Re: U.S. Tries to Build Case Against WikiLeaks Founder

>Conspiracy is a bullshit charge. I know it exists but on a moral level talking about doing something without taking action should be covered by the 1st amendment.  

>>**except for the part where he did it.  Granted, that assumes that Assange actually spoke to him before hand and encouraged him to get the docs, or in the second round, to get more.  The government has to prove it naturally, and it may be they cannot.  In which case Manning will fry on his own. <<

 

We were talking about Assange.  They don't need trumped up conspiracy charges to go after Manning 

 

**well, if Asange did ask Manning for more data, it is not trumped. 

 

>We hold people responsible for “what if”?  He didn’t release that so we shoudn’t be acting like he did.

 **by the way, yes we do.  There are plenty of laws against things that were planned but never happened.

 

>**no, but the point is that classified data always has potential to do harm.  We watched a film on this in the military where a number of unsecret random facts can be gathered together and become revealing.   You cannot look at a single aspect of this in isolation, there are too many ways it can interconnect. <

 

Yes, deductive reasoning can be applied to all sorts of facts secret or not.  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle made quite a name for himself writing about it.  But non secret is non secret.  The case you are making is way too speculative.  

 **the info was classified, so your point seems amiss.  It *was* secret.  Of is confidential not secret enough?

 

The only information that should be classified is infor that is legitmatel related to national security.  So far we haven't seen any evidence of that, (and yes I know about the self serving claim that they can't tell us because it is classified).  All have is that it had the potential to harm national security but no evidence that it did.  

 **Oh I think there is harm, but they are in damage control.

 

> **About?  Why should he be allowed to capriciously put people’s lives at risk?  And that release may make it harder to get cooperation from afghan civilians.  I don’t believe the meme by the pentagon that there was no harm, that is damage control. <

 

You keep conflating the possible with the actual.  Were lives put at risk or was it just that they could have been put at risk or is even a bigger leap?  If Manning actually revealed names, locations or other identifying information of allies, agents etc ala Robert Hansen or Aldrich Ames then by all means he should be proscuted and held to account.  But I haven't seen the evidence that he did anything close to those two and it sure seems to me like a bigger deal is being made of him.    

**there were confidential sources, native Afghans, whose identities were revealed.  I would say that Al Qaeda would take a dim view of that.

 

And are we to take the pentagon at its word or not? 

**well, I grant that I am a bit skeptical.

 

They are being truthful when they say Manning should be prosecuted because he released classified information but untruthful when they say no harm was done?  And was there no harm done because of luck or fortuitous circumstances or was the info released really not that big a deal?

**well the two are not necessarily exclusive.  The release of Classified info is a crime even if there was no actual harm.

 

Manning has all the makings of a classic fall guy.   

**yep.  He was a dupe.    But he knew better.

 

>**and for the people who do?  <

 I shouldn't have picked up that red herring in the first place.

 **heh

On one hand my reaction is that if you dance with the devil you're going to get burned.  On the other who says he has private account info and if he does, who says he's going to release that?  My understanding was that he was talking about releasing info about the inner workings and dealings between bank executives, wall street and federal agencies.  

**fair enough, that is my understanding.  But if you breach security, then you have access to much more.  Information security is nothing to play with.

**and if the information damages the bank severely, who knows what impact that could have…really the BofA leaks are potentially the most harmful.

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