5 ms·

Manning has not been held the conditions you're referring to since April of 2011. If you care about the case, please learn more about it.

by GHFigs 14y ago

jacquesm 14y ago
Probably you should clarify your statement a bit or you'll be downvoted a lot (upvoted you, but that's only one.) Anyway, what I find disgusting about the whole 'Manning' case is that vetting procedures should have never ever allowed this man to get even close to sensitive material, let alone top-secret. Burning him at the stake is just a way to assign blame when in reality every person that ever evaluated Mannings psychological profile had been asleep at the switch. The guy needs help, not punishment. The fact that we as a society depend on the Bradley Mannings of this world to keep us on the straight and narrow is what is really frightening.
- killerpopiller 14y ago
  Whistle blower are per se mentally ill, you claim? Or how come, you dismiss him as a fragile person? He had good intentions and good reasons, the cables are an eye opener. Sweeping and leaving those actions under the rug would be the right thing to do? It was the lowest clearance, btw.
  - jacquesm 14y ago
    > Whistle blower are per se mentally ill, you claim? No, I don't claim that. > Or how come, you dismiss him as a fragile person? Because, unlike you, I know his biography by heart. > it was the lowest clearance by the way: "Receiving a TS/SCI security clearance (Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information)." see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Manning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Manning
    - killerpopiller 14y ago
      indeed, I don't know his biography, but do you? To paint Manning as a weak, gay, sexually uncertain character suits those parties who'd rather distract from the contents of those leaks than to admit that parts of the US foreign policy are unethical.
      - jacquesm 14y ago
        I've read a lot about him and those things are pretty much common knowledge by now. I would not go so far as to paint Manning as 'weak, gay, sexually uncertain', but I definitely would think twice when confronted with his history if I were to give him some clearance level (not that I'll ever be in a position to do so). Manning strikes me as someone that has a pretty highly developed sense of what is right and what is wrong. US foreign policy is not just 'unethical', I think it transcends that several levels at least. The main reason why the US Government is going after Manning is not because it distracts the attention from US foreign policy, but mostly because he made them look like fools.
        killerpopiller 14y ago
        ..or maybe both. to me, discussing and speculating his state of mind, his personality from a armchair just doesn' feel right. It might not even correlate with his actions. They count and were well intended, ethical, brave, helping and in a good democratic spirit. They were also foolish, off, dangerous and endangering. I am convinced that people with different psych. I hope he will be treated like Daniel Elsberg.
  - mpyne 14y ago
    It's definitely not the lowest clearance you can get. The clerk shuffling HR paperwork at an admin office for military technically needs to be screened as well (since they'll be handling PII and responsible for pay system updates), but they certainly don't need access to TS info.
    - cma 14y ago
      Lowest clearance for an analyst.
      - mbrameld 14y ago
        A TS/SCI is required for just about every intel job in the military, so sure it's probably factually accurate to say that's the lowest clearance for an analyst. But it's also the clearance that 95% (an educated estimate) of analysts hold. There just aren't many folks with anything higher than that and comparatively speaking not a whole lot of stuff gets classified higher than that. So, what's your point?
- ck2 14y ago
  There are also 5 million people in the USA with the same level of sensitive access as Bradley Manning, 1.4 million with "top secret" clearance. That's a ridiculous mockery of anything they think should be a "secret" from US citizens.
  - mpyne 14y ago
    There's a difference between secret from US citizens and restricted from public (I.e. worldwide) disclosure. Classified material is kept from US citizens as a side-effect of it not being public. Believe it or not there are certain limited exceptions in practice to those classification requirements, since the exceptions don't translate to full public disclosure. E.g. a military spouse knowing the week to expect their spouse's return home, something which is normally classified from public disclosure until after it's already occurred.
  - dyno12345 14y ago
    The point wasn't to keep it from US citizens, it was to keep it from foreign governments.
  - krschultz 14y ago
    That's just a fundamental misunderstanding of what the clearances mean. First and foremost, they're just a background check. There are lots of janitors and painters that have Secret or Top Secret clearances so they can work in buildings that contain that kind of information. There are large swaths of people that work in factories with clearances that really couldn't tell you anything of value - but they have to pass a background check to get the job. Then once you narrow it down to the people that have actual classified knowledge, they generally only know a sliver of a small area and that's it. "Need to know" matters a whole lot. The people with wide ranging access to lots of different databases is very small. I would bet Bradley Manning is one of less than 50,000 or so people with that kind of access.
    - jacquesm 14y ago
      > I would bet Bradley Manning is one of less than 50,000 or so people with that kind of access. You'd lose that bet pretty quickly. He was one of those.
- danenania 14y ago
  "The fact that we as a society depend on the Bradley Mannings of this world to keep us on the straight and narrow is what is really frightening." Based on the contents of what Manning's leaks, shouldn't we be a lot more worried about depending on a military and state department rife with corruption and immorality? If members of military and diplomatic corps took their oaths to the country and constitution seriously, there should be many more whistleblowers than Manning, given the apparent levels of routine misconduct in those organizations.
  - jacquesm 14y ago
    > Based on the contents of what Manning's leaks, shouldn't we be a lot more worried about depending on a military and state department rife with corruption and immorality? Absolutely, but that's not really the subject of the thread. I strongly believe that we could move forward quite a bit by taking corporate interests & cronyism out of the political equation. > If members of military and diplomatic corps took their oaths to the country and constitution seriously, there should be many more whistleblowers than Manning, given the apparent levels of routine misconduct in those organizations. Again, no disagreement there. Which is exactly the reason they're coming down like a ton of bricks on Manning, we really don't want to give any other whistleblowers the idea that they can get away with it. The part where they are not paying attention is that by treating Manning in this way they've caused his case to become an example of how bad things really are, on top of that they're giving the signal that if you pass out secret documents in bulk the only thing you probably should do different compared to Manning is that you should not tell others.
  - Kim_Bruning 14y ago
    Or perhaps Manning's profile is exactly the right profile for this kind of data. :-)
- rimantas 14y ago
  > The fact that we as a society depend on the Bradley > Mannings of this world to keep us on the straight and > narrow is what is really frightening. We don't. The world would be the same without him. Just less talk about some guys sexual adventures in the Northern Europe.
  - simonh 14y ago
    That's Julian Assange, not Bradley Manning.
  - jacquesm 14y ago
    You should probably read up a bit on how the cable-gate bits and pieces fit into the Arab spring. The world would definitely not 'be the same without him', maybe your part of the world, but definitely not all of it.
    - mpyne 14y ago
      So how many civilian casualties do we lay at Manning's feet, if he's responsible for the Arab Spring?
      - jacquesm 14y ago
        You meant to ask: "Hoe many casualties do we lay at the feet of the soldiers that were 'just following orders' firing on civilians?". My guess is all of them.
        mpyne 14y ago
        Finally, something we fully agree on! :) However you may be surprised to hear that most (on the ground at least) are not actually going around playing Let's Clean our Bayonets With Civilian Guts everyday... I would be interested in an answer to my original question then. We do still blame Bush for "bringing democracy to Iraq" after all, seems like fair's fair.
        14y ago

Manning has not been held the conditions you're referring to since April of 2011. If you care about the case, please learn more about it.

by GHFigs 14y ago

Manning has not been held the conditions you're referring to since April of 2011. If you care about the case, please learn more about it.

jacquesm 14y ago

Probably you should clarify your statement a bit or you'll be downvoted a lot (upvoted you, but that's only one.) Anyway, what I find disgusting about the whole 'Manning' case is that vetting procedures should have never ever allowed this man to get even close to sensitive material, let alone top-secret. Burning him at the stake is just a way to assign blame when in reality every person that ever evaluated Mannings psychological profile had been asleep at the switch. The guy needs help, not punishment. The fact that we as a society depend on the Bradley Mannings of this world to keep us on the straight and narrow is what is really frightening.

killerpopiller 14y ago
Whistle blower are per se mentally ill, you claim? Or how come, you dismiss him as a fragile person? He had good intentions and good reasons, the cables are an eye opener. Sweeping and leaving those actions under the rug would be the right thing to do? It was the lowest clearance, btw.
- jacquesm 14y ago
  > Whistle blower are per se mentally ill, you claim? No, I don't claim that. > Or how come, you dismiss him as a fragile person? Because, unlike you, I know his biography by heart. > it was the lowest clearance by the way: "Receiving a TS/SCI security clearance (Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information)." see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Manning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Manning
  - killerpopiller 14y ago
    indeed, I don't know his biography, but do you? To paint Manning as a weak, gay, sexually uncertain character suits those parties who'd rather distract from the contents of those leaks than to admit that parts of the US foreign policy are unethical.
    - jacquesm 14y ago
      I've read a lot about him and those things are pretty much common knowledge by now. I would not go so far as to paint Manning as 'weak, gay, sexually uncertain', but I definitely would think twice when confronted with his history if I were to give him some clearance level (not that I'll ever be in a position to do so). Manning strikes me as someone that has a pretty highly developed sense of what is right and what is wrong. US foreign policy is not just 'unethical', I think it transcends that several levels at least. The main reason why the US Government is going after Manning is not because it distracts the attention from US foreign policy, but mostly because he made them look like fools.
      - killerpopiller 14y ago
        ..or maybe both. to me, discussing and speculating his state of mind, his personality from a armchair just doesn' feel right. It might not even correlate with his actions. They count and were well intended, ethical, brave, helping and in a good democratic spirit. They were also foolish, off, dangerous and endangering. I am convinced that people with different psych. I hope he will be treated like Daniel Elsberg.
- mpyne 14y ago
  It's definitely not the lowest clearance you can get. The clerk shuffling HR paperwork at an admin office for military technically needs to be screened as well (since they'll be handling PII and responsible for pay system updates), but they certainly don't need access to TS info.
  - cma 14y ago
    Lowest clearance for an analyst.
    - mbrameld 14y ago
      A TS/SCI is required for just about every intel job in the military, so sure it's probably factually accurate to say that's the lowest clearance for an analyst. But it's also the clearance that 95% (an educated estimate) of analysts hold. There just aren't many folks with anything higher than that and comparatively speaking not a whole lot of stuff gets classified higher than that. So, what's your point?
ck2 14y ago
There are also 5 million people in the USA with the same level of sensitive access as Bradley Manning, 1.4 million with "top secret" clearance. That's a ridiculous mockery of anything they think should be a "secret" from US citizens.
- mpyne 14y ago
  There's a difference between secret from US citizens and restricted from public (I.e. worldwide) disclosure. Classified material is kept from US citizens as a side-effect of it not being public. Believe it or not there are certain limited exceptions in practice to those classification requirements, since the exceptions don't translate to full public disclosure. E.g. a military spouse knowing the week to expect their spouse's return home, something which is normally classified from public disclosure until after it's already occurred.
- dyno12345 14y ago
  The point wasn't to keep it from US citizens, it was to keep it from foreign governments.
- krschultz 14y ago
  That's just a fundamental misunderstanding of what the clearances mean. First and foremost, they're just a background check. There are lots of janitors and painters that have Secret or Top Secret clearances so they can work in buildings that contain that kind of information. There are large swaths of people that work in factories with clearances that really couldn't tell you anything of value - but they have to pass a background check to get the job. Then once you narrow it down to the people that have actual classified knowledge, they generally only know a sliver of a small area and that's it. "Need to know" matters a whole lot. The people with wide ranging access to lots of different databases is very small. I would bet Bradley Manning is one of less than 50,000 or so people with that kind of access.
  - jacquesm 14y ago
    > I would bet Bradley Manning is one of less than 50,000 or so people with that kind of access. You'd lose that bet pretty quickly. He was one of those.
danenania 14y ago
"The fact that we as a society depend on the Bradley Mannings of this world to keep us on the straight and narrow is what is really frightening." Based on the contents of what Manning's leaks, shouldn't we be a lot more worried about depending on a military and state department rife with corruption and immorality? If members of military and diplomatic corps took their oaths to the country and constitution seriously, there should be many more whistleblowers than Manning, given the apparent levels of routine misconduct in those organizations.
- jacquesm 14y ago
  > Based on the contents of what Manning's leaks, shouldn't we be a lot more worried about depending on a military and state department rife with corruption and immorality? Absolutely, but that's not really the subject of the thread. I strongly believe that we could move forward quite a bit by taking corporate interests & cronyism out of the political equation. > If members of military and diplomatic corps took their oaths to the country and constitution seriously, there should be many more whistleblowers than Manning, given the apparent levels of routine misconduct in those organizations. Again, no disagreement there. Which is exactly the reason they're coming down like a ton of bricks on Manning, we really don't want to give any other whistleblowers the idea that they can get away with it. The part where they are not paying attention is that by treating Manning in this way they've caused his case to become an example of how bad things really are, on top of that they're giving the signal that if you pass out secret documents in bulk the only thing you probably should do different compared to Manning is that you should not tell others.
- Kim_Bruning 14y ago
  Or perhaps Manning's profile is exactly the right profile for this kind of data. :-)
rimantas 14y ago
> The fact that we as a society depend on the Bradley > Mannings of this world to keep us on the straight and > narrow is what is really frightening. We don't. The world would be the same without him. Just less talk about some guys sexual adventures in the Northern Europe.
- simonh 14y ago
  That's Julian Assange, not Bradley Manning.
- jacquesm 14y ago
  You should probably read up a bit on how the cable-gate bits and pieces fit into the Arab spring. The world would definitely not 'be the same without him', maybe your part of the world, but definitely not all of it.
  - mpyne 14y ago
    So how many civilian casualties do we lay at Manning's feet, if he's responsible for the Arab Spring?
    - jacquesm 14y ago
      You meant to ask: "Hoe many casualties do we lay at the feet of the soldiers that were 'just following orders' firing on civilians?". My guess is all of them.
      - mpyne 14y ago
        Finally, something we fully agree on! :) However you may be surprised to hear that most (on the ground at least) are not actually going around playing Let's Clean our Bayonets With Civilian Guts everyday... I would be interested in an answer to my original question then. We do still blame Bush for "bringing democracy to Iraq" after all, seems like fair's fair.
        14y ago