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Bradley Manning's Tough Sentence Shows White House's Uncompromising War On Data Leakers
Wikileaks source Private Bradley Manning was slapped with a 35-year prison sentence today — the largest sentence ever of its kind. “It’s further indication that the Executive Branch is very serious about discouraging classified documents,” Yale Law School professor Eugene Fidell tells me. “It struck me that it was a little on the high side, but within the range of reasonableness.”
Manning is responsible for arguably the largest data leak in U.S. history: 250,000 sensitive diplomatic cables to the rogue journalism outfit, Wikileaks. The cables preceded mass upheaval in the Middle East and are widely considered a factor in the 2009 Arab Spring uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. As a result, his punishment has no comparable precedent.
In 1985, for instance, Naval Intelligence Officer Samuel Morison was sentenced to two years for leaking satellite surveillance photographs (President Clinton eventually pardoned him).
While Obama is a pioneer in non-classified open government, he has been aggressively anti-leak. In a cordial, but testy exchange with Bradley Manning supporter Logan Price at an expensive fundraising breakfast in San Francisco in April, Obama had this to say:
Obama: Look, there are better ways and more appropriate ways to bring this up than interrupting and causing a scene…
Price: I understand. That’s why I am asking you now. I wasn’t singing or chanting and I want to know. I think he is the most important whistleblower of my generation. Why is he being prosecuted?
Obama: Well, what he did was irresponsible and risked the lives of service members abroad. He did a lot of damage. So people can have philosophical views on…
Price: But I haven’t seen any evidence of that, and how can you say that the leaks did more harm than good? What about their effect on the democratic revolutions in the Arab world? And isn’t this going to help the war on terror?
Obama: No, no, no, but look, I can’t conduct diplomacy on an open source [basis]. That’s not how the world works. And if you’re in the military… I have to abide by certain rules of classified information. If I were to release material I weren’t allowed to, I’d be breaking the law. We’re a nation of laws. We don’t let individuals make their own decisions about how the laws operate.
The Secret Service was beginning to tug on Price’s arm, but Obama waved them off. “No he’s being fine,” he told his detail, “He is being courteous and asking questions.”
Price: But didn’t he have a responsibility to expose…
Obama: He broke the law!
Price: Well, you can make the law harder to break, but what he did was tell us the truth.
Obama: What he did was he dumped…
Price: But Nixon tried to prosecute Daniel Ellsberg for the same thing and he is a [hero].
Obama: No it isn’t the same thing.What Ellsberg released wasn’t classified in the same way.
Despite Manning’s tough sentence and the unlikely event of a presidential pardon, Wikileaks calls the sentence a “strategic victory.”
Significant strategic victory in Bradley Manning case. Bradley Manning now elegible for release in less than 9 years, 4.4 in one calculation
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WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) August 21, 2013And in a follow-up statement, part-time James Bond villain lookalike Julian Assange said: ”This hard-won minimum term represents a significant tactical victory for Bradley Manning’s defense, campaign team and supporters.”
Fidell, however, doesn’t hold the same optimism. “I don’t know who it’s a victory for,” he says. “Private Manning is going to jail for a long time.”
Court Eventually Stopped NSA From Collecting Millions Of Communications
Two new fun facts today regarding America’s surveillance state: the National Security Agency was collecting hundreds of millions of communications up until 2011, but a military court stopped them.
In a recently declassified and heavily redacted court order, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) ruled that a potentially defunct mass email snooping program violated the 4th Amendment. ”The court is unable to find that NSA’s targeting and minimization procedures, as the government proposes to implement them in connection with MCTs [Multi-Communication Transactions], are consistent with the 4th amendment.”
In the course of sweeping up communications directly from fiber-optic cables, including screenshots of emails, the government can inadvertently view the communications of Americans who are not suspected of terrorism. These “multi-communication transactions” disturbed the court enough to supposedly shut down a program that was reading the content of emails, not just the records (so-called “metadata”).
Judge John D. Bates found that the government “advised the court that the volume and nature of the information it has been collecting is fundamentally different from what the court had been led to believe.” In other words, the NSA was either ignorantly or willfully misleading the court charged with limiting its power.
While this is evidence that FISC does in fact have some meaningful oversight, it apparently can take a while for the court to exercise its power. It’s actually good news that the government can exercise restraint over spy agencies, but it’s disturbing how long it takes.
US Director Of National Intelligence Launches Tumblr Site “IC On The Record” To Assuage Surveillance Concerns
The U.S. office of National Intelligence launched a new site today to promote government transparency in the wake of the months-long scandals surrounding the National Security Agency’s surveillance tactics.
“In June, President Obama requested that Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper declassify and make public as much information as possible about certain sensitive NSA programs while being mindful of the need to protect sensitive classified intelligence and national security,” an unsigned post on the site read.
Launched the website POTUS promised on August 9 as part of an effort to bring greater transparency to intel programs http://t.co/94xLtnZQ9Q
— Ben Rhodes (@rhodes44) August 21, 2013
IC On The Record featured three new documents today, all FISA Court legal opinion documents, and highlighted seven documents that will be released soon.
The site is a good idea on the surface, but such great portions of the declassified documents are (and, I presume, will continue to be) redacted that it won’t end up being a big help.
It’s unclear why the department chose Tumblr, the blogging platform popular with a younger demographic that was acquired by Yahoo for $1 billion earlier this summer. The site also now has a Twitter handle. Hopefully the office will be able to string together 140 characters without redacting anything.
Ironic that @IContheRecord is not following anyone.
— Justin Amash (@repjustinamash) August 21, 2013
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Update: Michael Birmingham, a spokesman for the ODNI, sent me the following statement:
“The purpose of IC on the Record is two-fold: first, to enable the Intelligence Community to respond with factual, on the record information in the context of a rapidly developing situation and second, to put this information more readily into the hands of the American public. As a platform, Tumblr is a an ideal fit to fulfill both of these needs.
With regard to balancing transparency and national security, the Administration is undertaking a careful and thorough review of whether and to what extent additional information or documents pertaining to this program may be declassified, consistent with the protection of national security.
IC on the Record provides a single online location to access new information as it is made available from across the Intelligence Community.”
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