5 ms·

Can you clarify? Both of them took a principled stand and leaked a large amount of sensitive information to journalists they trusted at great personal risk. Bot

Can you clarify? Both of them took a principled stand and leaked a large amount of sensitive information to journalists they trusted at great personal risk. Both of them had a huge influence on public debate. They are at least comparable.

theworst 12y ago
The argument that I've commonly heard is twofold. One, Manning was in the Army, so lots of his actions fall under military jurisdiction, where the primary concern is not the rights of the accused. Secondly, Manning dumped a lot of info without knowing what he dumped. Snowden knew what was in the docs he leaked, and he made sure to protect human lives. That's what I've heard, at least. It seems to make sense to me, but I'm open to having my mind changed if you have a different perspective.
- JshWright 12y ago
  Unrelated transgender protocol question... When referring to events in the past, do you use the gender the party identifies as now, or the gender they (at least publicly) identified as at the point in time the events occurred? I suspect that might vary from person to person, but in most cases, I expect they would prefer the former...
  - king_jester 12y ago
    Usually you use the current gender identity pronouns.
  - sp332 12y ago
    In this case at least, Manning always felt feminine. It just took a long time to personally work that out. The reason she joined the army in the first place was to make herself more manly, because she already didn't feel like a man at the time.
- d23 12y ago
  For the life of me, whenever I hear someone call Manning a whistleblower, I cannot ever get the person to articulate exactly what he was blowing the whistle against. It's my understanding that most of what was released was nothing more than embarrassing personal cables that harmed diplomatic relations. Snowden revealed legitimate privacy concerns that the American people had not yet been privy to.
  - thetrb 12y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007_Baghdad_airstrike http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007_Baghdad_airstrike
    - d23 12y ago
      Which doesn't really justify 99.9% of the other things that were released.
      - dllthomas 12y ago
        But that 99.9% (assuming your figure is accurate - I have no idea the proportion of damning vs. embarrassing vs. irrelevant information that was leaked) doesn't make Manning not a whistle-blower.
  - morsch 12y ago
    I couldn't off-hand recall anything, either. But a cursory search reveals: "There were hundreds of classified reports of torture, that continued even after the Abu Ghraib scandal."[0] The diplomatic embarrassment is what made the news, but whose fault is it that -- and who stands to gain from it? People like a good embarrassing story. And I'm sure governments prefer you think of them as having their diary exposed to the public as opposed to the guys paying thugs to torture people. [0] http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestory/2013/08/2013817912749650.html http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestory/2013/08/2013...
  - ck2 12y ago
    You seriously never heard of the "Collateral Murder" video? Manning specifically released that among other information. It was incredibly important.
JshWright 12y ago
Snowden was careful and calculating with what he leaked. Manning just grabbed everything she could and released it without regard for the safety of folks involved.
- junto 12y ago
  I disagree. Manning gave everything to wikileaks and they (Assange) and the chosen publishers curated it (somewhat badly). Snowden leaked to Poitras and Greenwald and they seem to be curating with much more care. This is smart because Snowden can't have access to the archive because it isn't safe for him to have a copy whilst in Russia. It is also smart of Greenwald because the USG are looking for any tiny chink in the armour to be able to descredit Greenwald and by association, Snowden. That's why Greenwald has still only released and estimated 1% of the archive. Each release needs to be analysed, reviewed and judged for release before carefully timing the release for maximum impact. Any damage to the safety of US personel on the ground is going to become a propaganda coup for the USG. Greenwald only has his integrity. Once he loses that it is very hard to get it back, which is why I hope he hasn't made a mistake choosing his FirstLook backers. There was a reason that Snowden chose Poitras and Greenwald over Assange. Firstly he did his research well. He hoped that these two in particular were noble enough for the task. He knew that both were somewhat ostracised from the US and certainly targets for sigint, and both were living outside the US. Snowden also let slip his opinion of Assange in the NZ-Dotcom presentation. He said: "I think its wrong of any politician to take away the public seat at the table of government and say you'll simply have to trust us and you know what, its not in the public interest to know about these programmes, unless it threatens my reputation, in which case I'm going to throw documents in the air like I'm Julian Assange. No offence there Julian" Assange and Poitras/Greenwald are substantially different beasts. What is impressive is that Assange would have been Snowden's easy route. Instead he chose two people who had zero knowledge about sigint and no history of dealing with such a leak. What they did have was class and integrity and luckily that won him over. They don't throw documents in the air like Julian Assange (for personal reasons). The documents should transcend personal issues.
  - JshWright 12y ago

theworst 12y ago

The argument that I've commonly heard is twofold. One, Manning was in the Army, so lots of his actions fall under military jurisdiction, where the primary concern is not the rights of the accused. Secondly, Manning dumped a lot of info without knowing what he dumped. Snowden knew what was in the docs he leaked, and he made sure to protect human lives. That's what I've heard, at least. It seems to make sense to me, but I'm open to having my mind changed if you have a different perspective.

JshWright 12y ago
Unrelated transgender protocol question... When referring to events in the past, do you use the gender the party identifies as now, or the gender they (at least publicly) identified as at the point in time the events occurred? I suspect that might vary from person to person, but in most cases, I expect they would prefer the former...
- king_jester 12y ago
  Usually you use the current gender identity pronouns.
- sp332 12y ago
  In this case at least, Manning always felt feminine. It just took a long time to personally work that out. The reason she joined the army in the first place was to make herself more manly, because she already didn't feel like a man at the time.
d23 12y ago
For the life of me, whenever I hear someone call Manning a whistleblower, I cannot ever get the person to articulate exactly what he was blowing the whistle against. It's my understanding that most of what was released was nothing more than embarrassing personal cables that harmed diplomatic relations. Snowden revealed legitimate privacy concerns that the American people had not yet been privy to.
- thetrb 12y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007_Baghdad_airstrike http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007_Baghdad_airstrike
  - d23 12y ago
    Which doesn't really justify 99.9% of the other things that were released.
    - dllthomas 12y ago
      But that 99.9% (assuming your figure is accurate - I have no idea the proportion of damning vs. embarrassing vs. irrelevant information that was leaked) doesn't make Manning not a whistle-blower.
- morsch 12y ago
  I couldn't off-hand recall anything, either. But a cursory search reveals: "There were hundreds of classified reports of torture, that continued even after the Abu Ghraib scandal."[0] The diplomatic embarrassment is what made the news, but whose fault is it that -- and who stands to gain from it? People like a good embarrassing story. And I'm sure governments prefer you think of them as having their diary exposed to the public as opposed to the guys paying thugs to torture people. [0] http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestory/2013/08/2013817912749650.html http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestory/2013/08/2013...
- ck2 12y ago
  You seriously never heard of the "Collateral Murder" video? Manning specifically released that among other information. It was incredibly important.

JshWright 12y ago

Snowden was careful and calculating with what he leaked. Manning just grabbed everything she could and released it without regard for the safety of folks involved.

junto 12y ago
I disagree. Manning gave everything to wikileaks and they (Assange) and the chosen publishers curated it (somewhat badly). Snowden leaked to Poitras and Greenwald and they seem to be curating with much more care. This is smart because Snowden can't have access to the archive because it isn't safe for him to have a copy whilst in Russia. It is also smart of Greenwald because the USG are looking for any tiny chink in the armour to be able to descredit Greenwald and by association, Snowden. That's why Greenwald has still only released and estimated 1% of the archive. Each release needs to be analysed, reviewed and judged for release before carefully timing the release for maximum impact. Any damage to the safety of US personel on the ground is going to become a propaganda coup for the USG. Greenwald only has his integrity. Once he loses that it is very hard to get it back, which is why I hope he hasn't made a mistake choosing his FirstLook backers. There was a reason that Snowden chose Poitras and Greenwald over Assange. Firstly he did his research well. He hoped that these two in particular were noble enough for the task. He knew that both were somewhat ostracised from the US and certainly targets for sigint, and both were living outside the US. Snowden also let slip his opinion of Assange in the NZ-Dotcom presentation. He said: "I think its wrong of any politician to take away the public seat at the table of government and say you'll simply have to trust us and you know what, its not in the public interest to know about these programmes, unless it threatens my reputation, in which case I'm going to throw documents in the air like I'm Julian Assange. No offence there Julian" Assange and Poitras/Greenwald are substantially different beasts. What is impressive is that Assange would have been Snowden's easy route. Instead he chose two people who had zero knowledge about sigint and no history of dealing with such a leak. What they did have was class and integrity and luckily that won him over. They don't throw documents in the air like Julian Assange (for personal reasons). The documents should transcend personal issues.
- JshWright 12y ago