Thank you Bradley Manning

[Thanas]

Seeing as how the material was so much that he had no chance to sift through it all on his own, but considering that there have been plenty of cases of wrongdoing uncovered by it, I would argue that the items brought to light and actually published do fall under whistleblowing. After all, he did turn it over to people who screened material before release. I am pretty sure that if I give the briefcase to a guy more competent than I am to look through and make sure only incriminating material is released, it would still have to be whistleblowing.

Because otherwise your whistleblower protection is pretty bad, considering I would have to be able to understand every single detail of what I am releasing.

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Leaving aside this specific argument, I still maintain that the good far outweighs the evil and that his actions were still moral and driven by good intentions.

[Mr Bean]

Thanas this is where I'd disagree with you strongly as what Pvt Manning did was not whistle blowing in the classical sense. A whistle blower is someone who finds something bad going on, tries to raise the issue with his/her superiors and when that fails goes to the media/other outside agency. You would agree this is what whistle blowing is seen as? Be it a leaking pipeline not being fixed or toxic elements going into food, or research being suppressed that shows harm or yes even illegal acts by your own government.

The difference is Pvt Manning was not just whistle blowing about A-stan/Iraq or the military in general, what Pvt Manning did was downloads reams of classified cables about a hundred different subjects and release them onto the Internet. That's not the same thing. If I were working a Tobacco company and I found out that a new additive in cigarets increases the addictiveness levels to heron scale (Hypothetical RAR!) and I took this information along with the personal names and addresses of everyone in the company, then tossed their social security and bank records until my original information is only one tenth the total information I release to Sixty Minutes would I still just be whistle blowing?

There are many problems with Pvt Manning but the issue in this case was the fact there was no sifting, Manning downloaded years with of government cables and released them.

Leaving aside this specific argument, I still maintain that the good far outweighs the evil and that his actions were still moral and driven by good intentions.

Non-Hypothetical, how much good would outweigh the evil of thirty eight Iraq citizens lives?

[Thanas]

IMO you would still be whistle blowing, yes. Ineptly, but yes. (Also, your analogy is false as it implies Manning found something and then added stuff afterwards just to screw with people).

That being said, it is not as if he released them on the internet for everyone to see. Instead he released them to one specific organization which had it screened by several media organizations before releasing it bit by bit.

[Simon_Jester]

As a hypothetical:

Suppose he looked at some of the cables, enough to get a sense of "whoa, there's some nasty shit in here." He never read the whole thing, he doesn't know what's in all of them. But he knows some of them contain damning information.

Would he then be whistleblowing?

[Mr Bean]

IMO you would still be whistle blowing, yes. Ineptly, but yes. (Also, your analogy is false as it implies Manning found something and then added stuff afterwards just to screw with people).

That being said, it is not as if he released them on the internet for everyone to see. Instead he released them to one specific organization which had it screened by several media organizations before releasing it bit by bit.

It's not a perfect analogy but lets say by quick of fate nothing Pvt Manning had released had showed anything damning, what it was all the more titillating stuff like which world rules the US Government had thought where idiots, intel on Qaddafi's Ukrainian private nurse and the other stuff which made headlines and which had nothing to do with A-Stan or Iraq.

Also that organization need I remind you threaten several times to release everything unscreened and material that was unscreened was released leading to my Iraq example where a very dangerous (to them) list of Iraq citizens who had been working for the US State department was released which while fine in 2004, in 2006 was all intents and purposes an automatic death sentence if know.

[CmdrWilkens]

Seeing as how the material was so much that he had no chance to sift through it all on his own, but considering that there have been plenty of cases of wrongdoing uncovered by it, I would argue that the items brought to light and actually published do fall under whistleblowing. After all, he did turn it over to people who screened material before release. I am pretty sure that if I give the briefcase to a guy more competent than I am to look through and make sure only incriminating material is released, it would still have to be whistleblowing.

Because otherwise your whistleblower protection is pretty bad, considering I would have to be able to understand every single detail of what I am releasing.

*******************

Leaving aside this specific argument, I still maintain that the good far outweighs the evil and that his actions were still moral and driven by good intentions.

Two things:

In the first part, you have grossly overcomplicated the requirements in order to make them seem burdensome. Again the requirement for whistelblower status is knowing, or reasonably believing, information contained within indicates improper or illegal activities. You don't have to be widely knowledgeable to have that apply BUT you do have to be selective about what you release. You state as a fact that "he had no chance to sort through it" except that there is no timeline to show that that is the case. None of the material was so pressing as to require immediate divulgance and in fact he took the time to send it to an NGO rather than the OSC (as he would be required to do) so there was both time and deliberate consideration in his actions.

As to the morality that's hilarious, his intentions were to screw people over because he was bitter about his career prospects, the RESULTS may be in the whole positive (and I'm yet to be certain of that) but the motive was base vengance (thus the release to an NGO rather than the legal avenue of releasing to OSC).