Bradley Manning cleared of aiding the enemy

Bradley Manning knew what he was doing when he downloaded reams of government documents and forwarded them to WikiLeaks. He knew the information was classified. He knew that he shouldn't have been doing what he was doing.

Well, except for the fact that he exposed human rights violations committed by our government. He had a duty to reveal that information. After all, at the Nuremberg trials we found out that a defense that one was just following orders was insufficient to keep a noose from being tied around your neck.

But maybe that was just because those put on trial for committing war crimes were the losers in the war. No one ever puts the winners on trial. Maybe history will - one day.

Bradley Manning was a whistleblower and, just like every other whistleblower, he broke the rules to expose the wrong doing. That's part of the game. These folks who are willing to stand up and tell the truth about what's going on behind closed doors do so at a great price. Sometimes the consequences are financial and sometimes they're greater.

Pvt. Manning knew what that price was - yet he did what he thought was the right thing anyway. Without his actions we would never have seen video of the chopper killing children and journalists while the soldiers inside acted like they were playing a video game. The film was classified not because there was anything secret about what happened - it was classified because it was really embarrassing.

Yesterday Pvt. Manning was found guilty on 20 of the 22 charges filed against him - but he was acquitted of the most serious charge of aiding the enemy. Even though he was acquitted of the charge that could have brought about a life sentence, Pvt. Manning is still looking at the possibility of spending decades behind bars.

The aiding the enemy charge was dismissed by Col. Denise Lind because the prosecution failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Manning intended to provide the material to enemies of the United States. But the remaining charges do cast a large shadow on advocates for more government transparency.

Yes, the world's a dangerous place. Yadda, yadda, yadda. And part of the reason it is a dangerous place are the policies of the US government that are carried out without benefit of illumination. Our government has a sorry record of backing military dictatorships and authoritarian rulers due to fears that those who produce wealth will one day rise up and demand their fair share of the pie. Our government provides the weapons of war to despots in order to keep the steady drip of oil from running out. Our government has done things during this so-called War on Terrorism that we would condemn if the other side did the same.

Our government occupies over 100 countries around the world by the use of military bases. Our government gets involved in the internal politics of nations all over the globe in an attempt to ensure that politicians who favor a neo-liberal economic agenda and who are friendly to global corporations sit in the seats of power.

Just imagine the outrage if these roles were reversed. Would the US stand for another nation putting a military base in the Lower 48? What would be the reaction if it turned out that a foreign government funneled money into an American election?

Bradley Manning peeled back the curtain and for that he will be punished severely. The entire circus that has surrounded this case from the beginning has only served to distract the public from the real issues. During the trial we were consumed by the question of whether or not he intended for Osama bin Laden to see the information. We've questioned whether or not he exceeded his authority to download the material in question.

But few people questioned the basic assumptions of this case. No one in the mainstream media questioned whether or not government officials violated international law or committed human rights violations. No one questioned whether it was proper to charge someone criminally who exposed wrongdoing to the press. No one questioned whether the actions of our government that Pvt. Manning exposed were proper.

President Obama has come down harder on whistleblowers than any other president. He has made it his mission to keep the American people from knowing what their government does in their name. He has gone after those who exposed wrongdoing with a vengeance.

Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and Julian Assange have done us all a service by exposing the illegal actions of our government. History shall be the judge of how they should be rewarded.

Watch what you say

Thanks to the wonders of the Freedom of Information Act, the Daily Mail of London has put together a list of all the words that the Grand Inquisitors at the Department of Homeland Security (which sounds like something straight out of the Third Reich) are on the lookout for day in and day out.

Every day some bureaucrat sits behind a computer terminal sifting through everything that's posted online - just looking for some of these very special words. That's right. Whatever you post on Facebook, Twitter or any other social networking site is being watched.

According to the Daily Mail...

The words are included in the department's 2011 ' Analysts Desktop Binder' used by workers at their National Operations Center which instructs workers to identify 'media reports that reflect adversely on DHS and response activities'.

But, fret not, los federales aren't looking to add your name to their list just because you happen to write disparaging things about the government - or so they say. It is nothing short of ironic that, by most accounts, the most left-leaning president in American history has launched the greatest assault on the people's right to be left alone. No constitutional protection is safe these days.

It's long been said that it took someone like Nixon to make nice with the Chinese (hey, authoritarians just love to hang out with other authoritarians). It follows that it took someone like President Obama to lay waste to privacy rights and due process. It would've been too obvious with Bush.

So, in this day where the government is squeezing our right to free speech - unless you're a corporation or a billionaire who has a few millions to throw at political candidates - it's time to have a little fun. This is the list of words related to domestic security that will raise some eyebrows (and this is only one category - there are plenty more where these came from):

Assassination
Attack
Domestic security
Drill
Exercise
Cops
Law enforcement
Authorities
Disaster assistance
Disaster management
Domestic nuclear detection office
National preparedness
Mitigation
Prevention
Response
Recovery
Dirty bomb
Domestic nuclear detection
Emergency management
Emergency response
First responder
Homeland security
Maritime domestic awareness
National preparedness
Initiative
Militia
Shooting
Shots fired
Evacuation
Deaths
Hostage
Explosion
Police
Disaster medical assistance team
Organized crime
Gangs
National security
State of emergency
Security
Breach
Threat
Standoff
SWAT
Screening
Lockdown
Bomb
Crash
Looting
Riot
Emergency landing
Pipe bomb
Incident
Facility

Here's your challenge. By my count there were 51 words and phrases that the spooks are looking for on social networking sites. Write a short story (no more than 500 words) using as many of these words and phrases as you can. The winning entry will be posted on the blog later this month. I will be the sole judge of who wins and there is no set criteria. The deadline to enter is two weeks from today.

Send those entries to thedefenserestsblog@gmail.com .

Working in a data mine

So you think there's such a thing as a reasonable expectation of privacy anymore? If you do, James Bamford has some news for you.

In the current issue of Wired magazine, Mr. Bamford explores the new data mining facility being constructed by the NSA in a Utah desert and the world's fastest supercomputer housed in the Smokey Mountains in Tennessee. He also paints a haunting picture of just how much information our own government is collecting on its own citizens.

But “this is more than just a data center,” says one senior intelligence official who until recently was involved with the program. The mammoth Bluffdale center will have another important and far more secret role that until now has gone unrevealed. It is also critical, he says, for breaking codes. And code-breaking is crucial, because much of the data that the center will handle—financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communications—will be heavily encrypted. According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US. The upshot, according to this official: “Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.” 

In its never-ending quest to keep us safe from some unnamed enemy, the government has instituted a program by which the NSA is intercepting every telephone call, email, internet search, e-purchase and toll tag receipt in an attempt to data map the entire United States.


The facility being built in the Utah desert will be five times the size of the US Capitol. Its warehouses will store an ungodly amount of raw data that its supercomputers will sift through for patterns that will allow the NSA to decrypt encrypted messages and attempt to predict what the supposed terrorists will be up to next.

Of course the NSA's track record has been pretty abysmal. Despite their budget and high tech goodies, the NSA failed to predict either of the attacks on the World Trade Center, the attack on the USS Cole or the bombings of embassies in East Africa. But, what the hell, let's give them a few more billion dollars and lift the ban on domestic spying and see what they can do.

Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy. 

Through agreements with AT&T and Verizon, the NSA collects data at switches across the United States. A special thanks should be due to all the iPhone and iPad users for their contribution to domestic spying.

The data mining raises questions about the fate of the Fourth Amendment as such an operation will render the reasonable expectation of privacy test all but moot. Los federales will be recording your phone calls, text messages and e-mails. The only safe avenues of communication will be face-to-face and by the old fashioned letter. If you know your communications are being captured, you can't say with a straight face that your expectation of privacy was reasonable.

More disturbing is the effect on lawyer-client confidentiality. Your phone calls with your client will be sitting in a database somewhere in Utah along with your email correspondence. And don't forget that supposedly secure remote teleconferencing you've been using. The all-knowing eye in the sky knows all.

You wanted the government to keep you safe from any potential danger anywhere in the world, no matter how remote or unlikely. Now you've got it. You traded your freedom for security. How does it feel? Somewhere along the line we've forgotten that the government is supposed to work for us. Instead, we have a government that's spying on us.

As Billy Joel once sang "This is what you wanted ain't you proud? / 'Cause everybody loves you now."

Taking a sledgehammer to the First Amendment

jour·nal·ist

 noun \-nə-list\

1

a : a person engaged in journalism; especially : a writer or editor for a news mediumb : a writer who aims at a mass audience

Now that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is out on bail in England, the US government is looking for ways to charge Mr. Assange with conspiracy for passing along classified information. The Justice Department is investigating the way in which Army Pfc. Bradley Manning passed the leaked cables to Wikileaks.

Prosecutors are looking at a transcript of an online chat log in which Mr. Manning claims to have communicated with Mr. Assange. Mr. Manning also alleges that Mr. Assange provided him with access to a dedicated server for the uploading of the secret documents.

So, in order to deflect attention from the contents of the cables, los federales are willing to take a sledgehammer to the First Amendment and go after a journalist who provided a forum for an individual who had documents he wanted to see the light of day. There is no conspiracy. At least no more of one than exists anytime a reporter accepts information from a source with the promise not to reveal the source's name. Pentagon Papers, anyone?

Mr. Assange may have provided Mr. Manning with access to a server. That is no different from a reporter agreeing to meet a source in a parking garage, in a park or in the back room of a pool hall. Bit and bytes are the coin of the realm today - not reams and reams of paper.

If Mr. Manning did indeed release the secret cables then he is guilty of passing along classified information. But Mr. Assange broke no law by posting the information online.

This little witch hunt being conducted from Washington is nothing more than an attempt to silence the critics of the government and the journalists who provide them a forum to do so.