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29 Aug 2013

by Ada Gonzalez

Manning and Snowden

Bradley Edward Manning was born on December 17, 1987. He is a United States Army soldier who was arrested in May 2010 in Iraq on suspicion of having passed classified material to the website WikiLeaks. He was ultimately charged with 22 offenses, including communicating national defense information to an unauthorized source and aiding the enemy. Since he was assigned to an army unit based near Baghdad, Manning had access to databases used by the United States government to transmit classified information. He was arrested after Adrian Lama, a computer hacker, told the FBI that Manning had confided during online chats that he had downloaded material from these databases and passed it to WikiLeaks. The material included videos of the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrikes, the 2009 Granai airstrikes in Afghanistan, 250,000 United States diplomatic cables and 500,000 army reports that came to be known as the Iraq War logs and Afghan War logs. It was the largest set of restricted documents ever leaked to the public.

On April 2011, he was transferred to Fort Leavenworth, where he could interact with other detainees. He pleaded guilty in February 2013 to 10 of the 22 charges, which could carry a sentence of up to 20 years. The trial on the remaining charges began on June 3, 2013 and is still going on. On July 30, 2013, Manning was found not guilty of aiding the enemy but nevertheless convicted of his other 19 charges. Manning was convicted of six espionage counts, five theft charges, a computer fraud charge and other military infractions sentencing hearing is set to begin on Wednesday”.

  • http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57596093/bradley-manning-acquitted-of-aiding-the-enemy-for-giving-secrets-to-wikileaks/
  • http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-bradley-manning-wikileaks-verdict-20130730,0,1616238.story http://www.dallasnews.com/news/local-news/20130730-us-army-pfc-bradley-manning-acquitted-of-aiding-enemy-guilty-on-19-other-charges.ece

There are many people out there that feel differently about this trial with Manning. Some people think that he shouldn’t be guilty because they feel like that was some information that the people should know. While others think he should be guilty because he said very important information that was only supposed to stay within the Government. “He's just a dumb kid who got himself into a situation where he felt he was saving the world,” Joseph Wippl, a professor of international relations at Boston University and a former CIA officer, told Reuters.

  • http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/07/30/19771789-bradley-manning-verdict-could-test-notion-of-aiding-enemy?lite
  • Edward Joseph Snowden was born on June 21, 1983 and is an American former technical contractor for the United States National Security Agency (NSA) and a former employee of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) who leaked details of several top-secret United States and British government mass surveillance programs to the press.

    Snowden leaked the information, primarily to Glenn Greenwald of London's The Guardian in Spring 2013 while employed as an "infrastructure analyst" at NSA contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. The Guardian in turn published a series of exposés in June–July 2013 and revealed programs such as the interception of US and European telephone metadata and the PRISM and Tempora Internet surveillance programs. Snowden's disclosures are said to rank among the most significant NSA security breaches in United States history.

    Snowden's leaks have been a subject of great controversy. Some have referred to Snowden as a hero and a whistleblower, while others have described him as a traitor. Snowden has defended his leaks as an effort "to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them". Government officials have condemned his actions as having harmed U.S. interests and its position in the War on Terror. Meanwhile, the media disclosures have fueled debates in the United States and elsewhere over mass surveillance, government secrecy, and the balance between national security and information privacy in the Post-9/11 era. On June 14, 2013, United States federal prosecutors charged Snowden with espionage and theft of government property.

  • http://www.globalresearch.ca/obama-blocks-eric-snowdens-asylum-blocked-at-moscow-airport/5342604
  • http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-07-26/politics/40863323_1_death-penalty-temporary-asylum-attorney-general-eric-holder,
  • Ada Gonzalez is 17 years old and was born and raised in New York City. She loves the city and is proud to come from a Mexican family. She atteds Lifes Science Secondary School where her favorite subjects are Art, Drama, and English.