): Where in the territory of a Party to the conflict, the latter is satisfied that an individual protected person is definitely suspected of or engaged in activities hostile to the security of the State, such individual person shall not be entitled to claim such rights and privileges under the present Convention as would, if exercised in the favour of such individual person, be prejudicial to the security of such State. So your question comes down to whether the crew of that gunship suspected the van of containing persons who threatened the security of the Afghan state. I don't know the answer to that. Do you?
- mcantelon 16y agoWatching that video, there doesn't seem to be a reason to suspect the van of being engaged in hostile activities. Your interpretation of that law would allow the military to kill any civilians they please, merely stating that they suspected them. I suspect this interpretation is incorrect.
- Alex63 16y agoI'm sorry, in the interest of brevity I may have been unclear. I don't think that I'm "interpreting" the Geneva Conventions. I reported what the convention said, and explained that to know whether the US had violated the conventions, we would have to know whether there was "suspicion". It would be up to a court to determine this. While the video is one piece of evidence, we have no way of knowing what other information was available (e.g., did the daily intel briefing warn crews that Taliban forces were using white vans to transport fighters). My point was that the GC does not make all civilian deaths illegal.
- mcantelon 16y agoMy guess is a court would find "suspicion" unwarranted without reason for it. As the military hasn't cited any reason for the killing of the civilians in the van (no daily intel briefing warning of white vans was revealed in defense of the military), it would seem that there isn't one. Obviously civilians can be killed if there is a rational reason for it (i.e. aggression), but it's fairly certain that killing civilians without reason is not legal under international law otherwise death squads would be considerably more popular.
- Alex63 16y agoWhich particular international law are you referring to? The Geneva Conventions?
- sophacles 16y agoA whistleblower points out wrongdoing. This is different from pointing out lawbreaking. Please note for future reference: legality and morality are at best loosely related. Just because something is legal does not make it right, and vice versa.
- Alex63 16y agoI understand (and agree to some extent with) your larger point, but my concern was with the specific term "whistleblower", which is usually associated with someone who identifies a crime occurring within their own organization. Whistleblowers are often protected because of the recognition that publicizing a crime is usually in the public good. In this case, I hesitate to use the term "whistleblower" because I think it implies circumstances and motivations that do not apply. At this point we are all speculating, but it appears that the alleged leaker made classified information available to another party, knowing that it would be made public, because they disagreed with US policy. In my mind, revealing privileged information because you do not agree with a policy is not the same thing as "whistleblowing". Would you classify Kim Philby, or Robert Hanssen as "whistleblowers"?
- sophacles 16y agoI would not classify Kim Philby or Robert Hanssen as whistleblowers. Of course both of them traded secrets to their sworn enemy for money. This is a much different situation than releasing secrets to the public out of a desire to uncover improper government lies. In fact other than the release of secrets, the situations are very different, your analogy is a strawman. As for whistleblowing: Shawn Carpenter, Peter Buxtun, and Wendell Potter have all received that label, while not informing on their bosses about illegal activities, just reprehensible ones. There are plenty more.
- Alex63 16y agoBoth Philby and Hanssen were agents of their respective governments, with a sworn duty to protect their country's secrets, as was the alleged leaker. People who work in these organizations, who hold top secret security clearances and handle sensitive information, are understandably expected to adhere to standard of personal behavior which does not include making personal judgments about government policy (in Philby's case, it is questionable whether he was motivated by money). Surely we agree that government agents (in their many forms) cannot choose which directives to obey based on their personal beliefs about the rightness/wrongness of the policy, although they must disobey unlawful commands/orders. This is admittedly a fine line to draw, but most government organizations offer avenues to report concerns without releasing sensitive information to the public. With respect to your examples of "whistleblowers", I'll accept that designation for Carpenter and Buxtun, but in both cases I think they were reporting something that was clearly illegal (Carpenter) or at odds with accepted standards (Buxtun). And both Carpenter and Buxtun did report their concerns through appropriate channels before "leaking".
- sofuture 16y agoWhistleblower? Leaking the single video was arguably whistleblowing. Dumping documents en masse without knowledge of their contents is not, by any stretch of the word, whistleblowing. Regardless, whether you agree with the leaking, in whole or in part, Adrian Lamo was going to end up in an interrogation room sooner or later if he didn't come forward. Manning put him in that situation quite carelessly. This is not about politics/policy -- this is about someone instantly making another person a potential co-conspirator. It's rather easy to comment from the sidelines and urge someone else to ignore the potential consequences they face.