I'm also saying that (or at least putting the idea out to test drive it) it's a good time for us to shift our language to talk about things that, in some deeper way, are politically and civically just.
"my point is that his intentions were clearly pure regardless."
I would tend to concur, but we don't know that.
Also - intentions are not that important. Manning's motivations I surmise were probably innocent, but his incredible naivte of releasing gigabytes of information of information when he didn't even know what the contents were ... were seriously damaging. Tons of undredacted cables in there meaning a number of Afghan and Iraqi citizens helping the US were needlessly put at risk, for example.
Listen, I don't mean to dismiss the kind of sober thinking you are putting forward here. There is a reality to these sorts of actions that, for the perhaps most optimistic or utopian among us, bears repeating mention of.
However, this:
> Tons of undredacted cables in there meaning a number of Afghan and Iraqi citizens helping the US were needlessly put at risk, for example.
...reads to me like a celebration of opposite day in the bizarro world.
Manning did nothing to put these people at risk; the state put them at risk with its murderous and greedy tendencies and foreign policy errors.
Announcing someone's name and affiliations, in the case of a decent, non-violent, dare I say "everyday" person does not in any way put them at risk.
It is only because these people are touched by the long finger of empire that the appearance of their name in a text file is compiled into danger.
Manning's heroism tends toward ending that empire and making these people (and those in a similar role in generations to come) safer and freer.
"It is only because these people are touched by the long finger of empire that the appearance of their name in a text file is compiled into danger.
Manning's heroism tends toward ending that empire and making these people (and those in a similar role in generations to come) safer and freer."
This is ideolgically anarchist and ridiculous.
There is no 'Empire'. There is just 'stuff you, as a citizen vote for'.
Have you ever been outside the Western World + Japan? Do you know how crazy it is out there?
Do you know how instantly things would collapse without the international framework we have today?
Are you too young to remember the Cold War? Do you realize that it's still going on, that Russians are grabbing territory and they still have 3 000 nuclear weapons pointed at us and, just a few months ago Putin bragged, over dinner, that he could 'wipe out the USA' in 45 minutes?
This is not a video game.
US foreign services do extremely important work in the world, and if you'd read the cables that Manning released, you'd see how true that is, and also how mundane most of it is relative to your anarchist hyperbole.
Manning swore an oath to serve the interests of his people selflessly, instead, he naively, and selfishly released information which caused a lot of damage and could have caused a lot more damage.
It would be one thing if Manning were some intellectual, knew what he was doing with conscience, but he was a very low level private - with severe social and identity problems, thinking that somehow he had 'answers'. I think that he thought he was doing the right thing, but he's severely deluded.
And by the way - I am not American.
Also - I should add - that the person who released the photographs from Abu Gharib - and caused the big scandal/uproar was definitely in the category of 'whistle blower' and did the right thing.
It's hard to know how to respond to your comment as whatever logic it may contain is camouflaged by ad-hominem presumptions (if you'd read the cables that Manning released, you'd see...) and impossible-to-take-seriously fear mongering ("3 000 nuclear weapons pointed at us").
I remember the cold war. And I thought that the government did the best thing it was able to do. Did the governments of both the USA and USSR behave childishly? Yes. Were they operating in a short-term feedback loop? They sure were. Did they, perhaps against the odds, avert a nuclear holocaust, at least for 40 years? Yes in fact they did.
But that's really not the point.
As I've said elsewhere, my argument (and I think the argument you see coming from much of the HN community) is not that government has always been unnecessary, but that it is being deprecated.
It doesn't matter that this one human leaked these troves of information; the internet will always tend toward making them available regardless of which individuals happen to be involved with the particulars.
Government secrets aren't merely immoral, they're increasingly impossible.
So all of your nostalgia about worldwide wars being "the international framework we have today" is just completely irrelevant. The internet will not abide government, and human evolution will continue to be the internet.
"I assert that, whether someone agrees or not, Snowden was doing something that was actually right."
Yes, Snowden did 'something' that was right.
But Snowden also did 'other things' that were wrong.
Snowden released information on how the NSA spies on adversaries, like Putin, who has 3 000 nuclear warheads pointed at us.
There is no 'public good' in that information, it's basically treason.
Which is the odd paradox about the Snowden revelations - there was a lot of info that arguably was in the 'public good'.
But if you save a baby and kill a baby in the same day ... you still go to jail.
The fact that Snowden released tons of data that had little to do with NSA domestic surveillance really changes the tone and nature of his crime, and it's not good to see so many come to his defence because he also 'saved a baby' the time that he 'killed a baby'. It really ads an odd dimension to the story.
