11 ms·
Daniel Hale Receives 45-Month Sentence for Releasing Drone Documents
- amin 5y agoEdward Snowden: "Daniel Hale, one of the great American Whistleblowers, was just moments ago sentenced to four years in prison. His crime was telling this truth: 90% of those killed by US drones are bystanders, not the intended targets. He should have been given a medal." https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1420067662823047172 https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1420067662823047172
- MeinBlutIstBlau 5y agoWell...at least he didn't get life in a camp like China! /s I don't know how you can legislate citizens be ethical when you penalize them for stating your own government is committing crimes. It's just a viscous cycle.
- xxx-or-xxxx 5y ago> Well...at least he didn't get life in a camp like China! /s Guantanamo ?
- lambdasquirrel 5y agoWhat works for China works for China. This isn’t going to work for the U.S., or any other Western country. In China falling on the sword for the sake of the people is romanticized. There are many tales and anecdotes that involve such. China have the population structure that historically they could pull it off. They are crowded enough as a country that they the can keep that up for long enough that “in the long run we’re all dead” applies. None of these things apply to the U.S. and the powers-that-be need to do better for themselves.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 5y agoI understand why China does what China does. I'm making a joke about the US making policies that are very similar to "Communist China." There the same thing just different brand.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- rapind 5y agoWe need an updated Godwin’s law for any political discussion and “China bad guy”.
- nomdep 5y agoChina is not “a guy”, the CCP is a tyrannical government just as evil as the Nazis.
- xvector 5y agoAnd yet it amazes me that people are still pushing for more government power and more government controlled services. HN's audience of all people should be keenly aware of the US government's tendency towards authoritarianism.
- Mountain_Skies 5y agoAs long as its outsourced to tech companies with the right politics, it's cool with a large segment of the posters here, which is rather astonishing.
- antonzabirko 5y agoBetter than private sector
- xvector 5y agoNot mutually exclusive
- ransom1538 5y agoWe don't want the government to have power! We just want them to be responsible for our education, health care, water, policing, energy, laws, foreign intelligence, taxing, safety, banking, college, protection, transportation, international affairs, court system, prison system, retirement and food supply.
- tekproxy 5y agoAlso military, environment, mail, immigration, trade, and my personal favorite: currency.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 5y agoIt's perfectly possible to improve, say, environmental protection without any drone programs. Most of Europe does so, for example. So it's just mindless cynicism to argue "more government" / "no less government" / blablabla. The specific American infatuation with anything that kills is, well, specific. Using all that wasteful killing/incarcerating/surveilling as an argument not against the Military-Industrial-Complex but, yet again, to diminish policies that might actually help people, is part and parcel of exactly the approach that ends with dead civilians domestically and abroad.
- 101_101 5y agoIf you are working for shitty companies like this then you are a piece of shit.
- trhway 5y ago>colleagues at the NGA asked him to join them to watch "war porn" or archived footage of drone strikes reminds that recent story where police damaged the shoulder joint of a frail woman and were recorded re-watching that bodycam footage at the station joyfully celebrating and congratulating themselves on that popping sound of the joint being damaged while they kept the woman right around the corner waiting for 2 hours for the medical attention.
- sneak 5y agoThe resulting reporting: https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/ https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/ He's paying the price for bringing you the truth; the least you can do is read the articles containing the info he sacrificed so much to bring to publication.
- neatze 5y agoOut of curiosity, what out of the truth he brings did surprised you the most ?
- beeboop 5y agoThe the US government allows these stats to be researched at all, much less put into writing. It's always been obvious the vast majority of deaths in US involvement overseas are innocents, including a lot of women and children. The 90% figure surprises me not at all.
- harry8 5y agoThat people will knowingly engage in a murder conspiracy, then support it with a rear-guard action to enhance ... their career. None of us are morally above reproach. Sure. But we all feel like we draw the line somewhere and say, yep, too far, won't do it. Killing people, knowingly committing war crimes, covering it up, supporting it, enacting revenge on those who can't play along and want it stopped? That's not the way I think of American citizens. How has it happened? Is it fixable? It must be, surely, right..?
- b0tzzzzzzman 5y agoI recall seeing the video. Sobering, disillusioned, and morbid. A heavy weight, a bolder. Reality for a few, but shelter for the many. Or is it? Anyone care to share what he gave up his life for?
- b0tzzzzzzman 5y agoAnd the down votes flow in.
- anigbrowl 5y agoYou're probably being downvoted because it's hard to make out what you're trying to say. Perhaps rewrite in clearer language at the expense of being less poetic.
- b0tzzzzzzman 5y agoI can see that it is poetic to some, wasn't the intention. I'll just say, we are so desensitized to murder and violence that a video and additional information can allow us an inexcusable am out of brazen apathy for innocent lifes.
- jtsiskin 5y agoVideo, what is “the video”?
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago>So I contacted an investigative reporter with whom I had had an established prior relationship and told him that I had something the American people needed to know." Most people don’t have an established prior relationship with an investigative reporter. I wonder what other stuff he leaked.
- yann2 5y agoWhy is accountability so primitive in 2021? As dumb as it might sound, I feel the US still has a big share of honest good people, compared to what I have seen abroad. Sad to watch.
- emilsedgh 5y agoWatch the US government make such examples of every whistleblower and even this level of accountability which is purely driven by personal consciousness of individuals to become ineffective in fear of harsher and harsher prosecutions. Sad indeed. US intelligence agencies have gone rogue and public doesn't really care.
- barbacoa 5y agoIf you gauge public perception by what the media says then that may be true. Watching the intelligence community go full nuclear to undermine and destroy a democratically elected interloper president in coordination with the media is something that can't be unseen to many Americans. It is becoming a less controversial view that an inappropriate amount of power is consolidated in the permanent unelected government employees.
- krapp 5y ago>Watching the intelligence community go full nuclear to undermine and destroy a democratically elected interloper president in coordination with the media is something that can't be unseen to many Americans regardless of how you felt of trump. I know you'll and half the US will never accept it, but Trump was only destroyed by his mishandling of COVID and his fulminating paranoid conspiracy theories about the election. He stood a chance at re-election, otherwise. There was no deep state/intelligence community/media conspiracy against him, his real enemy was always himself and his own ego.
- ipaddr 5y agoWhy couldn't it be both?
- briefcomment 5y agoI wonder if there are people who don't view intelligence agencies negatively nowadays.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Ericson2314 5y agoThey got a lot of breathless positive press for being a "institutional bullwork against trump" :(
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- neatze 5y agoNegatively compared to what specifically ?
- vmception 5y agolol, go to the DC area. they have lots of convoluted words to abstract the reality of the situation away to be comfortable with that career.
- _delirium 5y agoYeah, some version of "pro-CIA progressive" is a common political identity in DC. It is very weird.
- briefcomment 5y agoIt's almost like when a parent is in denial about their spouse abusing others. They turn a blind eye to it.
- nceqs3 5y agoOr it's more like the people in DC see the value that the IC brings to policy and war.
- ARandomerDude 5y ago> Hale built on that letter with a statement that lasted a little more than 15 minutes. He said, according to POLITICO's Josh Gerstein, "What I’m really here for is for having stolen something that was never mine to take: precious human life." > [Judge Liam] O'Grady responded, “You’re not facing prison for speaking out about the drone program injuring and killing innocent persons," and, "You could have been a whistleblower and garnered all this attention without leaking any of these documents, frankly.” O'Grady has a fair point here actually.
- boomboomsubban 5y agoSo what would have been the correct channel for a "proper" whistleblower and why should we expect it to have had any impact when the "improper" whistleblowing didn't stop the slaughter of innocent people?
- OnlineGladiator 5y agoYeah, this was the same argument that happened with Snowden. The whistleblowers claim they tried to no avail, and then get punished for actually trying to do the right thing. The system is designed to punish those who question it.
- secondaryacct 5y agoI mean I m glad Snowden did what he did for my own curiosity but stealing the credentials of NSA colleagues to leak secret military (or is the NSA civilian) programs is not something I d expect any country to reward. Solving these problems is very hard and Snowden took a shortcut.
- ALittleLight 5y agoThe truly problematic issues are the murders and wanton spying - not how Snowden obtained and released information.
- danShumway 5y ago
- anigbrowl 5y agoO'Grady responded, “You’re not facing prison for speaking out about the drone program injuring and killing innocent persons," and, "You could have been a whistleblower and garnered all this attention without leaking any of these documents, frankly.” However, if Hale had spoken to the public about the content of the documents but never taken any of the information, he almost certainly would have still been the target of an Espionage Act prosecution. Not sure if the writer is naive or obtuse; it's pretty obvious that the judge meant using institutional whistleblowing channels, which would have legally insulated Hale. Of course, it's also that much more likely that the matter would have gone unnoticed by the public and and eventually been buried in red tape.
- lambdasquirrel 5y agoIt’s really hard to believe we would have heard anything if official channels were used. It’s really hard not to hear the judge’s statement outside of that context.
- JumpCrisscross 5y agoMight the solution be an independent agency which centralises whistleblowing? Whose decisions are appealable to the courts and legally required to balance public interest and national security?
- hashkb 5y agoWho would fund this? No chance of the same corruption in that independent organization designed to oversee a much more powerful one.
- kodah 5y agoI can't speak for the rest of the government, but I can speak for internal whistleblowing of the Marine Corps. You can "request mast" all the way up to the Commandant, which is the tippy top. I think it's possible that some whistleblowing is discarded when it should have been honored, but I think for the most part these processes exist and are in-tact. Now, whether there's a perception that you can use them effectively is another issue. Let's not forget someone whistleblew on the President amid a highly political environment in recent memory. That's no short order.
- ummonk 5y agoImagine how the mainstream media would describe it if say this was in China or Russia. “Dissident sentenced to 45 months imprisonment for blowing the whistle on regime atrocities”
- secondaryacct 5y agoWell we re judging a guy who drove a motorbike into the police in HK and mainstream american media describe it at a crackdown on freedom... It feels the entire thing is really fake in the US and it s just a giant golden cage where debt-laden poor people look at exagerated external events and told that at least in America they can starve while speaking out. The US just terrifies me these days honestly
- tgragnato 5y ago> a giant golden cage where debt-laden poor people look at exagerated external events and told that at least in America they can starve while speaking out Making the Chinese population believe that by enduring the deprivation of their freedoms they would obtain a better economic condition is what has brought the Chinese Communists where they are. Seeing this model exported to Hong Kong is already quite depressing, it’d be better to consider this kind of argument for what it is, at least as far as any western country is concerned.
- oyashirochama 5y agoImagine ignoring the fact that the national security act is a tragedy of unsurmountable levels, from one of the most free semi independent states, to something nearly on the totalitarian level of China.
- f0xytr0xy 5y agoThis is the most honest explanation I have ever of USA and its sociopathic brand of capitalism.
- djabatt 5y agoI am not deeply read up on this case, but it seems rather high compared to the recent Jan 6th capital attackers sentence of eight months.
- rufus_foreman 5y agoHe was convicted of obstructing an official proceeding, I guess that is described as an attack now? Is that some general rule, are people who disrupt official proceedings attackers?
- libertyhouse 5y agoCan somebody please confirm the percentage of bystanders allowed to be killed when fighting war in a moral fashion? I'm assuming no war/technology is perfect, and nobody can reasonably expect it to be so. I'm also assuming most readers here are OK with our Government fighting a moral war. What percentage is morally acceptable to the readers here?
- ALittleLight 5y agoThe government didn't even bother to declare war, so we're off the rails before we even look at the question of "moral war".
- libertyhouse 5y agoAssuming some future declared moral war, what would be an acceptable percentage of collateral casualties?
- danShumway 5y ago> what would be an acceptable percentage of collateral casualties? As low as is currently feasible to get it at the point of this theoretical war, and lower once we have the capabilities to make it lower. Because this is an evolving standard based on our current capabilities and the stakes of the theoretical moral war you propose, there is no single universal answer, we'll always be paying attention to the context and we'll always be adjusting. It is thus very important that the public have information about what the current casualty rate is for civilians. There is no easy, universal numeric answer to what is an acceptable casualty rate, but in no world is a secret percentage of collateral casualties acceptable. The public needs some level of access to what is going on so we can have informed debates about whether what we're doing is justified. The Intercept's original coverage of this leak wrote: > The implicit message on drone strikes from the Obama administration has been one of trust, but don’t verify. > [...] Additional documents on high-value kill/capture operations in Afghanistan buttress previous accounts of how the Obama administration masks the true number of civilians killed in drone strikes by categorizing unidentified people killed in a strike as enemies, even if they were not the intended targets. How could the public have a meaningful debate about the morality and acceptability of drone strikes when we didn't even know what their effects were, when they were being misrepresented to us by our own government? You're asking for a single, universal number of what is and isn't acceptable. I'm asking just to know what our current rate is, and to not have the government lie to me about that rate. We can't debate whether or not our results are acceptable if we don't even know what our results currently are.
- joelbondurant 5y agoUSA is a terrorist nation.
- threatofrain 5y ago> Documents Hale revealed showed “more than 40 percent” of the people in the U.S. government’s database of terrorism suspects have “no recognized terrorist group affiliation.” The “watchlisting guidance” document he shared helped Muslim Americans clear their names and force the government to remove them from the No Fly List.
- f0xytr0xy 5y agoFlagged for criticising capitalism. It is almost as if Ycombinator is run by fragile libertarian ayn rand fetishists who are fragile about capitalism and their role in perpetuating suffering in the name of the almighty dollar.