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"Hitler had access to American newspapers" - yes and someone in the US military who leaked information useful to the enemy to one would have aided the enemy. Th
by cmdkeen 13y ago
"Hitler had access to American newspapers" - yes and someone in the US military who leaked information useful to the enemy to one would have aided the enemy. This isn't "anyone gives information to the press", it's someone subject to military law giving information away.
Manning was acquitted on the charge but the article tries to imply that no-one should ever be convicted on the basis of giving information to a "good" party that allows the "enemy" to receive it.
Which is bonkers - the press routinely have to get handled by the military because they, through ignorance or not caring, will often aid the enemy with information.
From a UK example the BBC during the Falklands exasperated the military because it routinely broadcast information of assistance to the Argentines because they didn't know any better. It isn't the fault of the journalists, it's the fault of the military personnel telling them the information.
The article rightly points out Government's abuse of general ignorance of tech. At the same time it falls into the opposite trap of the "information should be free" brigade.
- betterunix 13y agoThe standard for claiming someone aided the enemy should be naming the enemy. Which enemy did Bradley Manning aid? Who are our enemies? Why are you talking about censoring the press during times of war when we are not officially at war?
- mpyne 13y agoThough the prosecution's closing argument was pretty bad, he did manage to name one of the enemies concerned: OBL himself.
- LekkoscPiwa 13y agonation of 300 million vs. 1 person. This notion alone just shows how weak the US really is.
- mpyne 13y agoI listed an example, not the only example. Most spies, after all, only gave up their information to a single "enemy". Like inductive reasoning, one example is all the law requires here, and for good reason. For stuff that was actual whistleblowing of war crimes (i.e. the stuff actually beneficial to that nation of 300 million) there can be no charge of aiding the enemy. But for all the rest, there could have. Luckily the judge threw in an extra element to the UCMJ (which was written for a pre-Internet age). But that still didn't help with most of the rest.
- joering2 13y agoNot sure what "officially" mean, but Wiki says we are currently in at least 9 wars: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Unit...
- rbanffy 13y ago> Who are our enemies? Eastasia. We've always been at war with Eastasia.
- pasquinelli 13y agoi thought it was oceania.
- jessaustin 13y agoGood points all, but at least the "aiding the enemy" charge didn't stick, perhaps for the obvious reason you cite. Now if the judge weren't too dense to understand "wget and IE are both web clients, with only superficial differences", the whole affair wouldn't have been quite such a travesty. Although IMHO locking someone up in solitary, incommunicado, without trial, for years (much of that time without clothing) is so damaging that a defendant must be assumed to have been left in no condition to vigorously defend himself, and all verdicts should have been "not guilty" for that alone. O/T: when I typed "aiding the enemy" into G, the word it suggested next was "pokemon". LOL.
- JoshuaRedmond 13y agoAn interesting side-note about the Falklands, the restrictions on reporting resulted in this wonderful quote from the late BBC correspondent Brian Hanrahan "I'm not allowed to say how many planes joined the raid, but I counted them all out, and I counted them all back" [1] [1] - http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/dec/20/brian-hanrahan-media-mod http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/dec/20/brian-h...