O'Grady responded, “You’re not facing prison for speaking out about the drone program injuring and killing innocent persons," and, "You could have been a whistleblower and garnered all this attention without leaking any of these documents, frankly.”
However, if Hale had spoken to the public about the content of the documents but never taken any of the information, he almost certainly would have still been the target of an Espionage Act prosecution.
Not sure if the writer is naive or obtuse; it's pretty obvious that the judge meant using institutional whistleblowing channels, which would have legally insulated Hale. Of course, it's also that much more likely that the matter would have gone unnoticed by the public and and eventually been buried in red tape.
There is a mountain of evidence of official channels being tried by government whistleblowers with evidence of crimes committed where they were subject to the grossest retribution.
I frankly quite flatly don't believe the judge. The very fact that we know about so many of these crimes, which to my knowledge, none have been prosecuted shines the light of truth on this claim.
Judges have a very strong institution bias because they are by and large products of the insitutions. You climb high in legal circles by generally expressing a fairly high level of belief in cops, courts and the like.
And sometimes, to call something like official whistleblowing channels the nonsense that they are, you imoly something very damaging about the whole system. I think it's too much to chew. And it's much easier to profess belief.
If he'd gone through the official channels first, he wouldn't have gotten the chance to do it another way when inevitably official channels did nothing.
They'll ruin your life either way, at least this way the info makes a splash.
You mean he wasn't capable of gaming out the consequences of the Government reacting poorly to the use of official whistleblower mechanisms and wouldn't therefore be able to go to the press in the manner in which he did?
I disagree. He could have taken copies of the files as insurance before whistleblowing, allowing him to then go public if nothing resulted from the official inquiry.
You believe that the Government could hide/destroy all archival Target Development packages, SIGINT Reporting, Full Motion Video, Tactical Reports, Collateral Damage Estimates, Judge Advocate and other leadership decisional communications, Battle Damage Assessments, Political Communications, and other material about any particular strike in question to prevent the investigation of a whistleblowers claims?
Might the solution be an independent agency which centralises whistleblowing? Whose decisions are appealable to the courts and legally required to balance public interest and national security?
I can't speak for the rest of the government, but I can speak for internal whistleblowing of the Marine Corps. You can "request mast" all the way up to the Commandant, which is the tippy top. I think it's possible that some whistleblowing is discarded when it should have been honored, but I think for the most part these processes exist and are in-tact. Now, whether there's a perception that you can use them effectively is another issue.
Let's not forget someone whistleblew on the President amid a highly political environment in recent memory. That's no short order.
There is no recognized public right to know any information that subverts the defense apparatus or benefits a foreign adversary. So even if you want to reveal a war crime you may need to wait until after it can't be proven in court to jeopardize national security. Until such time you would need to limit your disclosure to approved channels.
Anything else is treated differently. Stuff like waste, abuse, environmental issues, discrimination and the like are usually a different ballgame.
Except that, "national security" has grown into an all encomoassing concern for juat this reason. It can be used to hide thay which is condemnable or embarassing.
Imagine how the mainstream media would describe it if say this was in China or Russia. “Dissident sentenced to 45 months imprisonment for blowing the whistle on regime atrocities”
Well we re judging a guy who drove a motorbike into the police in HK and mainstream american media describe it at a crackdown on freedom...
It feels the entire thing is really fake in the US and it s just a giant golden cage where debt-laden poor people look at exagerated external events and told that at least in America they can starve while speaking out.
> a giant golden cage where debt-laden poor people look at exagerated external events and told that at least in America they can starve while speaking out
Making the Chinese population believe that by enduring the deprivation of their freedoms they would obtain a better economic condition is what has brought the Chinese Communists where they are.
Seeing this model exported to Hong Kong is already quite depressing, it’d be better to consider this kind of argument for what it is, at least as far as any western country is concerned.
Imagine ignoring the fact that the national security act is a tragedy of unsurmountable levels, from one of the most free semi independent states, to something nearly on the totalitarian level of China.
"Daniel Hale, one of the great American Whistleblowers, was just moments ago sentenced to four years in prison. His crime was telling this truth: 90% of those killed by US drones are bystanders, not the intended targets.
Anyone acquainted deeply with American history would be aware that yes, the government can tend towards authoritarianism, and often goes fully into it. But the American private sector is even more enthusiastic to commit atrocities and enforce the authority of the few on the many.
Why are you assuming that I want the private sector to grow in power? These aren't mutually exclusive.
> But the American private sector is even more enthusiastic to commit atrocities and enforce the authority of the few on the many.
Shows a keen misunderstanding of American history. The US government commits far more atrocities on a yearly basis than the private sector ever has. I could fill up this whole page with links describing absurd infringements on our constitutional rights by the US government, many of them ongoing to this day.
How, practically, do you want to limit government power in a way that doesn't increase the power of the private sector?
I spoke of enthusiasm, not volume. The private sector commits less atrocities insofar as the government prevents them to. If you want a good historical example, recall that one of the main reasons for the American Revolution was that the private sector was angry at the Crown that they couldn't commit as much atrocities and steal as much land from the natives as they wanted to.
Playing Devil's advocate, the Declaration of Independence does include the phrase, "He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions."
Not arguing against your point, I would like to add that the current treatment of Assange was a responsibility of multiple countries working together to take him down - US, Sweden, Ecuador and Australia.
The espionage act which got used against Daniel Hale is also what the US is using in Assange's case.
>The US government commits far more atrocities on a yearly basis than the private sector ever has
This is one of those claims that's basically impossible to prove. I have no doubt you could link hundreds of constitutional infringements, but at the same time some reports suggest ~25% of workers regularly encounter some form of wage theft.
Or let's use this stories drone strikes as an example. Hale's revelation was that the military vastly underreported the number of civilian deaths to drone strikes. But I don't think private contractors would even be required to publish a bs number of casualties caused (I can't find any reporting requirements, but my search was hardly thorough.) Many private injustices can be very effectively hidden.
> The US government commits far more atrocities on a yearly basis than the private sector ever has.
Let's not compare which class of entities is more evil than the other.
We can't ignore that East India Company which ran drugs worldwide or I.G. Farben (maker of Nazi weaponry & Zyklon B), which later became Monsanto (maker or Agent Orange, DDT, etc.), Bayer, BASF. How about Corporate Sponsored "Tobacco Science" extolling the virtues of smoking? What about the various industrial complexes supporting the even more evil government?
With the Government infiltrated by agents who are connected with corporations & vice versa, is there any difference anyways? Are corporations & government inherently evil or are there contexts of corporations & government that are more evil than other contexts? Can criminal factions gain power over the government & corporations? Would corporations & government be less evil if honest people ran them instead of criminals?
Perhaps it's social phenomena, that we all participate in. Of course much if this phenomena is instigated by various cartels managing systems and hacking human consciousness & desire to consolidate power & curtail individual freedom & rights.
Dont know why you opinion/ theory is being downvoted as much. Its well within the realms of probability.
Im sure a lot of Americans have no idea what their government has been doing to other sovereign nations. Even Obama went on a world tour to disarm smaller nations like South Africa of their Nuclear Weapons. He certainly didn't go to Russia or China or North Korea. After South Africa made that deal about 2011~2012 - an influx of American imported food ravaged the local food production industries bringing one of the biggest poultry producers in the SADEC region to it's knees. Thats not a conspiracy theory. Thats just politics.
The whole private sector censorship reminds me of a very good piece by Matt Taibbi:
> "People in the U.S. seem able to recognize that China’s censorship of the internet is bad. They say: “It’s so authoritarian, tyrannical, terrible, a human rights violation.” Everyone sees that, but then when it happens to us, here, we say, “Oh, but it’s a private company doing it.” What people don’t realize is the majority of censorship in China is being carried out by private companies.
> Rebecca MacKinnon, former CNN Bureau chief for Beijing and Tokyo, wrote a book called Consent of the Network that lays all this out. She says, “This is one of the features of Chinese internet censorship and surveillance—that it's actually carried out primarily by private sector companies, by the tech platforms and services, not by the police. And that the companies that run China's internet services and platforms are acting as an extension of state power.”
> The people who make that argument don’t realize how close we are to the same model. There are two layers. Everyone’s familiar with “The Great Firewall of China,” where they’re blocking out foreign websites. Well, the US does that too. We just shut down Press TV, which is Iran’s PBS, for instance. We mimic that first layer as well, and now there’s also the second layer, internally, that involves private companies doing most of the censorship."
Only if tools like Tor had greater visibility. And communication without exchange of value is pointless (since any real movement needs exchange of $$ to organize), so throw Monero in there too.
> Tor Browser might help with mass data collection by businesses like Google, but it's the worst choice for threats by government or by others who have extra-legal powers: First, it signals that you are hiding something; it attracts attention: not everyone using Tor Browser is a dissident, but the proportion of dissidents among the Tor Browser population is much higher than among the Chrome and Safari populations. Second, it is based on a relatively insecure browser, Firefox, and then it is modified by a team that simply lacks the resources to design and implement proper security. Again, security is complex, expensive, and difficult. The obvious tactic for the attacker is to infect every Tor Browser visiting dissident resources.
> Seeing as how can very obvious to your ISP when you use Tor, I would take this advice with caution. I agree that you should download Tor Browser and get used to using it, but also think hard about whether it would be a problem if you were found to be using it, say from home.
> ...private military company contracted by the US government...
Damn the private sector and their evil ... of wait the government was stumping up the cash. Was the government perhaps acting in its private capacity when hiring mercenaries to "support democracy" in oil rich nations?
This is not even particularly a private-public thing (look to the East India company for what a private company is capable of, although the situation was complicated). The invasion of Iraq wasn't a private enterprise. There were private interests involved, but I think most people would agree that is curruption.
The US Government didn't ask Blackwater to kill 17 civilians in Iraq, they decided to do so themselves.
Obviously foreign invasions were not purely private enterprises. But American history is full of private interests pushing for war, the American Revolution itself was caused in large parts by the American private sector being much more enthusiastic to ethnically cleanse the land from natives and steal their land than the crown.
Private interests lobbying the US Government isn't really corruption, it is the way things are sadly intended to work.
My point is that the reason these atrocities are made by the government and not private companies is only that the government prevents the private sector from committing them. So giving power to the private sector instead of the government in general is not a good course of action despite these events because there is no reason to believe it is any less enthusiastic to do atrocious things.
Sorry, I'm not quite following the argument here. We're in a comment thread about it being illegal to reveal the amount of corruption in the US military, how they are not being particularly discriminating in who they are droning over in the Middle East.
You're putting up evidence that they are also hiring vetted thugs and sending them over to massacre people - also indiscriminately. Again, it is probably illegal at some level to report on how many massacres actually happen so presumably this case is more common than people think.
And the take away here is that the government is protecting us from private sector malfeasance? The private sector would never get funding for this sort of insanity! The only reason money is going to this is because paying taxes is mandatory. A tiny minority of people support this bloodshed. They just happen to have plum positions in DC. And even then, only because it isn't their money being used to vaporise brown people.
You might just as well say that the drone strikes are the fault of the individual operators. If a private operator does something in their capacity as a government contractor, then that's the government's responsibility.
If a fedex employee runs someone over while drunk, that employee is responsible. The company might also be responsible if they know the employee was drinking on the job.
It’s the same deal here, the company is 100% at fault, the government might also share some responsibility or not depending on the specifics. As to drone operators, “I was only following orders” isn’t a free pass though I was given bad information might be, the government can also be responsible at the same time.
Which isn’t to say these drone operators are going to end up at The Hague, but they and their superiors should at least be invested.
> On December 22, 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump granted full presidential pardons to Slatten, Slough, Liberty, and Heard.
Did Trump pardon them in his capacity has a private sector businessman?
It doesn't look like these are rogue agents. It looks a lot like the government (and, specifically, the military) is supporting their actions at the highest levels.
They were sent to Iraq by the US military, presumably protected from Iraqi justice by the presence of the US military, and then they were pardoned for their horrific crimes by the head of the US military.
The 'oh they're private contractors, nothing to do with the US military here!' line doesn't really fit.
I remember seeing an interview or a report about the founder of Blackwater being upset about the backlash, because he specifically said that the US government sends them in to do jobs they don't want to do themselves.
To not put any blame on the US government for giving these companies the reach that they have is to turn a blind eye to the source of the problem. Not to mention that these mercenary companies are made up to a huge degree by ex military.
When you hire a Hitman to do your dirty work, sure, the Hitman is responsible, but the guy who hired him at least shares some blame.
> But American history is full of private interests pushing for war
It is, but this isn’t a US trait. Look at the UK and it’s record. The British East India company were truely outrageous and set the standard for centuries of brutality and immense profit. Pretty much everything else is small fry in comparison.
Lol. Did you even read what you linked. The government hired mercenaries and they were brutally evil. That must’ve been because the government doesn’t have enough power.
Let’s just say Amazon and the government are both equally evil. You get to pick one to have more power. Are you going to pick the one who has given us the wonderful invention called the dmv, or the one who will let me order whatever I want and get it to me in a reasonable time at a reasonable price.
Amazon does a better job at serving the populace than the government does. They both act like rulers, but at least one gives you something worthwhile for it.
I find it incredible that anyone could have such a cartoonish view of the world that the completely secretive, unaccountable and independent security apparatus, which has totally liberated itself from democratic control or oversight, is simply "the government" in a way undifferentiated from say, the post office.
What is especially galling about it is that the entire monstrosity was constituted specifically in order to maintain the structures of private power and profit and has never deviated from that goal. The entire murder machine exists to benefit the corporate power that you absurdly imagine as some kind of countervailing force.
How do you account for the fact that military and CIA involvement overseas is systematically in the service of imposing minimal-government orthodoxy, from Chile 1973 to the Contras, Grenada, Iraq, Cuba, etc?
> You cant be serious. He was a member of military working on drone programs, then moved to a private company operating under the authority of the govt.
You're right. He did it as a soldier, then as a contractor.
> You think you can start an LLC and bomb people in Afghanistan?
If you're an elite, then yes, absolutely. Spoiled rich kid and SEAL dropout Erik Prince and his buddy started a two-bit training seminar company for red state keystone kops that was on the edge of going under when the USS Cole was bombed in 2000 and the firm scored its first federal contract. 9/11, Afghanistan ... the Pentagon turns on the money spigot and a few short years later Blackwater is murdering civilians in Iraq at a steady clip with not only zero lasting consequences but increasing success.
It's not an exaggeration to say that Prince is a mass murderer, but he walks free today, a billionaire without a care in the (not to mention a self-proclaimed "libertarian" who's spent the bulk of his adult life profiting off taxpayers). Not a bad run!
So it goes to show: if you've got a silver spoon, a decent rolodex, and some good timing, you can kill whoever you want in this world after filling out some forms on LegalZoom.
Loads of people are calling for more private power! People who defend the contractor-ization of American workers are asking for private power. People who argue for billionaires to have the right to launch themselves into orbit are arguing for more private power. People who argue for letting employers pick and choose what healthcare to provide their workers are asking for more private power.
Many discussions about gov't control are usually within the context of private power already existing. Of course those same people insist on a hyper-atomization of the topics to make it less clearcut. That's why context is important folks
People are calling for more private power every day. In fact, I think that if I had to pick one central theme behind American conservatism it would be that.
None of this has happened because people in the government started out bad. It is because there is overwhelming evidence that if you set up a powerful organisation, bad people will do what they must to be in charge of it.
Unscrupulous, power hungry liars work just as hard as any of us. Possibly more so because the rewards of power are higher for someone who is willing to abuse it.
If the strategy is to centralise power, there is not a system nor a will in the world that can stop that power being abused. It is really just a matter of how long and how badly.
Even if power is decentralized nothing stops multiple power hungry evil individuals form taking over and abusing their offices. Look at the government, most of it if not all branches are corrupted. It’s true that if a Hitler type comes along they could do a lot more damage grabbing a centralized power system.
We don't want the government to have power! We just want them to be responsible for our education, health care, water, policing, energy, laws, foreign intelligence, taxing, safety, banking, college, protection, transportation, international affairs, court system, prison system, retirement and food supply.
Here is a fun suggestion: Imagine each of those was an entirely separate institution with its own properly named tax and its own elections. i.e. We all pay education tax, the elected board makes a budget within the boundaries of its charter.
We replace the dinosaur one time election with a "change your vote whenever you like" system something like a coalition needs 51% to be eligible to take office and less than 40% to lose it.
Salaries should be glorious and the officials shall be [financially] accountable beyond death.
People will not care much and not modify their vote very often until things get bad enough.
The military [for example] can go to war without the usual bribing of senile old men but if you take the country to war you probably wont be in charge of the war effort and if people really don't want the war they will rappidly cycle though different formations until they are rid of it.
It's perfectly possible to improve, say, environmental protection without any drone programs. Most of Europe does so, for example.
So it's just mindless cynicism to argue "more government" / "no less government" / blablabla.
The specific American infatuation with anything that kills is, well, specific. Using all that wasteful killing/incarcerating/surveilling as an argument not against the Military-Industrial-Complex but, yet again, to diminish policies that might actually help people, is part and parcel of exactly the approach that ends with dead civilians domestically and abroad.
And we also want the corrupt incompetent bloated government to disarm the citizens and censor all offensive speech. Because the corrupt incompetent government is surely not going to do some bad things ever.
Amazingly this draws “downvotes,” while right in front of our eyes, the pundits, politicians, and secret police high kick to shared tunes, arms locked. Internet vote all you like but reality is there glaring right in our eyeballs.
One strong argument for more government power and control is of course the present "covid crisis". Which is amazingly convenient for the government. And that should definitely make you think.
What works for China works for China. This isn’t going to work for the U.S., or any other Western country. In China falling on the sword for the sake of the people is romanticized. There are many tales and anecdotes that involve such. China have the population structure that historically they could pull it off. They are crowded enough as a country that they the can keep that up for long enough that “in the long run we’re all dead” applies. None of these things apply to the U.S. and the powers-that-be need to do better for themselves.
I understand why China does what China does. I'm making a joke about the US making policies that are very similar to "Communist China." There the same thing just different brand.
He was convicted of obstructing an official proceeding, I guess that is described as an attack now? Is that some general rule, are people who disrupt official proceedings attackers?
He's paying the price for bringing you the truth; the least you can do is read the articles containing the info he sacrificed so much to bring to publication.
That people will knowingly engage in a murder conspiracy, then support it with a rear-guard action to enhance ... their career.
None of us are morally above reproach. Sure. But we all feel like we draw the line somewhere and say, yep, too far, won't do it.
Killing people, knowingly committing war crimes, covering it up, supporting it, enacting revenge on those who can't play along and want it stopped? That's not the way I think of American citizens. How has it happened? Is it fixable? It must be, surely, right..?
The the US government allows these stats to be researched at all, much less put into writing. It's always been obvious the vast majority of deaths in US involvement overseas are innocents, including a lot of women and children. The 90% figure surprises me not at all.
>colleagues at the NGA asked him to join them to watch "war porn" or archived footage of drone strikes
reminds that recent story where police damaged the shoulder joint of a frail woman and were recorded re-watching that bodycam footage at the station joyfully celebrating and congratulating themselves on that popping sound of the joint being damaged while they kept the woman right around the corner waiting for 2 hours for the medical attention.
I view the U.S. intelligence agencies as a necessary evil that should be made less evil over time. We have seen a lot of progress, in large part to whistleblowers like these, and the public reaction they've caused. The agencies are very aware of public perception and do a fairly good job of restraining themselves these days.
One big improvement would be to build up a much larger number of special forces troops to operate these kinds of targeted attacks. They would be much more precise than missile attacks, killing far fewer unarmed women and children (see: the Bin Laden raid).
The trade off is that we would lose a lot more soldiers, but that would be a worthy trade off. These troops could be made up entirely of volunteers. If we're not willing to risk our soldiers, we're probably not confident enough that the enemy is a target worth attacking.
The U.S. military never should have resorted to bombing unarmed women and children in WW2 and beyond. It's time to stop even targeted strikes where unarmed women and children will knowingly be killed.
There's nothing wrong with attacking people who declare themselves deadly enemies through words or actions. But let's have our soldiers go into combat against them head-to-head (with much better gear, of course) and fight it out like an honorable and brave people should.
"so-called"? you mean the one where there are multiple connections and convictions related to russians? that "so-called" collusion that was covered up?
Are you talking about Flynn? Imo, being apolitical, that looked like an inconsequential offense, and the FBI response to it looked like a dumb waste of time. And the longer they dragged it out, the dumber it looked.
Right, like a parent sees the value of an extra income, and subconsciously recognizes the benefit to their sanity to not recognize that they live with an abuser, so they let things slide.
Yes stopping terror attacks and keeping the US policy circles informed about ongoing activities in other countries is the same as domestic abuse. Well put! /s
Agreed - any functioning modern government needs an effective IC, the replies to your comment are naive. People in DC are more likely to see the pragmatic reality as part of their work, rather than some HN commenter who works on ads at facebook.
Nah, they just want a job and like that their eligible degree and clean track record allows them a fast track in earnings, compared to other government employees and everyone else in the area.
They're just as disillusioned as any one else.
The only people that drink the coolaid are a subset of the high school dropouts in the military, who actually need the military as the opportunity, singular. That system - even dropping out of high school - is basically tailored for non objective thinkers searching for a missing support system.
rough take, DC is fed by workers from Maryland and Virginia, educated in their universities and pipelined into Defense and Defense contracting.
This has been the case for a long time and those surrounding states have large Republican portions especially where many of the Universities are located in the middle of nowhere. But higher education is heavily Democratic, and doubly so in that area.
But the 2010s don't have much to do with aspirations in the intelligence community, mostly undermining those aspirations with the whistleblowing.
So even a tongue in cheek response like that is still trying to make a relation thats tough to make.
Well, they literally sit in pundit chairs in major “progressive” media outlets nowadays, and they were absolutely celebrated by those same people for their work continually running ops on Trump. Basically the entire neoliberal/neoconservative class cannot get enough dark intel arts into everyone else’s life.
Can somebody please confirm the percentage of bystanders allowed to be killed when fighting war in a moral fashion? I'm assuming no war/technology is perfect, and nobody can reasonably expect it to be so. I'm also assuming most readers here are OK with our Government fighting a moral war. What percentage is morally acceptable to the readers here?
> what would be an acceptable percentage of collateral casualties?
As low as is currently feasible to get it at the point of this theoretical war, and lower once we have the capabilities to make it lower.
Because this is an evolving standard based on our current capabilities and the stakes of the theoretical moral war you propose, there is no single universal answer, we'll always be paying attention to the context and we'll always be adjusting. It is thus very important that the public have information about what the current casualty rate is for civilians. There is no easy, universal numeric answer to what is an acceptable casualty rate, but in no world is a secret percentage of collateral casualties acceptable. The public needs some level of access to what is going on so we can have informed debates about whether what we're doing is justified.
The Intercept's original coverage of this leak wrote:
> The implicit message on drone strikes from the Obama administration has been one of trust, but don’t verify.
> [...] Additional documents on high-value kill/capture operations in Afghanistan buttress previous accounts of how the Obama administration masks the true number of civilians killed in drone strikes by categorizing unidentified people killed in a strike as enemies, even if they were not the intended targets.
How could the public have a meaningful debate about the morality and acceptability of drone strikes when we didn't even know what their effects were, when they were being misrepresented to us by our own government? You're asking for a single, universal number of what is and isn't acceptable. I'm asking just to know what our current rate is, and to not have the government lie to me about that rate. We can't debate whether or not our results are acceptable if we don't even know what our results currently are.
The collateral damage is part of a function that determines if a war is moral. Imagine a scale between zero collateral damage and complete collateral damage. Being able to selectively assassinate our exact enemies on one end and unlimited nuclear or biological war on the other end.
There are possible wars that would only be moral if, and only if, we could ensure some level of collateral damage or less. Perhaps it would be moral to wage war over X, but only if we could guarantee there would be no collateral damage. Conversely, if some country of psychopaths were doing some unspeakably horrible thing Y then it may be moral to stop them even if stopping them would require us to kill them to the last man, woman, and child. We would need very different casus belli to justify a moral war depending, in part, on the amount of collateral damage prosecuting that war would cause.
The problem in this instance is that the percentage is very high on one side and very low on the other, meaning there's little incentive to avoid civilian casualties. Considering that the risk faced by American civilians is approximately zero, the risk to those civilians in other countries that America is at war with should be zero likewise.
This doesn't really answer the question though. What is a reasonable percentage that would be acceptable to most readers here? If it helps we can assume equity in terms of ability to inflict casualties on bystanders by participating combatants?
Then your question about “bystanders” is irrelevant to the topic at hand. The article claims people were selected to be killed on very flimsy evidence, yet always classified as enemies killed in action. These are not “bystanders.”
You will now perhaps attempt to argue that this does not constitute “intentional” killing of innocents, which has a similar problem with relevance. Indiscriminate killing is highly immoral.
I understand you are responding in a flippant manner, but in warfare many innocents are inevitably killed, and it would be best to have a common understanding of an agreeable percentage in order to support decision/policy making, and to determine the merits of this particular case.
> Documents Hale revealed showed “more than 40 percent” of the people in the U.S. government’s database of terrorism suspects have “no recognized terrorist group affiliation.” The “watchlisting guidance” document he shared helped Muslim Americans clear their names and force the government to remove them from the No Fly List.
Watch the US government make such examples of every whistleblower and even this level of accountability which is purely driven by personal consciousness of individuals to become ineffective in fear of harsher and harsher prosecutions.
Sad indeed. US intelligence agencies have gone rogue and public doesn't really care.
If you gauge public perception by what the media says then that may be true.
Watching the intelligence community go full nuclear to undermine and destroy a democratically elected interloper president in coordination with the media is something that can't be unseen to many Americans.
It is becoming a less controversial view that an inappropriate amount of power is consolidated in the permanent unelected government employees.
> something that can't be unseen to many Americans
If the short/midterm/longterm response from "many Americans" is to be at all coherent/effective, then what they believe they saw had better jibe with reality.
Universe One: a cabal of chess hustlers cheat by surreptitiously moving a piece to their advantage. An anon films it and sends it anonymously to all the other chess players in the park.
Universe Two: a cabal of chess hustlers cheat by surreptitiously moving a piece to their advantage. An anon films it, then the film becomes part of a conspiracy theory that the players wearing red hats only ever lose because the non-red-hat-wearers have rigged the game against them. Anon creates an anon podcast that fuels the conspiracy theory for the half of the players who wear red hats.
In which universe would you guess the players have the best chance of banding together to throw the cabal of cheaters out of the park and return peace to the chess community?
Or an even simpler question-- if you were a chess hustler who cheated by subtly moving a piece, which universe would you choose to maximize your chances of escaping unscathed?
> Watching the intelligence community go full nuclear to undermine and destroy a democratically elected interloper president in coordination with the media is something that can't be unseen to many Americans.
Why does everything have to be about Trump? Public’s lack of support for Snowden, Assange and Manning was well before Trump.
>Watching the intelligence community go full nuclear to undermine and destroy a democratically elected interloper president in coordination with the media is something that can't be unseen to many Americans regardless of how you felt of trump.
I know you'll and half the US will never accept it, but Trump was only destroyed by his mishandling of COVID and his fulminating paranoid conspiracy theories about the election. He stood a chance at re-election, otherwise. There was no deep state/intelligence community/media conspiracy against him, his real enemy was always himself and his own ego.
I could say the same thing about the magic rock I keep on my front porch to ward off tigers. But the absence of tigers on my porch isn't evidence that my magic rock works.
People forget that for two+ years the intelligence community had the media reporting on some Q-annon level conspiracy that the president was colluding with the Russian government. If you recall most every story at the time was based on "unnamed sources", who do you think those sources were?
Occam's Razor. The Democrats weren't stealing the election, social media put up with Trump for years until his posts crossed a line, and Trump was throwing money at the military industrial complex. There's no need to invoke a massive conspiracy to explain the end of Trump's first term. He sabotaged his chance to unite the country under his leadership with COVID by making it a partisan wedge issue, because he wanted to run on the economy, and his ego couldn't handle mail-in ballots (which, thanks to his efforts to undermine his own base's faith in them, were almost entirely Democratic) turning his apparent victory around on him, so he cracked. His personality and ineptness at politics are sufficient to explain things.
Do you know have examples of situations like this? Most controversies that I am aware of have been enabled by Congressional facilities (e.g., PATRIOT act) or Presidential executive action (e.g., various executive orders).
The public can't do much because it has given too much power to intelligence agencies already. Today, the left and right almost unanimously hate intelligence agencies, but their power is entrenched.
Case in point: the Constitution is irrelevant to intelligence agencies. They genuinely believe they can operate completely outside of it and face no punishment, so they frequently do. What can an American citizen do at that point?
And who even wants to speak out against an intelligence agency if it'll put you on a list?
Elections don't work to stop things like this. As mentioned, the agencies are far too entrenched. They literally bypass our most sacred laws and structures as if they don't even exist.
Intelligence agencies would certainly would blackmail or suicide any domestic element that poses a serious threat to them, since historically they don't have a problem doing this to random people.
Wait, what gives you the impression that intelligence agencies care about being inconspicuous for stuff like this?
The fact that they suicide people is basically a running meme. There is nothing to hide. Everyone knows that intelligence agencies pull this shit. It surprises no one we all know they will continue to do it.
If sentiment against IA becomes really negative, they'll have a hard time doing particularly egregious stuff. Right now, plenty of people are totally fine with IAs.
If 100% of people think IAs are villainous, IAs will have a hard time recruiting capable people, so they will shrink and be less efficient. It will be easier to litigate against them too, since they have less of an ability to subvert the legal process with fewer people working for them, and fewer people being on their side. Congress will be more able to act and more incentivized to act against them if the rest of the country is united in disliking IAs.
You're probably being downvoted because it's hard to make out what you're trying to say. Perhaps rewrite in clearer language at the expense of being less poetic.
I can see that it is poetic to some, wasn't the intention.
I'll just say, we are so desensitized to murder and violence that a video and additional information can allow us an inexcusable am out of brazen apathy for innocent lifes.
> Hale built on that letter with a statement that lasted a little more than 15 minutes. He said, according to POLITICO's Josh Gerstein, "What I’m really here for is for having stolen something that was never mine to take: precious human life."
> [Judge Liam] O'Grady responded, “You’re not facing prison for speaking out about the drone program injuring and killing innocent persons," and, "You could have been a whistleblower and garnered all this attention without leaking any of these documents, frankly.”
I mean, we've seen how the discussion would go then. "Well sure he says there are outrageous murders happening, but if that were true why isn't there any documentation?".
Looks at how the PRISM leak worked. It turns out in hindsight it was a poorly kept secret and people just dismissed the evidence because it was new and there wasn't documentation.
What this looks like to me is while being a whistleblower is legal, owning a whistle, putting your lips to a whistle and exhaling vigorously into a whistle are all illegal. And suspicious noise pollution regulations for disturbing the peace with unnecessarily piercing sounds.
So what would have been the correct channel for a "proper" whistleblower and why should we expect it to have had any impact when the "improper" whistleblowing didn't stop the slaughter of innocent people?
Yeah, this was the same argument that happened with Snowden. The whistleblowers claim they tried to no avail, and then get punished for actually trying to do the right thing. The system is designed to punish those who question it.
I mean I m glad Snowden did what he did for my own curiosity but stealing the credentials of NSA colleagues to leak secret military (or is the NSA civilian) programs is not something I d expect any country to reward. Solving these problems is very hard and Snowden took a shortcut.
Well, speaking as an American citizen, I want unconstitutional surveillance against me to stop now, not 10 years from now.
So the idea that I should be upset that Snowden took a shortcut rather than letting my rights get trampled while he struggled impossibly with bureaucracy -- I just have a hard time figuring out why that would be good for the American people.
I understand that the government would prefer that only official channels are considered legitimate. That's the whole reason why the Espionage Act exists, that's why whistleblowers aren't allowed to bring up public interest during trial. And I get that motivation, I understand why the government wants complete control over how it can and can't be held accountable for violating my trust and violating my rights.
But I don't understand why I should be on the government's side in making it harder to hold them accountable and harder for whistleblowers to let me know when my rights are being violated. Getting mad about taking a shortcut is very strange to me, I'm not sure how to process that sentiment.
Yes, where are all these "proper" whistleblowers at and why don't I know of any of them? For every one that does it "improperly" how many get caught by trying to use the "proper" channels which is actually just a trash chute straight into the abyss?
Silenced (2014) is a great documentary about whistleblowers. "Three National Security whistleblowers fight to reveal the darkest corners of America's war on terror, challenging a government that is increasingly determined to maintain secrecy." They aren't famous. IIRC, they each tried to alert everyone in their chain of command, from bottom to top, then went public as a last resort, i.e. were "proper whistleblowers". They all seem to have lost their careers, marriages, homes...everything but their self-respect. It's tough, a neverending nightmare. A very disturbing documentary, highly recommended.
>So I contacted an investigative reporter with whom I had had an established prior relationship and told him that I had something the American people needed to know."
Most people don’t have an established prior relationship with an investigative reporter. I wonder what other stuff he leaked.
However, if Hale had spoken to the public about the content of the documents but never taken any of the information, he almost certainly would have still been the target of an Espionage Act prosecution.
Not sure if the writer is naive or obtuse; it's pretty obvious that the judge meant using institutional whistleblowing channels, which would have legally insulated Hale. Of course, it's also that much more likely that the matter would have gone unnoticed by the public and and eventually been buried in red tape.