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posted by on Wednesday January 18 2017, @10:27AM   Printer-friendly
from the she's-not-out-yet dept.

In one of his last moves in office, President Obama has commuted the 35-year prison sentence of Chelsea Manning, the Army private who leaked a massive trove of military secrets to WikiLeaks.

The former intelligence analyst's prison sentence has been shortened to expire on May 17, 2017, according to a statement from the White House.

Her lawyers at the ACLU expressed relief after the decision, saying that Manning has already served more time behind bars than any other whistleblower in U.S. history, and under difficult conditions.

Also at the BBC and the New York Times.

Previously: Chelsea Manning Reportedly on Obama's Short List for Commutation; Assange Offers Himself in Trade


Original Submission #1Original Submission #2Original Submission #3

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @02:08AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @02:08AM (#455844)

    You shouldn't buy so much into Snowdens propaganda, hastily thrown together after dumping the data to foreign intel ("look, look, see, see, look at all this domestic surveillance! See, I'm doing this for you!!!!! (You don't mind if I hand over the remaining 99% of the info to these nice Chinese and Russians, do you?).

    So he has this grand and carefully planned out escape plan. And it was almost foolproof as well, except for holding a press conference in Hong Kong in the middle of his "freedom escape". Geez, who's the fucking idiot? Perhaps you should extricate your nose from where it is buried (I think it is plenty brown enough) and look at what really happened from 30,000 feet and get out of your bobby soxer hero worship state.

    Revealing how they were conducting mass surveillance on foreign countries could also help us protect ourselves form the same exploits.

    LOL. Yeah, sure, we'll set up a github and gofundme to do our intel collections.

    Bootlicker, huh. Ok, maybe I have erred in my opinion and it isn't Snowden's anus you have your face buried in, it is Putin's. Or are you one of those "there should be no secrets" idiots? You know, it is a VERY short step from "there should be no secrets" to "you have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide."

    Holy fuck. Hipster Intel. Maybe when you're president you can give out participation trophies to the CIA and NSA employees. "Great job guys! I know you weren't allowed to do anything, but I'm proud of you because you have so much spunk!"

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Anal Pumpernickel on Thursday January 19 2017, @03:28AM

    by Anal Pumpernickel (776) on Thursday January 19 2017, @03:28AM (#455872)

    (You don't mind if I hand over the remaining 99% of the info to these nice Chinese and Russians, do you?).

    More baseless assertions, unless you mean that the Chinese and Russians can see the leaks as well. But if that's what you mean, then of course they can; the information is being released publicly.

    So he has this grand and carefully planned out escape plan.

    It doesn't matter how good your plan is if you're up against a country as powerful as the US.

    I don't know why we're still going over events that happened years ago that have long since been resolved. Maybe next you'll tell me that the NSA isn't "wittingly" collecting people's metadata, or repeat another lie straight from the intelligence agencies that have shown themselves to be generally untrustworthy. There are just so many lies and baseless assertions to choose from, and smearing and speculation is all too easy.

    Or are you one of those "there should be no secrets" idiots?

    I'm one of those rare "the government shouldn't do evil" people. I'm also one of those people who think there should be consequences if the government does do something evil, and one of those consequences may be that your secrets get revealed, and maybe more secrets get revealed than you would like. So be it.

    You know, it is a VERY short step from "there should be no secrets" to "you have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide."

    There's a difference between violating individual rights and using 'nothing to hide, nothing to fear' as an excuse and having a transparent government. Whistleblowers are sometimes necessary for transparency. Revealing a government's wrongdoing has absolutely nothing in common with a government violating individual liberties. The 'nothing to hide, nothing to fear' argument is always used to trample upon liberties.

    The intelligence agencies have not only repeatedly shown that they are filled almost entirely with unethical scumbags, but that they are untrustworthy as well. To me, anything they say is suspect, because it's just far too easy for them to smear whistleblowers while claiming that all the damning evidence is top secret.

    At any rate, it's blatantly apparent that you're a gullible and/or disingenuous bootlicker.