Nicholson Baker: Whistleblower Song
Nicholson Baker performs "Whistleblower Song, " a song he wrote to protest Bradley Manning #39;s imprisonment without a trial. Subscribe to the all-new The New Yorker channel here: http://www.youtube....
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Nicholson Baker: Whistleblower Song - Video
WASHINGTON The Bureau of Prisons has rejected the Armys request to accept the transfer of national security leaker Pvt. Chelsea Manning from the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to a civilian facility where she could get better treatment for her gender-identify condition. The military will instead begin the initial treatment for her.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has approved the Armys recommendation to keep Manning in military custody and start a rudimentary level of gender treatment, a defense official said Thursday. The initial gender treatments could include allowing Manning to wear some female undergarments and also possibly provide some hormone treatments.
The decision raises a number of questions about what level of treatment Manning will be able to get and at what point the private would have to be transferred from the all-male prison to a female facility.
Bradley Manning, now known as Chelsea Manning, in 2013Photo: Getty Images
Manning has been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, the sense of being a woman in a mans body. Civilian prisons can provide treatment, and the Defense Department has argued repeatedly that it doesnt have the medical expertise needed. As a result, the Army tried to work out a plan to transfer Manning to a federal prison.
Officials said Thursday that federal authorities refused the proposal. Officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly by name.
Mannings lawyer, David Coombs, did not immediately respond to requests for comment, but in May he contended that civilian prisons were not as safe as military facilities.
In a statement, he said, It is common knowledge that the federal prison system cannot guarantee the safety and security of Chelsea in the way that the military prison system can.
The Army sends an average of 15 to 20 prisoners a year to civilian prisons. But Mannings appeals have not been exhausted, shes still in the military and her case is of national security interest. Those are factors that normally could prevent a transfer.
According to a complaint filed by Manning, she asked that a treatment plan consider three types of measures: real life experience, a regimen in which the person tries dressing and living in the new gender; hormone therapy, which changes some physical traits such as breast and hair growth; and sex reassignment surgery. Manning has not publicly said whether she wants surgery, and the proposed plan was not released.
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Chelsea Manning to begin gender treatment in military ...
WASHINGTON The Bureau of Prisons has rejected the Armys request to accept the transfer of national security leaker Pvt. Chelsea Manning from the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to a civilian facility where she could get better treatment for her gender-identify condition. The military will instead begin the initial treatment for her.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has approved the Armys recommendation to keep Manning in military custody and start a rudimentary level of gender treatment, a defense official said Thursday. The initial gender treatments could include allowing Manning to wear some female undergarments and also possibly provide some hormone treatments.
SEE ALSO: Calif. gay pride event bans National Guard, honors Chelsea Manning
The decision raises a number of questions about what level of treatment Manning will be able to get and at what point the private would have to be transferred from the all-male prison to a female facility.
Manning has been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, the sense of being a woman in a mans body. Civilian prisons can provide treatment, and the Defense Department has argued repeatedly that it doesnt have the medical expertise needed. As a result, the Army tried to work out a plan to transfer Manning to a federal prison.
Officials said Thursday that federal authorities refused the proposal. Officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly by name.
Mannings lawyer, David Coombs, told The Associated Press on Thursday that he was encouraged that the Army will begin medical treatment.
It has been almost a year since we first filed our request for adequate medical care, Coombs said. I am hopeful that when the Army says it will start a rudimentary level of treatment that this means hormone replacement therapy.
If hormone therapy is not provided, he said he will have to take appropriate legal action to ensure Chelsea finally receives the medical treatment she deserves and is entitled to under the law.
In May Coombs had also contended that civilian prisons were not as safe as military facilities.
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Bradley Manning to begin gender treatment while in military custody
FORT LEAVENWORTH, Kan., July 17 (UPI) --Chelsea Manning, the Army private once known as Bradley Manning, is to start undergoing gender dysphoria treatment in prison, U.S. defense officials said.
Manning is currently serving a 35-year sentence at a military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., for her role in the largest intelligence leak in United States history.
The day after she was sentenced, she announced she had gender-dissociation and was granted permission to receive treatment for the early stages of gender reassignment.
She is allowed to wear women's underclothes and shoes, and she'll start undergoing psychiatric and psychological counseling, two senior U.S. defense officials said Thursday.
2014 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Any reproduction, republication, redistribution and/or modification of any UPI content is expressly prohibited without UPI's prior written consent.
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Chelsea Manning to undergo gender treatment in jail
Why it's important to do now, and factors to consider.
Think headlines about data theft and leakage have nothing to do with you? Think again. Many of these incidents have a common theme: Privileged access. It's your job to make sure your organization doesn't fall victim to the same fate by at the very least examining your existing insider threat program, and perhaps doing a major revamp.
Edward Snowden's theft and release of National Security Agency data, Army Private First Class Bradley Manning's disclosure of sensitive military documents to information distributor WikiLeaks and the shooting at the Washington Navy Yard by a credentialed IT subcontractor have given IT executives across industries pause to reconsider their security policies and procedures.
Tips for insider-threat mitigation
-- Sandra Gittlen
"A crescendo of discussions is happening in boardrooms everywhere about the impact an insider could have on corporate assets," says Tom Mahlik, deputy chief security officer and director of Global Security Services at The MITRE Corporation, a government contractor that operates federally funded research and development centers.
The Washington Navy Yard incident cost 12 people their lives; the full impact of the WikiLeaks and Snowden data releases cannot yet be quantified.
"These incidents have added another dimension to the threat paradigm -- privileged access," Mahlik says.
Mahlik suggests that existing insider threat programs must increasingly be focused on users with elevated or privileged access to critical information. To that point, he is leading an overhaul of MITRE's own program. His goal is to understand the threats insiders pose and to deter those threats via a program that synchronizes people, policies, processes and technology. "We are in the nascent stage of this effort," he says.
Realizing the new threat
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Revamping your insider threat program
Bradley Manning is sentenced to 35 years Wikileaks Case
By: Taho NYMOUS
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Bradley Manning is sentenced to 35 years Wikileaks Case - Video
The freedom to communicate and to share has entered a new era. The power promised by this freedom, by the Internet, is immense, so much so that it frightens entrenched institutions. Governments, militaries, corporations, banks: They all stand to lose the control they exert over society when information they suppress runs free. Yet some of the most ardent advocates for the free Internet have become targets of these very institutions, forced to live on the run, in exile or, in some cases, in prison.
Julian Assange is perhaps one of the most recognized figures in the fight for transparency and open communication. He founded the website WikiLeaks in 2007 to provide a safe, secure means to leak electronic documents. In 2010, WikiLeaks released a shocking video taken from a U.S. military attack helicopter, in which at least 12 civilians are methodically machine-gunned to death in New Baghdad, a neighborhood of Baghdad, Iraq. Two of those killed were Reuters journalists. Throughout the massacre, the Army radio transmissions are heard, a combination of grimly sterile orders to "engage" the victims and a string of mocking exchanges among the soldiers, belittling the victims and celebrating the slaughter.
On the heels of the video's publication, WikiLeaks provided three more major document releases, with hundreds of thousands of classified documents, from official U.S. military communications about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which allowed direct research into, for example, the scale of civilian casualties in those wars. WikiLeaks also revealed hundreds of thousands of U.S. State Department cables, exposing dark, cynical realities of U.S. diplomacy. The secret cables are credited with fueling the Arab Spring, especially the overthrow of the corrupt, U.S.-supported regime in Tunisia.
While the WikiLeaks website managed to protect the identity of the source of these remarkable leaks, an FBI informant pointed the finger at a U.S. soldier, Pvt. Bradley Manning. Serving in U.S. military intelligence in Iraq, Manning was frustrated with U.S. military abuses. He allegedly copied the trove of files and delivered them to WikiLeaks. Manning was arrested and thrown into solitary confinement, in conditions the United Nations labeled "torture." Manning was court-martialed. After conviction and sentencing to 35 years in an Army prison, Manning announced his intention to transition to a woman, and formally changed her name to Chelsea Manning. One month ago, Manning wrote in an opinion piece in The New York Times, "I believe that the current limits on press freedom and excessive government secrecy make it impossible for Americans to grasp fully what is happening in the wars we finance."
WikiLeaks investigations editor Sarah Harrison is British but now lives in Berlin. When Edward Snowden leaked his trove of National Security Agency documents in Hong Kong, Harrison flew there. She and WikiLeaks provided key assistance to Snowden as he made his way to political asylum in Russia. Harrison is concerned that if she returns to her native England, she will be arrested.
Also in Berlin is U.S. citizen Laura Poitras, the first journalist to respond to Snowden in his efforts to leak the NSA documents. She convinced Glenn Greenwald to travel with her to Hong Kong, launching the Snowden era in U.S. national security reporting. Poitras had already been detained and aggressively questioned many times on entering the United States, very likely for her unflinching exposes on the U.S. national security system.
Greenwald, a U.S. citizen, chooses to live in Brazil. Since the Snowden revelations, on advice of his lawyers, he avoided visiting his home country. Poitras and Greenwald finally did return to the U.S. to collect the prestigious George Polk Award for their journalism. Three days later, they were part of the teams at The Guardian and The Washington Post that won the Pulitzer Prize.
Then there is Snowden. He has been charged with espionage for making one of the largest and most significant leaks in U.S. history, which has sparked a global debate around surveillance, privacy and the national security state. Last weekend, The Guardian published an interview with Hillary Clinton. She said Snowden should return to the United States, where he could mount a vigorous legal and public defense. The day after, I asked Julian Assange what he thought. He replied: "The U.S. government decided to smash Chelsea Manning absolutely smash her to send a signal to everyone: Don't you ever think about telling people what's really going on inside the U.S. military and its abuses. And they tried to smash also the next most visible person and visible organization, which was WikiLeaks, to get both ends the source end and the publishing end."
Assange has been holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for the past two years. Ecuador has granted him political asylum, but he fears that if he steps foot out of the embassy, he will ultimately be extradited to the United States, landing him in a U.S. prison for years to come for his work with WikiLeaks.
At the heart of his case, and of so many others, is the question of whether the Internet will remain a free and open platform for communication, or a commodity controlled by a few corporations, censored and surveilled by the U.S. national security apparatus.
Originally posted here:
Amy Goodman: Fate of a free Internet is on the line
Spies must be less secretive if they are to win back public trust, a new report says.
Leaks from US security whistleblowers Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning have led to "adverse commentary" and media attention is "mostly negative", a review commissioned by the State Services Commission says.
Overseas agencies in Australia and Britain are "much more transparent and active in the media".
It recommends the Government Communications Security Bureau and the Security Intelligence Service should talk publicly about threat detection and security risks.
The full report is classified "top secret". But the agencies appear to be heeding advice - a source said they requested that the unclassified summary of the report be released.
"Public knowledge and experience of the security and intelligence sector in New Zealand is very low," the report says. "This is not surprising given the secret nature of the work and the sector's deliberately low profile over many years . . . a much more transparent approach could be possible in other areas . . . greater pro-activity would have potentially high gains."
The performance improvement framework (PIF) review into the Intelligence Community - made up of GCSB, SIS, Intelligence Coordination Group of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, and the National Assessments Bureau - was carried out in late 2013 and published yesterday.
It follows the damning Kitteridge report on the GCSB last year.
The review makes references to funding problems, saying a "high tempo operational focus" leads to employees "pitching in to make the most of scare resources".
Much of its electronic equipment and hardware have a "short life-cycle". An asset stocktake will get under way this year.
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Report finds spooks too far under the radar
Pentagon mulls quiet transfer of Pvt. Manning for gender treatment
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has quietly given the Pentagon approval to transfer the former Pvt. Bradley Manning now known as Pvt. Chelsea Manning to a civilian prison facility to undergo treatment for his gender issues, sources said.
Pfc. Bradley Manning the former Army intelligence analyst who decided as he was headed to prison for leaking government information to WikiLeaks that he wanted to be a she heads to court Wednesday to try for a name change to Chelsea.
A 35-year prison sentence for espionage isn't stopping former Army Pvt. Bradley Manning from becoming an honorary grand marshal of the San Francisco Pride parade.
Convicted leaker Chelsea Manning is asking an Army general to reverse her conviction and 35-year prison sentence for sending reams of classified information to WikiLeaks.
Pvt. Bradley Manning who made media waves during his federal trial by announcing he'd rather be called Chelsea has penned a Thanksgiving thank-you in Time in part to Martin Luther King Jr., citing the civil rights leader's pioneering break-through in social justice as a source of personal inspiration.
Liberals get surly when their identity fantasy is exposed
Army Pvt. Bradley Manning, who now is serving a 35-year sentence at Fort Leavenworth for leaking stacks of classified documents to WikiLeaks for publication, wants a pardon from President Obama for information he released that isn't deemed so sensitive.
Jailbirds Ophelia De'Lonta and Bradley Manning have a lot in common. Taxpayers are paying for their incarceration, and both want those same taxpayers to pick up the tab for sex-change operations. It's a sign of the times.
The attorney for Pvt. Bradley Manning, the convicted document leaker who insisted on his way to Fort Leavenworth that he wants to be a woman called Chelsea, said his client is doing well in prison and has already made several friends who have accepted her for who she is.
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Arrest Of Bradley Manning - Bio, News, Photos - Washington ...
Glenn Greenwald amplifies the leaks of documents that are damning to the US government.
A lot has happened since June 2013, when famed Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, then 82, donned a pink feather boa to lead an energized San Francisco Pride Parade contingent on behalf of US Army private Bradley Manning, who couldn't attend due to being held in federal custody.
Manning, a whistleblower who stood accused of leaking classified US documents, was celebrated as a queer hero by the more than 1,000 parade participants. They hailed the young private's courageous decision to share US military secrets with WikiLeaks in a bid to expose human rights atrocities committed during the Iraq War.
The Bradley Manning Contingent had been ignited by the drama following Manning's nomination as a grand marshal for Pride, then crowned grand marshal in an erroneous public statement, an announcement that was then emphatically revoked by the San Francisco Pride Board of Directors.
The messy, embarrassing incident made international headlines and sent a torrent of criticism raining down upon Pride. Progressives sharply condemned the board as spineless for being afraid to stand with a celebrated queer whistleblower whose act of self-sacrifice could alter the course of history.
In late August 2013, Manning announced that she identified as female and would be known as Chelsea Manning from that day forward. The announcement was concurrent with her sentencing to 35 years in prison for leaking classified US government documents.
The whistleblower's name and gender identity aren't the only things to change since last year: Chelsea Manning has been named an honorary grand marshal for the 2014 Pride celebration.
"The 2013 SF Pride Board's controversial decision to revoke her status as Grand Marshal fueled an international controversy and created intense strife within the local LGBT and progressive communities," a statement on Pride's website explains. "In January, in the spirit of community healing, and at the behest of SF Pride's membership, the newly elected SF Pride Board of Directors reinstated Manning's status as an honorary Grand Marshal for the 2014 Celebration and Parade."
The other game-changing subplot of this continuing whistleblower saga, of course, began to unfold just weeks before the 2013 Pride celebration, when former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden came forward to explain that he'd leaked secret NSA documents to expose a sweeping dragnet surveillance program intercepting millions of Americans' digital communications, because he believed it posed a threat to democracy and personal freedom.
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Proud of the whistleblowers