WHISTLEBLOWER: Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden
Featuring... *Chelsea Manning*Edward Snowden
2 Great Books in 1!
Chelsea Manning
The information came as a slow trickle. The whistleblower website WikiLeaks was just four years old, and the media didn't necessarily pay much attention to it. But then it came, the publication of a diplomatic cable on February 18, 2010. It was from the US embassy in Iceland's capitol city, Reykjavik, and detailed information about the country's financial crisis. Two months later, a Wired report from April 5, 2010, screams with the headline, "Whistleblower Report: Leaked Video Shows U.S. 'Cover up, '" and said WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange called the course of the footage "courageous."
The Army's Criminal Investigative Division arrested the "courageous source" on May 26, 2010, and she was moved from Iraq to Camp Arifjan, Kuwait where she was held until July 6 without being charged. When the charges finally came, they were for violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice because she had transferred classified information to a personal computer and added unauthorized software to a classified computer. All of the actions violated federal laws about the handling of classified information. Who had access to that volume of information? Why did they do it? Where was the leak coming from?
Edward Snowden
The revelation that Government organizations were spying on their own citizens, and those from other countries, shocked the world. That this was probably legal, was even more astonishing. In particular, the American NSA and British GCHQ, were intercepting communications - emails, phone calls, chat rooms, even normal internet usage - and monitoring them. Not just the communications of those suspected of crime, or terrorists, but those of every single citizen. They had been doing it for years. The revelations came about because of one man. A young American with a great future came across the details of the Governments' actions, and decided to act. Fearing for his freedom, even his life, he set up an elaborate programme of meetings with three trusted journalists. These were reporters he knew would take him seriously, and would not be cowed by the enormity of what he had discovered. With thousands of pieces of evidence, bordering on millions, this man revealed what he knew. Edward Snowden.