9 ms·

Free Manning, free Assange and free Snowden. These 3 individuals have shown the world the corruption and criminal activity our governments engage in and no mat

Free Manning, free Assange and free Snowden. These 3 individuals have shown the world the corruption and criminal activity our governments engage in and no matter how hard they try to silence them, eventually the truth will show through.

kzrdude 8y ago
Thanks for the reminder - Manning is currently not free https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/08/chelsea-manning-judge-jails-wikileaks-case https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/08/chelsea-mann...
- wurst_case 8y ago
  Clearly Manning is the most simpathetic of all mistreated 'leakers'. Truly, what does anyone gain by having her locked up?
  - mikejb 8y ago
    I think the intent is to make life hard for whistleblowers to discourage others from doing the same.
    - Bombthecat 8y ago
      And germany is thinking about creating laws to make the life of whistlelowers easier... Just let that sink in..
      - Theodores 8y ago
        au contraire! There is EU wide whistleblower protection on its way. The motivation is to save money. More details: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2019/01/25/better-protection-of-whistleblowers-council-adopts-its-position/ https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2019... The quote in the article mentions Cambridge Analytica so political whistleblowing could be part of the deal: "Recent scandals such Cambridge analytica or Lux Leaks have demonstrated the importance of whistleblowers. That is why we need to provide them with a high level of protection across the Union. We should not expect anyone to risk their reputation or job for exposing illegal behaviour." - Ambassador Luminița Odobescu, Permanent representative of Romania to the EU
        pjc50 8y ago
        > whistleblowers will first have to use internal channels within their organisation before calling on external ones (set up by public authorities) and, eventually, going for public disclosure. Not helpful. The most important cases are the ones where blowing the whistle will incur reprisals and prevent the whistleblower ever reaching the other two steps. (I don't see how "The motivation is to save money" though?)
        vinceguidry 8y ago
        In most cases I can remember, including the most high-profile ones, internal channels were indeed used. They were just ignored. It's the act of going outside those channels which triggered the disloyal reprisals. I don't see much of a problem with making it mandatory.
        StavrosK 8y ago
        You seem to be agreeing with the GP, so why do you say "au contraire"?
  - GVIrish 8y ago
    I mean, Manning is in jail because Manning chooses to be in jail. Manning had an immunity deal to testify in front of a grand jury and refused to do so, leading to the contempt of court charge that currently has her in jail. She says she doesn't believe in the concept of being compelled to testify, which is fine, but the penalty for that is jail.
    - dhruvparamhans 8y ago
      She is being held in solitary for 22 hours at a time. Isn't that a bit harsh for contempt of court?
      - idlewords 8y ago
        Manning has been moved out of solitary confinement. https://thehill.com/homenews/437454-chelsea-manning-removed-from-solitary-confinement-report https://thehill.com/homenews/437454-chelsea-manning-removed-...
      - fredgrott 8y ago
        depends upon the security stuff she holds secret...yes it sounds bad...but the other prisoners do not have security clearances and this the solution military justice came up with..is the best solution? probably not but tis the on they went with
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    She's not locked up for leaking, she's locked up for flagrant contempt in an active grand jury investigation, one which otherwise poses her no legal jeopardy, since she has both immunity and, for much of the subject matter, double jeopardy protection since she's been tried, convicted, and served her sentence for her involvement.
    - vinceguidry 8y ago
      I'm rather struck by the realization here that if a person has spent significant amounts of time in prison being locked up for following their principles, they may start looking at getting locked up for their principles as, well, just something they do. Is this a traumatic response to the initial experience or something more? After all, being willing to go to prison for your principles underlies much of 'real' activism. Probably a mix of both.
      - saalweachter 8y ago
        There's also a certain sort of immunity brought about by the initial exposure. There are a lot of reasons to not want to be in jail: not wanting to be confined, fear of physical violence... but as a middle-aged person with a family, friends and a job, being in jail for any length of time would just wreck my life. I'd lose my job, my relationship with my family would be strained, and I'd probably lose touch with most of my friends. Rebuilding afterwards would be difficult or even functionally impossible. If I did have my life burned down around me once, my personality would probably tend towards not wanting it to happen a second time, but I could see another person saying "you can't burn ashes" and leaning into it.
      - whamlastxmas 8y ago
        I suspect she holds a tremendous amount of resentment towards her government and basically wants to give them the middle finger because she doesn't respect their legal process after it failed her so miserably
    - mrobot 8y ago
      What about this "perjury trap" thing? https://shadowproof.com/2019/03/21/chelsea-manning-believes-grand-jury-may-be-perjury-trap-according-to-unsealed-documents/ https://shadowproof.com/2019/03/21/chelsea-manning-believes-...
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - Pimpus 8y ago
    > Clearly Manning is the most simpathetic of all mistreated 'leakers'. Isnt "she" (he?) a trannie? I still support her, because whether I'm sympathetic of a person and their flaws is irrelevant.
    - matthewmacleod 8y ago
      I’m going to make the probably flawed assumption that you are commenting in good faith, and make you aware that this comment is not okay, for the following reasons: 1. It’s not relevant, 2. “Trannie” is a slur, 3. Pronouns should not be put in scare quotes.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - Pimpus 8y ago
        Wrong on all three points.
  - strainer 8y ago
    She has actually just been released from a months stay in solitary confinement to general prison - for refusing to testify against Wikileaks and Assange https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/d3mnjz/chelsea-manning-is-out-of-solitary-confinement-reps-say https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/d3mnjz/chelsea-manning-i...
- acqq 8y ago
  "The judge said she will remain jailed until she testifies or until the grand jury concludes its work." Wow. Not even some specific number of months or anything. Appears not as a punishment but a blackmail. (edit: yes I miss the right word for this is, there is certainly a better one, I'd be happy to read a better one; edit2: right, extortion, thanks).
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    Its not a penal sentence, no; insofar as it is a pinishment it is a punishment for an ongoing offense, and continues as long as the offense continues. And, blackmail is threatening to reveal a secret to get someone to comply, so, no, it's not that.
    - coldtea 8y ago
      Yeah, those insignificant pedantic reasons make it not a punishment and not blackmail /s
      - dragonwriter 8y ago
        I didn't say it's not a punishment. But it's far closer to extortion than blackmail. But that's true of compulsory legal process generally, not a special feature of confinement for contempt.
  - pjc50 8y ago
    What happened to that whole fifth amendment thing?
    - votepaunchy 8y ago
      > What happened to that whole fifth amendment thing? Hence the immunity. “But the Fifth Amendment doesn’t provide an absolute right to remain silent and not answer any questions. Rather, it protects people from having to answer incriminating questions about themselves.” https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/immunity-exchange-testimony.html https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/immunity-exchange-te...
sgt 8y ago
Free Ross Ulbricht as well. I feel more for him, to be honest. https://freeross.org https://freeross.org
- wurst_case 8y ago
  He was akin to a one man cartel, why shouldn't he be locked up? I'd guess there is a high risk he'd do it again if he had the chance. Unless you think it was OK because he was 26 years old and first time offender...
  - invalidusernam3 8y ago
    He definitely should have been locked up, but a double life sentence plus forty years without the possibility of parole for selling drugs on the internet seems like overkill
    - newnewpdro 8y ago
      Sure, if "selling drugs on the internet" were his only crime. I vaguely recall reading he (unsuccessfully) paid to assassinate people. Edit: Read it here https://www.wired.com/2015/04/silk-road-1/ https://www.wired.com/2015/04/silk-road-1/ Later that day, DPR messaged Nob. DREAD: ok, so can you change the order to execute rather than torture? DREAD: he was on the inside for a while, and now that he’s been arrested, I’m afraid he’ll give up info.
      - hanniabu 8y ago
        That was never proven, yet they used an unproven accusation in the case against him and nobody seemed to think that was an issue.
      - invalidusernam3 8y ago
        That's part of the controversy, everyone vaguely recalls that but is unaware that those accusations weren't even brought to trial (https://freeross.org/uncharged-crimes/ https://freeross.org/uncharged-crimes/). He was convicted of money laundering, computer hacking, conspiracy to traffic fraudulent identity documents, and conspiracy to traffic narcotics by means of the Internet.
cm2187 8y ago
I agree with free Snowden. But Manning and Assange had a history of leaking unredacted personal information that is indefensible. In the case of Manning, I might add that the leak didn’t show any major wrong doing. It illustrated some case of collateral damage, which we always knew (and the US military keeps public records of). It showed the underbelly of the US diplomacy, which turns out to be rather clean (some ambassadors commenting that the memos look generally very insightful and professional). And it caused some red faces of people who shared thoughts with US diplomats in confidence, and I don’t see how that could possibly be a good thing. Assange and Manning is really leaking for the sole purpose of leaking.
- Tepix 8y ago
  Manning revealed war crimes, yet the only person who went to prison was Manning. That's all we need to know really. The system is broken und unable to fix itself. Edit: Free Reality Winner
  - GVIrish 8y ago
    The system is not perfect, but the reason Manning went to jail is because she made an indiscriminate leak of secrets of which she did not review before she released them. Had she only released material on stuff she had thought to be a crime, then there would have been a much stronger case to be made as a whistle blower. It would be like if someone working at a hospital exposed a medical fraud scheme but leaked all the patient records of thousands of people who had nothing to do with scheme. They'd probably get hit with criminal HIPAA violations. The reason Manning is in jail right now is because she refused to testify to a grand jury about WikiLeaks and got hit with contempt of court. She had been given immunity to testify so the jail time is purely on her.
    - coldtea 8y ago
      >The system is not perfect, but the reason Manning went to jail is because she made an indiscriminate leak of secrets of which she did not review before she released them. And what gives a government a right to have secrets in the first place? Except itself of course...
jaabe 8y ago
I think we all got caught up in wiki leaks and the seemingly good fight for truth, but to me, their truth looks biased. I mean, you have to wonder why wiki leaks helped Trump win the election and then pretty much stopped their American leaks. Did the American military stop using murder drones? Wouldn’t Trumps taxes or the Mueller report be interesting? Why have all the abundance of White House leaks ended up in traditional media instead of on wiki leaks? I’m not American though, so I’m not really that interested in your domestic politics. I prefer you to be working well with Europe, so it’s fair to say I don’t like Trump, but it’s not like your democrats were really a beacon of freedom and justice internationally either. Living rather close to Russia, so close that they practice airplane bombing runs on our yearly political summit (folkemødet) and regularly fly on the border of our air space, I do wonder why wiki leaks never houses any Russian leaks. The Ukraine was invaded by the Russian military. Sure they dress up and use local militias to be able to deny it, but that’s exactly what happened. They even hacked the entire power grid, and left fallout which is still effecting Maersk because Maersk happened to use similar software. Yet not a single word on anything on wiki leaks? Maybe it didn’t start out that way, and maybe Assange is not involved with it, but it sure seem like wiki leaks turned into something anti-democracy.
- raxxorrax 8y ago
  Pretty much the whole Russia angle was a big pile of crap for democrats to save face. In my opinion, this hysteria is a big scandal for parts of the media, US institutions and the democratic party. Not saying that Putin is our friend or that republicans are the better choice in the US (not from there).
  - pjc50 8y ago
    What about all the actually guilty? > Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team indicted or got guilty pleas from 34 people and three companies during their lengthy investigation, which is now complete. > That group is composed of six former Trump advisers, 26 Russian nationals, three Russian companies, one California man, and one London-based lawyer. Seven of these people (including five of the six former Trump advisers) have pleaded guilty. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/20/17031772/mueller-indictments-grand-jury https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/20/17031772/m...
idlewords 8y ago
Snowden and Assange are not being detained.
- King-Aaron 8y ago
  The very second Assange walks out of the embassy he will be.
  - ionised 8y ago
    Snowden too. He can't go anywhere outside Russia without the threat of capture and extradition, and Russia is only keeping him 'safe' because it pisses off the USA.
Traubenfuchs 8y ago
Did they change anything? Did anything they do matter in the end?
- kome 8y ago
  Yes, and by a great deal.
- viivaux 8y ago
  And what pray tell have you done?

kzrdude 8y ago

Thanks for the reminder - Manning is currently not free https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/08/chelsea-manning-judge-jails-wikileaks-case https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/08/chelsea-mann...

wurst_case 8y ago
Clearly Manning is the most simpathetic of all mistreated 'leakers'. Truly, what does anyone gain by having her locked up?
- mikejb 8y ago
  I think the intent is to make life hard for whistleblowers to discourage others from doing the same.
  - Bombthecat 8y ago
    And germany is thinking about creating laws to make the life of whistlelowers easier... Just let that sink in..
    - Theodores 8y ago
      au contraire! There is EU wide whistleblower protection on its way. The motivation is to save money. More details: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2019/01/25/better-protection-of-whistleblowers-council-adopts-its-position/ https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2019... The quote in the article mentions Cambridge Analytica so political whistleblowing could be part of the deal: "Recent scandals such Cambridge analytica or Lux Leaks have demonstrated the importance of whistleblowers. That is why we need to provide them with a high level of protection across the Union. We should not expect anyone to risk their reputation or job for exposing illegal behaviour." - Ambassador Luminița Odobescu, Permanent representative of Romania to the EU
      - pjc50 8y ago
        > whistleblowers will first have to use internal channels within their organisation before calling on external ones (set up by public authorities) and, eventually, going for public disclosure. Not helpful. The most important cases are the ones where blowing the whistle will incur reprisals and prevent the whistleblower ever reaching the other two steps. (I don't see how "The motivation is to save money" though?)
        vinceguidry 8y ago
        In most cases I can remember, including the most high-profile ones, internal channels were indeed used. They were just ignored. It's the act of going outside those channels which triggered the disloyal reprisals. I don't see much of a problem with making it mandatory.
      - StavrosK 8y ago
        You seem to be agreeing with the GP, so why do you say "au contraire"?
- GVIrish 8y ago
  I mean, Manning is in jail because Manning chooses to be in jail. Manning had an immunity deal to testify in front of a grand jury and refused to do so, leading to the contempt of court charge that currently has her in jail. She says she doesn't believe in the concept of being compelled to testify, which is fine, but the penalty for that is jail.
  - dhruvparamhans 8y ago
    She is being held in solitary for 22 hours at a time. Isn't that a bit harsh for contempt of court?
    - idlewords 8y ago
      Manning has been moved out of solitary confinement. https://thehill.com/homenews/437454-chelsea-manning-removed-from-solitary-confinement-report https://thehill.com/homenews/437454-chelsea-manning-removed-...
    - fredgrott 8y ago
      depends upon the security stuff she holds secret...yes it sounds bad...but the other prisoners do not have security clearances and this the solution military justice came up with..is the best solution? probably not but tis the on they went with
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  She's not locked up for leaking, she's locked up for flagrant contempt in an active grand jury investigation, one which otherwise poses her no legal jeopardy, since she has both immunity and, for much of the subject matter, double jeopardy protection since she's been tried, convicted, and served her sentence for her involvement.
  - vinceguidry 8y ago
    I'm rather struck by the realization here that if a person has spent significant amounts of time in prison being locked up for following their principles, they may start looking at getting locked up for their principles as, well, just something they do. Is this a traumatic response to the initial experience or something more? After all, being willing to go to prison for your principles underlies much of 'real' activism. Probably a mix of both.
    - saalweachter 8y ago
      There's also a certain sort of immunity brought about by the initial exposure. There are a lot of reasons to not want to be in jail: not wanting to be confined, fear of physical violence... but as a middle-aged person with a family, friends and a job, being in jail for any length of time would just wreck my life. I'd lose my job, my relationship with my family would be strained, and I'd probably lose touch with most of my friends. Rebuilding afterwards would be difficult or even functionally impossible. If I did have my life burned down around me once, my personality would probably tend towards not wanting it to happen a second time, but I could see another person saying "you can't burn ashes" and leaning into it.
    - whamlastxmas 8y ago
      I suspect she holds a tremendous amount of resentment towards her government and basically wants to give them the middle finger because she doesn't respect their legal process after it failed her so miserably
  - mrobot 8y ago
    What about this "perjury trap" thing? https://shadowproof.com/2019/03/21/chelsea-manning-believes-grand-jury-may-be-perjury-trap-according-to-unsealed-documents/ https://shadowproof.com/2019/03/21/chelsea-manning-believes-...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- Pimpus 8y ago
  > Clearly Manning is the most simpathetic of all mistreated 'leakers'. Isnt "she" (he?) a trannie? I still support her, because whether I'm sympathetic of a person and their flaws is irrelevant.
  - matthewmacleod 8y ago
    I’m going to make the probably flawed assumption that you are commenting in good faith, and make you aware that this comment is not okay, for the following reasons: 1. It’s not relevant, 2. “Trannie” is a slur, 3. Pronouns should not be put in scare quotes.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - Pimpus 8y ago
      Wrong on all three points.
- strainer 8y ago
  She has actually just been released from a months stay in solitary confinement to general prison - for refusing to testify against Wikileaks and Assange https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/d3mnjz/chelsea-manning-is-out-of-solitary-confinement-reps-say https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/d3mnjz/chelsea-manning-i...
acqq 8y ago
"The judge said she will remain jailed until she testifies or until the grand jury concludes its work." Wow. Not even some specific number of months or anything. Appears not as a punishment but a blackmail. (edit: yes I miss the right word for this is, there is certainly a better one, I'd be happy to read a better one; edit2: right, extortion, thanks).
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  Its not a penal sentence, no; insofar as it is a pinishment it is a punishment for an ongoing offense, and continues as long as the offense continues. And, blackmail is threatening to reveal a secret to get someone to comply, so, no, it's not that.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    Yeah, those insignificant pedantic reasons make it not a punishment and not blackmail /s
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      I didn't say it's not a punishment. But it's far closer to extortion than blackmail. But that's true of compulsory legal process generally, not a special feature of confinement for contempt.
- pjc50 8y ago
  What happened to that whole fifth amendment thing?
  - votepaunchy 8y ago
    > What happened to that whole fifth amendment thing? Hence the immunity. “But the Fifth Amendment doesn’t provide an absolute right to remain silent and not answer any questions. Rather, it protects people from having to answer incriminating questions about themselves.” https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/immunity-exchange-testimony.html https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/immunity-exchange-te...

sgt 8y ago

Free Ross Ulbricht as well. I feel more for him, to be honest. https://freeross.org https://freeross.org

wurst_case 8y ago
He was akin to a one man cartel, why shouldn't he be locked up? I'd guess there is a high risk he'd do it again if he had the chance. Unless you think it was OK because he was 26 years old and first time offender...
- invalidusernam3 8y ago
  He definitely should have been locked up, but a double life sentence plus forty years without the possibility of parole for selling drugs on the internet seems like overkill
  - newnewpdro 8y ago
    Sure, if "selling drugs on the internet" were his only crime. I vaguely recall reading he (unsuccessfully) paid to assassinate people. Edit: Read it here https://www.wired.com/2015/04/silk-road-1/ https://www.wired.com/2015/04/silk-road-1/ Later that day, DPR messaged Nob. DREAD: ok, so can you change the order to execute rather than torture? DREAD: he was on the inside for a while, and now that he’s been arrested, I’m afraid he’ll give up info.
    - hanniabu 8y ago
      That was never proven, yet they used an unproven accusation in the case against him and nobody seemed to think that was an issue.
    - invalidusernam3 8y ago
      That's part of the controversy, everyone vaguely recalls that but is unaware that those accusations weren't even brought to trial (https://freeross.org/uncharged-crimes/ https://freeross.org/uncharged-crimes/). He was convicted of money laundering, computer hacking, conspiracy to traffic fraudulent identity documents, and conspiracy to traffic narcotics by means of the Internet.

cm2187 8y ago

I agree with free Snowden. But Manning and Assange had a history of leaking unredacted personal information that is indefensible. In the case of Manning, I might add that the leak didn’t show any major wrong doing. It illustrated some case of collateral damage, which we always knew (and the US military keeps public records of). It showed the underbelly of the US diplomacy, which turns out to be rather clean (some ambassadors commenting that the memos look generally very insightful and professional). And it caused some red faces of people who shared thoughts with US diplomats in confidence, and I don’t see how that could possibly be a good thing. Assange and Manning is really leaking for the sole purpose of leaking.

Tepix 8y ago
Manning revealed war crimes, yet the only person who went to prison was Manning. That's all we need to know really. The system is broken und unable to fix itself. Edit: Free Reality Winner
- GVIrish 8y ago
  The system is not perfect, but the reason Manning went to jail is because she made an indiscriminate leak of secrets of which she did not review before she released them. Had she only released material on stuff she had thought to be a crime, then there would have been a much stronger case to be made as a whistle blower. It would be like if someone working at a hospital exposed a medical fraud scheme but leaked all the patient records of thousands of people who had nothing to do with scheme. They'd probably get hit with criminal HIPAA violations. The reason Manning is in jail right now is because she refused to testify to a grand jury about WikiLeaks and got hit with contempt of court. She had been given immunity to testify so the jail time is purely on her.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >The system is not perfect, but the reason Manning went to jail is because she made an indiscriminate leak of secrets of which she did not review before she released them. And what gives a government a right to have secrets in the first place? Except itself of course...

jaabe 8y ago

I think we all got caught up in wiki leaks and the seemingly good fight for truth, but to me, their truth looks biased. I mean, you have to wonder why wiki leaks helped Trump win the election and then pretty much stopped their American leaks. Did the American military stop using murder drones? Wouldn’t Trumps taxes or the Mueller report be interesting? Why have all the abundance of White House leaks ended up in traditional media instead of on wiki leaks? I’m not American though, so I’m not really that interested in your domestic politics. I prefer you to be working well with Europe, so it’s fair to say I don’t like Trump, but it’s not like your democrats were really a beacon of freedom and justice internationally either. Living rather close to Russia, so close that they practice airplane bombing runs on our yearly political summit (folkemødet) and regularly fly on the border of our air space, I do wonder why wiki leaks never houses any Russian leaks. The Ukraine was invaded by the Russian military. Sure they dress up and use local militias to be able to deny it, but that’s exactly what happened. They even hacked the entire power grid, and left fallout which is still effecting Maersk because Maersk happened to use similar software. Yet not a single word on anything on wiki leaks? Maybe it didn’t start out that way, and maybe Assange is not involved with it, but it sure seem like wiki leaks turned into something anti-democracy.

raxxorrax 8y ago
Pretty much the whole Russia angle was a big pile of crap for democrats to save face. In my opinion, this hysteria is a big scandal for parts of the media, US institutions and the democratic party. Not saying that Putin is our friend or that republicans are the better choice in the US (not from there).
- pjc50 8y ago
  What about all the actually guilty? > Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team indicted or got guilty pleas from 34 people and three companies during their lengthy investigation, which is now complete. > That group is composed of six former Trump advisers, 26 Russian nationals, three Russian companies, one California man, and one London-based lawyer. Seven of these people (including five of the six former Trump advisers) have pleaded guilty. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/20/17031772/mueller-indictments-grand-jury https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/20/17031772/m...

idlewords 8y ago

Snowden and Assange are not being detained.

King-Aaron 8y ago
The very second Assange walks out of the embassy he will be.
- ionised 8y ago
  Snowden too. He can't go anywhere outside Russia without the threat of capture and extradition, and Russia is only keeping him 'safe' because it pisses off the USA.

Traubenfuchs 8y ago

Did they change anything? Did anything they do matter in the end?

kome 8y ago
Yes, and by a great deal.
viivaux 8y ago
And what pray tell have you done?