Militair analist Bradley Manning (24) had ruim acht maanden lang min of meer vrijelijk toegang tot een reusachtige database vol vertrouwelijke gegevens (‘cables‘) van de Amerikaanse overheid. Hij kopieerde een deel van het archief waarna hij het in reguliere media gepubliceerd wist te krijgen, met Wikileaks als tussenschakel. Een motivatie van (de biseksuele) Manning:

“the possibility of having pictures of me … plastered all over the world press … as boy …”

Het is niet eenvoudig om nu al met zekerheid veel te concluderen omtrent de gevolgen van Mannings beslissing. In ieder geval schonk het mega-lek wereldwijd enkele tientallen miljoenen geïnteresseerden een verfrissend ‘perspectief van binnenuit’ op de buitenlandse politiek van de Verenigde Staten en daarmee in zekere zin ook op die van haar bondgenoten en vijanden.

Een ander gevolg is dat Manning (‘bradass87′) sinds hij opgepakt werd onder een ‘onmenselijk’ gevangenisregime gebukt gaat. Daarnaast beweren commentatoren dat de – soms schokkende – onthullingen bijdroegen aan de val van dictators in Tunesië en Egypte. Volgens sommigen is hij zelfs een ‘Amerikaanse held‘.

Uiteindelijk werd Manning erin geluisd door ex-hacker ‘Adrian Lamo’, die hem aangaf bij de autoriteiten. Hieronder staan delen van de chat-sessie tussen de twee die leidde tot de arrestatie. Het interessante en soms ook amusante geheel is terug te vinden op Wired.
………………..

(10:48:43 AM) info@adrianlamo.com:

‘Black summer‘ – W. Ellis

Would you know if a specific person had authored a report/paper?

(10:49:23 AM) bradass87: not really …

(10:49:42 AM) bradass87: bureaucrats usually aren’t that intelligent i find
…………
(12:15:11 PM) bradass87: hypothetical question: if you had free reign over classified networks for long periods of time … say, 8-9 months… and you saw incredible things, awful things… things that belonged in the public domain, and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington DC … what would you do?

(12:16:38 PM) bradass87: or Guantanamo, Bagram, Bucca, Taji, VBC for that matter …

(12:17:47 PM) bradass87: things that would have an impact on 6.7 billion people m

(12:21:24 PM) bradass87: say… a database of half a million events during the iraq war … from 2004 to 2009 … with reports, date time groups, lat-lon locations, casualty figures … ? or 260,000 state department cables from embassies and consulates all over the world, explaining how the first world exploits the third, in detail, from an internal perspective?
………………

(12:59:41 PM) bradass87: uhm … crazy, almost criminal political backdealings… the non-PR-versions of world events and crises … uhm … all kinds of stuff like everything from the buildup to the Iraq War during Powell, to what the actual content of “aid packages” is: for instance, PR that the US is sending aid to pakistan includes funding for water/food/clothing… that much is true, it includes that, but the other 85% of it is for F-16 fighters and munitions to aid in the Afghanistan effort, so the US can call in Pakistanis to do aerial bombing instead of americans potentially killing civilians and creating a PR crisis

(1:00:57 PM) bradass87: theres so much … it affects everybody on earth … everywhere there’s a US post … there’s a diplomatic scandal that will be revealed … Iceland, the Vatican, Spain, Brazil, Madascar, if its a country, and its recognized by the US as a country, its got dirt on it
……
(1:13:10 PM) bradass87: i just … dont wish to be a part of it… at least not now … im not ready … i wouldn’t mind going to prison for the rest of my life, or being executed so much, if it wasn’t for the possibility of having pictures of me … plastered all over the world press … as boy …

(1:14:11 PM) bradass87: i’ve totally lost my mind… i make no sense… the CPU is not made for this motherboard…
…………
(2:05:58 PM) bradass87: it took me four months to confirm that the person i was communicating was in fact (Julian) Assange

(2:10:01 PM) info@adrianlamo.com: how’d you do that?

‘Black summer’

(2:12:45 PM) bradass87: I gathered more info when i questioned him whenever he was being tailed in Sweden by State Department officials… i was trying to figure out who was following him … and why… and he was telling me stories of other times he’s been followed … and they matched up with the ones he’s said publicly

(2:14:28 PM) info@adrianlamo.com: did that bear out? the surveillance?

(2:14:46 PM) bradass87: based on the description he gave me, I assessed it was the Northern Europe Diplomatic Security Team … trying to figure out how he got the Reykjavik cable…

…………
(02:26:01 PM) bradass87: i dont believe in good guys versus bad guys anymore … i only a plethora of states acting in self interest … with varying ethics and moral standards of course, but self-interest nonetheless

……………………………..

(02:27:47 PM) bradass87: i mean, we’re better in some respects… we’re much more subtle… use a lot more words and legal techniques to legitimize everything

(02:28:00 PM) bradass87: its better than disappearing in the middle of the night

(02:28:19 PM) bradass87: but just because something is more subtle, doesn’t make it right

DF

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Afghanistan, de paradox

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