From the readings, what is your opinion of Chelsea/Bradley Manning’s decision to leak sensitive information to WikiLeaks and her subsequent sentencing? Is what she did ethical or did she violate her duty? Should she have been protected under the Whistleblower protection laws? Is she a revolutionary hero or a traitor?
Manning is a traitor. Why am I so bold with my first statement? It is because in the clearest sense she betrayed her countries trust. After receiving a security clearance he (at the time) “claimed to have been rummaging through classified military and government networks for more than a year and said that the networks contained ‘incredible things, awful things … that belonged in the public domain, and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington DC.'” This is scary, that a person was allowed to reach outside of their allowed zone of information. Even his hacker contact thought the same, Lamo said, “He was in a war zone and basically trying to vacuum up as much classified information as he could, and just throwing it up into the air.”
In my mind what she did was not ethical. It is not clear that she brought her questions about her findings to a party in charge. This is probably due to the fact that Manning should not have been searching around through all the documents she had clearance for. This seems unethical to me, to extend a reach looking for trouble. I find it hard to justify the publishing of documents that could harm future US relations as in the case with the diplomatic cables. Manning is quoted to have said, “It’s open diplomacy. World-wide anarchy in CSV format… it’s beautiful, and horrifying.” This kind of post and see what happens does not encourage favorable discussion.
At this crossroads I find I am still wrestling with the need of a 5th estate, or leaking organizations such as WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks puts fear in government officials that if they have any secrets they could get leaked. Now does this fear help push government in the direction of reformation, or harsher penalties for leaking sensitive information. I would see some cases where a leak can help a situation, but if it ever puts lives in danger I have a hard time agreeing that it should be put to the web for all to consume. The internet gives a lot of freedom in publishing for it can reach a large audience while also keeping anonymity. I think this combination is dangerous.
I do not see a good way of solving the wistleblowing problem. If there truly is a problem at a place of work, then I think it would be hard to find someone in a position of power to go to and explain the ethical situation you are in at the company. If firms are driven by profit, any sidetrack would take away from revenue. This gives a good reason to have wistleblowing laws, the problem is how they get interpreted in situations where the information is actually protected. There must be a better solution to exposing believed ethical problems than posting to WikiLeaks and hoping for change. It might seem difficult to bring these issues up through the system that might be perpetuating the problem, but I have faith that the saperation of powers particularly in the military would be able to handle this situation better than the internet. If this were the case, Chelsea might not have been locked up, but a leader in the restructuring of military security.
Ethics Blog 