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Pocky In My Pocket posted:Can trump gently caress it up somehow? It seems like ~4 months as pres he would have a lot of options to undo it Why would he? I don't think hes ever expressed an opinion on the Manning stuff or given any indication that he cares either way? This is an empty promise, because it only mentions US extradition, and there's nothing to extradite him for because he was never charged with a crime by the US. He's in the embassy to hide from Swedish and British authorities, not the US.
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Jan 17, 2017 23:01
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Not a Step posted:Well, better late then never, but still kind of cowardly for Obama to wait until the end of his term when the political fallout isn't his problem anymore. What kept him from commuting Chelsea's sentence a year ago? If there was too much of a gap between when the commutation was issued and when it actually went into effect, he'd just cause Manning supporters to make a bigger deal about her treatment.
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Jan 18, 2017 00:26
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Not a Step posted:Yeah, but I was hoping there was a better answer than 'chronic lack of spine'. Because Obama wanted her to serve a certain amount of time behind bars before going free.
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Jan 18, 2017 01:20
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Not a Step posted:As I've mentioned before, it just seems super convenient that the optimal amount of punishment for Chelsea Manning just *happened* to be right after Obama leaves office and its somebody else's problem. Why not months ago when it was apparent the prison system was loving her over in regards to needed medical assistance and excessive solitary confinement? Did she really just need that extra few months of punishment? Apparently so, since she still has to serve four more months.
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Jan 18, 2017 04:32
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Peel posted:Maybe he's planning to wait until we leave the EU and try to escape in the five minutes before there's a new extradition treaty. He'd be arrested by the British police anyway since he skipped bail when he fled to the embassy. Sephyr posted:Ubless she handed them directly to foreign government agents or sold them for cold hard cash, it is. Daniel Ellsberg also broke sensitive state and defense information to the world, in a time of war and with a very vital USSr on the board to capitalize on it, and he's still a whistleblower. Ellsberg was prosecuted too; he likely would have spent a significant amount of time in prison if Nixon hadn't Nixoned him so hard.
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Jan 18, 2017 16:09
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POOL IS CLOSED posted:I know I probably hold some similarly absurd beliefs that I simply just don't recognize as this batshit when considered side by side, yet... it's hard for me to figure out this perspective. You're confusing two different types of whistleblowing here, and the distinction is really, really important. There are whistleblowers who circumvent the normal chain of command and report suspected misconduct to a higher authority within the government, and there are whistleblowers who believe that something the government is doing is morally wrong and leak it openly to the public. The Whistleblower Protection Act, the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act, PPD-19, and other whistleblower protection laws only protect the first kind of whistleblowing - they're meant to protect whistleblowers from being retaliated against by their superiors for reporting problems and misconduct to their supervisors' bosses. There isn't any US law, as far as I'm aware, that protects the second type of whistleblowing - as far as the US government is concerned, going public with classified information is always unacceptable. And honestly, that makes a lot of sense from the government's perspective. If secrecy laws stop applying as soon as someone who looks at the material feels it shouldn't be secret, then secrecy laws might as well not exist. Nobodies get cracked down on harder because there are over four million people with security clearances, which means it's a lot harder to keep watch on the nobodies than the top rankers, so the government makes examples of them because it knows there's no way it can handle a wave of copycat crimes. Now, I realize there are people who think that government secrecy shouldn't exist at all, but that's an entirely separate discussion.
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Jan 18, 2017 23:46
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Chomskyan posted:The NSA's programs were actually illegal under US law, and whistleblowers who had tried to work within the govt before Snowden had their lives destroyed, forcing his hand. These facts are convienently ignored by his opponents. Whistleblower protection laws gave him the ability to report any illegal activities to high levels of command, as well as members of Congress. If you think that high-level executive branch officials and all of Congress lack the ability to tell right from wrong or can't be trusted to uphold the law, then fine, but don't expect that massive criminal conspiracy you think is running the entire government to give you clemency after you publicly defy them.
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Jan 19, 2017 04:12
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Archonex posted:Not saying it was right or wrong but weren't the NSA's actions being spearheaded by members of congress and that one weird NSA head with the Star Trek room that had a hard on for invading the privacy of citizens? Granted, I may be mis-remembering that part of the leaks. If not then i'm not sure how much higher you can take it than that. My point is that if you believe that the very highest levels of government already approve of the behavior you believe is immoral or illegal, you probably shouldn't expect those very same people to give you a medal for revealing it. Considering the existence of current whistleblower protection laws, the only reasons to go public with a disclosure are if you believe Congress/the President approves of the behavior and will act to protect it, or if you oppose the entire concept of government security at an ideological level. In either case, you probably shouldn't expect the government to approve of your leaks or give you immunity for them. The government has no interest in having programs it wants to keep secret be revealed to the public.
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Jan 19, 2017 15:32
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Peel posted:I'm pretty sure he doesn't expect the government to approve of his leaks or give him immunity for them, and that's why he's not in the country. Oh, absolutely. I'm more targeting my argument at the people who for some reason expect President Obama to pardon Snowden for revealing the NSA spying programs that President Obama already knew about and thought were perfectly fine. Snowden knew full well what he was doing and that he would never again be able to return to the US, but there are far too many supporters who don't seem to understand why the government is not in the business of granting clemency to people who think the government is wrong about things.
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Jan 19, 2017 16:45
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