15 ms·

Chelsea Manning is tweeting from prison

213 points by SwellJoe 12y ago

rtkwe 12y ago
> Also for those of you asking: @fitzgibbonmedia is handling my account for the time being So it sounds like Manning doesn't have Twitter access but instead is probably giving whatever tweets she wants to send out to the Fitz Gibbon Media. Not much different from the old statements and letters from prison other than where it ends up. PS: For anyone else who was confused like me since it's been a while: Chelsea Manning == Bradley Manning.
AlwaysBCoding 12y ago
This is unbelievable if true. Why has nobody thought of tweeting from prison before? It's genius. Is there anything the government can legally do to prevent this from happening? Do you have the right to freely distribute your thoughts while incarcerated? If there were more prison twitter accounts it would do wonders towards expsosing how absurd our judicial / prison system is. More people should be live tweeting court cases / prison sentences. Could Adnan Syed have done companion tweets to the Serial podcast? This idea is so interesting.
- anaphor 12y ago
  Maybe because they get sent to solitary confinment for using social media? (At least in SC, I'm sure it's frowned on by prisons elsewhere) https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/02/hundreds-south-carolina-inmates-sent-solitary-confinement-over-facebook https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/02/hundreds-south-carolin...
- A_COMPUTER 12y ago
  Weev did it: http://www.dailydot.com/news/andrew-weev-auernheimer-prison-livetweeting/ http://www.dailydot.com/news/andrew-weev-auernheimer-prison-... An apparently was punished for it: http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/weev-in-solitary-confinement-for-remotely-tweeting-from-prison/ http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/weev-in-solitary-c...
- nthitz 12y ago
  http://www.betweenthebars.org http://www.betweenthebars.org hosts blogs for hundreds of inmates.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- Zuider 12y ago
  >Do you have the right to freely distribute your thoughts while incarcerated? Only in a very restricted form because of the possibility that convicts could instigate or control criminal activity via such communication with the outside world. visitors, letters, and phone calls from prison are strictly rationed because of the resources required to monitor them. Even though mobile phones are strictly forbidden because they cannot be controlled, they are quite common in prisons.
xnull2guest 12y ago
Has this been confirmed? Edit: Looks like CNN, RollingStone, and The Guardian are all reporting this.
- SwellJoe 12y ago
  It has been covered by USAToday, NBC News, etc. If it's not legit, it's a reasonably elaborate hoax. Though the source always seems to be the media company in question, I guess it's still actually up in the air. But, tweets have mentioned Glen Greenwald and others who would be among the most capable of debunking it, and most likely to do so, if it's fake. http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/chelsea-manning-joins-twitter-prison-n335461 http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/chelsea-manning-joins-tw... http://news.yahoo.com/supporters-help-chelsea-manning-starts-tweeting-181100521.html http://news.yahoo.com/supporters-help-chelsea-manning-starts...
  - xnull2guest 12y ago
    Agreed on all points. Compelling. Kind of a scandal: "US's largest leaker broadcasting from military prison". I wonder how long the Twitter access will last.
    - dublinben 12y ago
      Manning isn't using Twitter directly. An outside group is transcribing phone calls.
      - glandium 12y ago
        Which, really, is easy to fix: no more phone calls.
      - pakled_engineer 12y ago
        Marc Emery did the same thing and BOP threw him in solitary for criticism on his blog that his wife transcribed for him. I imagine Manning's privs will disappear quickly now that this story is out.
dpritchett 12y ago
Does HN still have those frustrating title renaming rules? If so this would be a good time to insist on using them.
- fabulist 12y ago
  If you propose a better title and an admin sees your comment, they'll change it if they agree it is called for.
- SwellJoe 12y ago
  What's wrong with the title? (Genuinely would like to do better next time.)
  - cachvico 12y ago
    Second that - what's wrong with the title? It's descriptive, neutral, factual.
    - kzrdude 12y ago
      It's missing an indication that she is tweeting via an intermediary.
      - cachvico 12y ago
        I think the important part is that she has a Twitter account, and is using it.
  - dpritchett 12y ago
    Your title is fine, SwellJoe. I was being petty and pointing out a case where a descriptive title that didn't match the HTML <TITLE> dramatically improved the submission. I have long felt HN's title renaming policies were a bit too aggressive and I'd like to see 'em go away. This wasn't the right venue for me to bring that up though - things have improved a good bit under dang's tenure already. As a reference for my outdated and inappropriate axe grinding see this 2013 thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5142851 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5142851 Mea culpa.
clamprecht 12y ago
When I was doing my time in the Fed (1995-2000), my friends & mom had set up a web page for me.[1] Sometime around '96 or '97, the prison Captain (responsible for security) found out and had me fired from my "good" job. (Good job meant I was working at the Unicor factory, where I could have eventually made $200/month). I was transferred to be an "orderly" (which means janitor), earning $5/month at the Captain's office, so he could keep an eye on me. Eventually I found out the reason he had me fired was because the prison officials didn't like the attention that my web page brought, and they also though I was somehow accessing the Internet from the Unicor factory (they had terminals there, which I wasn't allowed to be near). My case started getting attention, media interviews, etc. At one point, I was told directly by the prison staff attorney to stop all the attention. I scaled it back enough to where they stopped harassing me. It's definitely a tradeoff - the more attention you get, the more they will fuck with you in there. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/19990222022940/http://www.paranoia.com/~mthreat/ https://web.archive.org/web/19990222022940/http://www.parano...
- wantab 12y ago
  iow, you were treated like a prisoner. Imagine that.
- bane 12y ago
  Can you imagine a "no internet access" sentence today? It's virtually a human right w/r to basic free speech. I've heard prices at the commissary are pretty ridiculous, so $200 vs. $5/mo seems like a pretty big deal. edit for people who aren't up on the whole rights thing http://www.wired.com/2011/06/internet-a-human-right/ http://www.wired.com/2011/06/internet-a-human-right/ http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/02/02/unrestricted-internet-access-human-rights-technology-constitution/ http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/02/02/unrestricted-internet-ac... http://rt.com/news/213611-internet-access-human-right/ http://rt.com/news/213611-internet-access-human-right/ http://broadband.about.com/od/International/a/United-Nations-Broadband-Access-Is-A-Basic-Human-Right.htm http://broadband.about.com/od/International/a/United-Nations... http://bigthink.com/think-tank/nicholas-negroponte-internet-access-is-a-human-right http://bigthink.com/think-tank/nicholas-negroponte-internet-... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet/11252526/Three-quarters-of-Britons-consider-internet-access-a-human-right.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet/11252526/Thre... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_Internet_access https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_Internet_access This almost trivially makes sense since so many of our other rights are expressed these days through the internet.
forrestthewoods 12y ago
Many prisoners get daily e-mail access. For outsiders there's either a web portal or an app. With the app you get a push notification when there's a new message. It's almost like texting, except it takes a few hours for any message to go through. Roundtrip can be a few more hours since e-mail access from the inside isn't continuous. https://www.corrlinks.com https://www.corrlinks.com
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
fluxist 12y ago
When I was in, there was at least one "celebrity" inmate living with me maintaining his twitter feed in the same way -- dictating to a friend over the phone. A twitter feed on its own is not indicative of the experience and brutality of his incarceration. Hopefully he'll speak to that himself and raise awareness. But do not doubt, he faces a threat to his safety by doing so. I think, with an eye toward's the arc of history, that some day I'll see Chelsea Manning's term commuted and Edward Snowden pardoned. I hope, at least. It's a disturbing alternative to countenance. In this country the prisoner is always regarded as subhuman. And his suffering is effectively irrelevant.
EGreg 12y ago
Wait, don't prisons penalize social media use by inmates very harshly? Does Chelsea manning have a lifetime sentence? http://rt.com/usa/232235-prison-facebook-solitary-southcarolina/ http://rt.com/usa/232235-prison-facebook-solitary-southcarol...
VOYD 12y ago
Lame.

213 points by SwellJoe 12y ago

rtkwe 12y ago

> Also for those of you asking: @fitzgibbonmedia is handling my account for the time being So it sounds like Manning doesn't have Twitter access but instead is probably giving whatever tweets she wants to send out to the Fitz Gibbon Media. Not much different from the old statements and letters from prison other than where it ends up. PS: For anyone else who was confused like me since it's been a while: Chelsea Manning == Bradley Manning.

AlwaysBCoding 12y ago

This is unbelievable if true. Why has nobody thought of tweeting from prison before? It's genius. Is there anything the government can legally do to prevent this from happening? Do you have the right to freely distribute your thoughts while incarcerated? If there were more prison twitter accounts it would do wonders towards expsosing how absurd our judicial / prison system is. More people should be live tweeting court cases / prison sentences. Could Adnan Syed have done companion tweets to the Serial podcast? This idea is so interesting.

anaphor 12y ago
Maybe because they get sent to solitary confinment for using social media? (At least in SC, I'm sure it's frowned on by prisons elsewhere) https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/02/hundreds-south-carolina-inmates-sent-solitary-confinement-over-facebook https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/02/hundreds-south-carolin...
A_COMPUTER 12y ago
Weev did it: http://www.dailydot.com/news/andrew-weev-auernheimer-prison-livetweeting/ http://www.dailydot.com/news/andrew-weev-auernheimer-prison-... An apparently was punished for it: http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/weev-in-solitary-confinement-for-remotely-tweeting-from-prison/ http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/weev-in-solitary-c...
nthitz 12y ago
http://www.betweenthebars.org http://www.betweenthebars.org hosts blogs for hundreds of inmates.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
Zuider 12y ago
>Do you have the right to freely distribute your thoughts while incarcerated? Only in a very restricted form because of the possibility that convicts could instigate or control criminal activity via such communication with the outside world. visitors, letters, and phone calls from prison are strictly rationed because of the resources required to monitor them. Even though mobile phones are strictly forbidden because they cannot be controlled, they are quite common in prisons.

xnull2guest 12y ago

Has this been confirmed? Edit: Looks like CNN, RollingStone, and The Guardian are all reporting this.

SwellJoe 12y ago
It has been covered by USAToday, NBC News, etc. If it's not legit, it's a reasonably elaborate hoax. Though the source always seems to be the media company in question, I guess it's still actually up in the air. But, tweets have mentioned Glen Greenwald and others who would be among the most capable of debunking it, and most likely to do so, if it's fake. http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/chelsea-manning-joins-twitter-prison-n335461 http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/chelsea-manning-joins-tw... http://news.yahoo.com/supporters-help-chelsea-manning-starts-tweeting-181100521.html http://news.yahoo.com/supporters-help-chelsea-manning-starts...
- xnull2guest 12y ago
  Agreed on all points. Compelling. Kind of a scandal: "US's largest leaker broadcasting from military prison". I wonder how long the Twitter access will last.
  - dublinben 12y ago
    Manning isn't using Twitter directly. An outside group is transcribing phone calls.
    - glandium 12y ago
      Which, really, is easy to fix: no more phone calls.
    - pakled_engineer 12y ago
      Marc Emery did the same thing and BOP threw him in solitary for criticism on his blog that his wife transcribed for him. I imagine Manning's privs will disappear quickly now that this story is out.

dpritchett 12y ago

Does HN still have those frustrating title renaming rules? If so this would be a good time to insist on using them.

fabulist 12y ago
If you propose a better title and an admin sees your comment, they'll change it if they agree it is called for.
SwellJoe 12y ago
What's wrong with the title? (Genuinely would like to do better next time.)
- cachvico 12y ago
  Second that - what's wrong with the title? It's descriptive, neutral, factual.
  - kzrdude 12y ago
    It's missing an indication that she is tweeting via an intermediary.
    - cachvico 12y ago
      I think the important part is that she has a Twitter account, and is using it.
- dpritchett 12y ago
  Your title is fine, SwellJoe. I was being petty and pointing out a case where a descriptive title that didn't match the HTML <TITLE> dramatically improved the submission. I have long felt HN's title renaming policies were a bit too aggressive and I'd like to see 'em go away. This wasn't the right venue for me to bring that up though - things have improved a good bit under dang's tenure already. As a reference for my outdated and inappropriate axe grinding see this 2013 thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5142851 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5142851 Mea culpa.

clamprecht 12y ago

When I was doing my time in the Fed (1995-2000), my friends & mom had set up a web page for me.[1] Sometime around '96 or '97, the prison Captain (responsible for security) found out and had me fired from my "good" job. (Good job meant I was working at the Unicor factory, where I could have eventually made $200/month). I was transferred to be an "orderly" (which means janitor), earning $5/month at the Captain's office, so he could keep an eye on me. Eventually I found out the reason he had me fired was because the prison officials didn't like the attention that my web page brought, and they also though I was somehow accessing the Internet from the Unicor factory (they had terminals there, which I wasn't allowed to be near). My case started getting attention, media interviews, etc. At one point, I was told directly by the prison staff attorney to stop all the attention. I scaled it back enough to where they stopped harassing me. It's definitely a tradeoff - the more attention you get, the more they will fuck with you in there. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/19990222022940/http://www.paranoia.com/~mthreat/ https://web.archive.org/web/19990222022940/http://www.parano...

wantab 12y ago
iow, you were treated like a prisoner. Imagine that.
bane 12y ago
Can you imagine a "no internet access" sentence today? It's virtually a human right w/r to basic free speech. I've heard prices at the commissary are pretty ridiculous, so $200 vs. $5/mo seems like a pretty big deal. edit for people who aren't up on the whole rights thing http://www.wired.com/2011/06/internet-a-human-right/ http://www.wired.com/2011/06/internet-a-human-right/ http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/02/02/unrestricted-internet-access-human-rights-technology-constitution/ http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/02/02/unrestricted-internet-ac... http://rt.com/news/213611-internet-access-human-right/ http://rt.com/news/213611-internet-access-human-right/ http://broadband.about.com/od/International/a/United-Nations-Broadband-Access-Is-A-Basic-Human-Right.htm http://broadband.about.com/od/International/a/United-Nations... http://bigthink.com/think-tank/nicholas-negroponte-internet-access-is-a-human-right http://bigthink.com/think-tank/nicholas-negroponte-internet-... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet/11252526/Three-quarters-of-Britons-consider-internet-access-a-human-right.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet/11252526/Thre... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_Internet_access https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_Internet_access This almost trivially makes sense since so many of our other rights are expressed these days through the internet.

forrestthewoods 12y ago

Many prisoners get daily e-mail access. For outsiders there's either a web portal or an app. With the app you get a push notification when there's a new message. It's almost like texting, except it takes a few hours for any message to go through. Roundtrip can be a few more hours since e-mail access from the inside isn't continuous. https://www.corrlinks.com https://www.corrlinks.com

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

fluxist 12y ago

When I was in, there was at least one "celebrity" inmate living with me maintaining his twitter feed in the same way -- dictating to a friend over the phone. A twitter feed on its own is not indicative of the experience and brutality of his incarceration. Hopefully he'll speak to that himself and raise awareness. But do not doubt, he faces a threat to his safety by doing so. I think, with an eye toward's the arc of history, that some day I'll see Chelsea Manning's term commuted and Edward Snowden pardoned. I hope, at least. It's a disturbing alternative to countenance. In this country the prisoner is always regarded as subhuman. And his suffering is effectively irrelevant.

EGreg 12y ago

Wait, don't prisons penalize social media use by inmates very harshly? Does Chelsea manning have a lifetime sentence? http://rt.com/usa/232235-prison-facebook-solitary-southcarolina/ http://rt.com/usa/232235-prison-facebook-solitary-southcarol...

VOYD 12y ago

Lame.