Bradley Manning

AKA Bradley E. Manning [1]

Born: 17-Dec-1987 Birthplace: Crescent, OK

Gender: Transgender [2] Race or Ethnicity: White Sexual orientation: Gay [3] Occupation: Military

Nationality: United States Executive summary: Convicted of releasing classified documents

Military service: US Army (pfc, 2007-13, dishonorably discharged)

US Army infantryman Bradley Manning was convicted of leaking a large quantity of classified material to the whistleblower website Wikileaks between November 2009 and May 2010. He was arrested after confiding in celebrity hacker Adrian Lamo, who promptly contacted authorities. In a transcript of his internet conversation with Lamo, Manning asked, "If you had unprecedented access to classified networks 14 hours a day, seven days a week for eight plus months, what would you do?"

Manning was twenty years old when he enlisted in the US Army in 2007, and though holding only the baseline rank of private first class and experience working at Starbucks and Abercrombie and Fitch, he was assigned duties as an intelligence analyst. In 2008, he was disciplined for posting "sensitive information" in video messages on YouTube, but his security clearance was apparently not curtailed. Comments posted by Manning at Facebook reveal his growing frustration with the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, though when not wearing his uniform he seems to have been openly gay, lamenting a break-up with a boyfriend in his on-line posts. His last assignment was at Forward Operating Base Hammer near Baghdad, where he was arrested on 27 May 2010.

The breadth of material this Army private was able to access, copy, and purportedly release is breathtaking, and raises questions about the competence and efficacy of US military security. Manning is accused of providing Wikileaks with about 100,000 field reports from military officers in Afghanistan, and an additional quarter of a million confidential State Department cables. He is also accused of releasing numerous classified military videos, including footage of the 2009 Granai air strike in Afghanistan which left more than 100 civilians dead, and a 2007 video of US forces gunning down unidentified civilians in Baghdad, two of whom turned out to be Reuters journalists. In chat logs with Lamo, Manning described an easy mechanism for pilfering all this material he brought music CDs to work, where he erased the music and loaded the discs with classified, digitized data. According to media reports, about 3,000,000 members of the US military have the same level of clearance Manning had.

Wikileaks and other free information advocates have portrayed him as a hero, saying transparency is essential to democracy. US government officials have denounced the leaks, claiming that they put American soldiers, allies, and diplomats in grave danger. Manning faces myriad charges under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and has been jailed since July 2010. Salon writer Glenn Greenwald reported in December 2010 that Manning has been held in solitary confinement 23 hours a day during that time, barred from exercising, and kept drugged on anti-depressants "to prevent his brain from snapping from the effects of this isolation". Prominent US politicians ranging from Congressman Mike Rogers (R-Michigan) to former UN Ambassador John Bolton have called for Manning's execution.

Read more:

Bradley Manning - NNDB

This year's annual Project Censored list of the most underreported news stories includes the widening wealth gap, the trial of Pfc. Bradley Manning for leaking classified documents and President Obama's war on whistleblowers--all stories that actually received considerable news coverage.

So how exactly were they "censored" and what does that say of this venerable media watchdog project?

Project Censored isn't only about stories that were deliberately buried or ignored. It's about stories the media has covered poorly through a sort of false objectivity that skews the truth. Journalists do cry out against injustice, on occasion, but they don't always do it well.

That's why Project Censored was started back in 1976: to highlight stories the mainstream media missed or gave scant attention to. Although the project initially started in our backyard at Sonoma State University, now academics and students from 18 universities and community colleges across the country pore through hundreds of submissions of overlooked and underreported stories annually. A panel of academics and journalists then picks the top 25 stories and curates them into themed clusters. This year's book, Censored 2014: Fearless Speech in Fearful Times, hit bookstores in October.

What causes the media to stumble? There are as many reasons as there are failures.

Brooke Gladstone, host of the radio program On the Media and writer of the graphic novel cum news media critique, The Influencing Machine, said the story of Manning (who now goes by the first name Chelsea) was the perfect example of the media trying to cover a story right, but getting it mostly wrong.

"The Bradley Manning case is for far too long centered on his personality rather than the nature of his revelations," Gladstone told us. Manning's career was sacrificed for sending 700,000 classified documents about the Iraq war to WikiLeaks. But the media coverage focused largely on Manning's trial and subsequent change in gender identity.

Gladstone said that this is part of the media's inability to deal with vast quantities of information which, she said, "is not what most of our standard media does all that well."

The media mangling of Manning is number one on the Project Censored list, but the shallow coverage this story received is not unique. The news media is in a crisis, particularly in the U.S., and it's getting worse.

WATCHING THE WATCHDOGS

Read more from the original source:

Project Censored: 10 Under- (Or Badly) Reported Stories of 2013

Sydney, Mar 25 : Former American military analyst and Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg has backed US Army private accused Bradley Manning for spilling secrets to website WikiLeaks.

Ellsberg hailed Manning, who released the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of U.S. government decision-making in relation to the Vietnam War, as a champion of truth and not a betrayer of his country.

According to the Herald Sun, Ellsberg said that he would like to see Manning getting the Nobel Peace Prize, and added that he has 'significant identification with all whistleblowers'.

He even said that Manning 'deserves to be seen as a hero', the paper added.

The former military official, who will turn 82 in April, said that Bradley has done the right thing and the world would need this kind of revelation frequently.

The Pentagon Papers were published in full in June 2011, 40 years after then US military analyst Ellsberg slipped excerpts of the classified report to the media.

Ellsberg's act of defiance revealed evidence that successive US administrations had lied to the public about Vietnam.

--ANI (Posted on 25-03-2013)

<< Previous News

Next News >>

Read the rest here:

'Pentagon Papers' whistleblower defends WikiLeaks 'hero' Manning

17 January 2014| last updated at 12:07AM

WHILE recent headlines have focused on the leaks by Edward Snowden and United States soldier Private Bradley Manning, the threats from lower profile "mobile pickpockets" who prey on smartphones and tablets may be as dangerous to corporations, telcos and even governments.

Now exiled in Russia, Snowden, a former analyst for the US National Security Agency, disclosed top secret information about the US government's mass surveillance programmes to the media. Manning has been jailed for disclosing military and diplomatic intelligence to WikiLeaks.

However, more insidious threats to enterprises -- often emanating from generally accepted global trends to promote office productivity -- may generate less media publicity but are a greater threat to financial security or the reputation of enterprises.

First, as more Generation Y executives rely on their own devices, such as laptops and smartphones, at work, an organisation's confidential information is at risk of being disclosed.

"Bring Your Own Device" or BYOD is increasingly a workplace norm as organisations seek to retain younger staff. And as organisations shift towards cloud computing, the ease of linking up various devices is difficult to argue against. However, BYOD has also opened up opportunities for cyber thieves to "phish" for information on the cloud's server, instead of the traditional platform such as personal computers.

The servers reside within the Internet service providers (ISP) that may often have lax controls, allowing hackers to penetrate them without being detected.

Secondly, as there is growing adoption of apps in smartphones and tablets -- including for use by enterprises -- cyber terrorists can now make use of this platform to commit crime.

A more ominous threat is the increasing popularity of smartphones and tablets apps. Cyber pickpocketing is now scalable through apps, available for download, as worldwide smartphone sales, according to technology analysts International Data Corporation, are expected to rise rapidly over the next few years, reaching 1.7 billion by 2017.

Indeed, well away from the headlines, such app-based phishing and malware are a far more ominous and prevalent form of cyber theft. The individual amounts pilfered are insignificant and the theft can go on undetected for months or even years. This has indirectly granted mobile hackers impunity.

Go here to see the original:

Apps more dangerous than human leakers