I was going through my usual routine of reading articles when I came across one titled “Chelsea Manning asks Obama to commute sentence to time served”
What piqued my interest to click the article despite not knowing who this Chelsea Manning was, initially lay in the picture that accompanied the headline.
(image source: Free Malaysia Today)
First of all, how big of a crime did she felt it necessary to personally reach out to the President and ask for a shortening of her sentence? And secondly, what ‘crime’ could it be that would lead to protesters holding banners of her and asking for her to be freed? Was she a trapped journalist? Perhaps she was someone wrongly convicted, a victim of a flawed legal system?
Nope, Chelsea was none of that. She was a whistleblower.
“US Soldier Chelsea Manning, who is serving 35 years in prison for passing classified files to WikiLeaks..”
Prior to the article, I knew nothing about this case. I knew nothing about her or of the nature of those classified files. It was without a question that I was curious, and I searched her up immediately and was greeted by long walls of texts describing what was called the biggest information leak in US history at that point of time in 2013.
Chelsea Manning was born Bradley Manning, a man serving in the US Army. I would say that the turn of events was one that was emotionally driven. Then known as Bradley, he was facing a cycle of personal turmoil that he dealt with while he was in the army, more prominently revolving around the lack of identity felt with his gender. Isolation felt during his service were further fueled by the granted access that he had to tons of classified military information touching on the nature of asymmetric warfare between the US and their allies as well as communication between leaders in the government. The things that he was seeing, the information that he was being exposed to, left him increasingly bothered and he finally decided that he needed somebody to share this issue with. So, he contacted WikiLeaks.
Chelsea Manning (as he now wishes to identify as) had leaked over 700,000 classified and unclassified documents to WikiLeaks, which included diplomatic cablegates, the Afghan and Iraq war logs and a video of an airstrike in Baghdad that had killed two Reuters journalists. It was arguably called the most important leak largely due to the fact that the documents exposed the secrets behind American asymmetrical warfare in the Middle East, which had resulted in large amount of innocent lives that had been lost during these controversial interventions.
While going through the timeline of events, I had stumbled across a few other names as well, some familiar and some not so familiar. Edward Snowden. Julian Assange. WikiLeaks.
I was suddenly hit by a sudden realization of how the perceptions of ‘whistleblowing’ has increasingly changed. Over the past few years, we’ve witnessed ‘leaks’ take the forefront as a viable method to expose acts of fraud and deceit in political or corporate agenda. I’m sure Wikileaks is a name no longer foreign to most of us. It’s functioning ground? Being an NGO that works by publishing classified information from anonymous sources. A recent and widely known leak that they had published were the thousands of emails from U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s private server.
Leaking information is becoming a form of activism, in fact the term “Leak Activism” has even been coined. It has been called one of the most powerful ways to bring corruption to light. There have definitely been more than a few whistleblowers who have successfully shaken up governments and the people with their revelations. This isn’t something new, in fact we’ve seen these occurrences date back to the time of the Pentagon Paper reveals (1971) and the Watergate scandal (1972) which had significantly shifted public perception towards important government matters.
The transmission of information has come along way since the 1970s. Daniel Ellsberg had photocopied the Pentagon Papers, which was a 7000 page report. Now, 7000 pages is nothing if it were to be digitally transferred. Compare that to Manning’s 700,000 documents or the 50,000 pages of Hillary Clinton’s emails that are currently arranged in a searchable archive on WikiLeaks. This new convenience to get information out there goes hand in hand with the increase in whistleblowing cases over the recent years. The amount of information that can conveniently get out there also goes hand in hand with the impact that these leaks could possibly make to running systems.
Whistleblowing in the context of the cases that I had mentioned, stems from an underlying issue - the way our politics, society and economy works.
Corruption. Powerplay. Capitalism. It seems like the more people fight inequality, the more people fight to bridge the gap between the two ends of the social pyramid, the more we realize that the idea of an ideal world system is much farther away than what we envision it to be. In fact, obtaining this ideal world system that is transparent and just may objectively look impossible to achieve.
Our systems have already fallen into the state of an ‘executive coup’; a takeover from those in the higher ranks who have the funds and resources to shift the world, and shift public norms. However, having a dominant group of people shape the way our world works is one thing, indeed we need people who are have these resources to run governments or lead large corporations. It’s a completely different thing though, when these people carry out actions and plans that affect the lives of those placed lower in the social hierarchy without letting the course of action come into public knowledge.
It’s becoming increasingly hard to imagine a world not backed by capitalistic gains, similarly it’s becoming somewhat impossible for leaders and politicians to stick to their promises of serving the people rather than for their bank accounts. It’s hard to imagine a world where we are all equally represented. It’s hard to imagine a world where compassion and human rights prevail over political and diplomatic priorities.
There are many out there who are aware and there are many people out there that want to make change. There are people who go out there and start movements and create organizations aiming to fight issues for the people. In an ideal world, these little efforts would collectively bring about change efficiently. In an ideal world.
However, not all these efforts directly affect governments and policies. This is where the people who are already interweaved into the existing structures come into the picture. What happens to the individual in the system that is aware of the wrong, but has to put food on the table? What happens to the individual in the system that does not agree, but wants to live a comfortable life? They suck it up and move on. You can’t blame them. The consequences of whistleblowers is no joke. These individuals face years of jail time or go through the hassle of seeking external governments to seek asylum. Almost all of us going by our daily routines are turning a blind eye towards some sort of issue, because at the end of the day human nature prevails - and human nature pushes people to look out for themselves.
There are those that have taken that leap of bravery into spilling the truth - and some of them fall under this very category called “whistleblowers”. The term itself has has in most portions of time possessed a rather shaky reputation. They’re the ‘backstabbers’ in a functional body, the ones that bite the hands that feed them. A common question behind the actions of whistleblowers boil down to the matter of ethics. Is it ethical to betray a trust that has been bestowed upon you? Then again, is it ethical to sit back and not break this trust if it pertains matters that would affect the public in one way or another.
“The people is owed an explanation of the motivations behind those that make these disclosures.” This is what Edward Snowden echoed on the fact that people outside the democratic model need to be well informed just as well, especially since they’re the drivers of this model - they’re the masses, the consumers, the ones that bite the bait. Snowden leaked classified information of NSA (National Security Agency) activities in spying on American citizens. The information now known to the public sparked an uproar, an understandable one; phone records from practically all telephone companies were being given to the NSA, they had tools that allowed them to search user activity on the Internet. A breach in privacy was one part of the outrage, but not making these actions transparent to the public gives them a reason to doubt that this information was being used for more than just ‘national security’. Said leak resulted in the Obama administration introducing a legislation that would change how NSA collects telephone data - in which obtain records would be those linked to a phone number tied to legitimate terrorism threats. Albeit, we’re not sure as to how much of this legislation has properly come into effect.
Think about it. Think about how we place so much trust into organizations, bodies, and systems to protect us and everything we have. Governments, corporations, banks, militaries. At the end of the day they’re all systems run by other human beings, human beings with an immense amount of power to dictate how other human beings would go around living their lives.
It has reached a point where wrongdoing is so intertwined with the way our world works, that there is no way to point it out. Even the people that are supposed to restore justice for us are serving those at the top, and it comes off as though that even those that start off with the purest of hearts and intentions get sucked into this dark culture of lies and hidden agendas. It’s a worry to live in a time where you’re unsure if every move made by your country is for the sole intention of benefitting the people.
There’s a gap between the way the world works for those that rule and those that are ruled. A different moral compass, a measure of humanity that may be inversely proportional to the amount of zeros in their paycheques. We don’t have as much outright wars like what we used to have back in the day, but what we have at hand is a problem that could be even more detrimental for the betterment of society - the abuse of power.
Not all information released by whistleblowers are of importance - random emails and phone records leaked from a powerful individual doesn’t always have to be threatening, and we have to be aware that at this point of time there’s a terribly large volume of information being disseminated into the public. We each have to take on the role of informing ourselves and opening our eyes to discussions that are happening globally, to differentiate what has to be acted upon. As mentioned, most whistleblowers face severe consequences for their actions. However, it feels as though their sacrifices are not being given what its worth. Despite being a form of activism and retaliation that have the potential to alter the structures of systems, upon being leaked matters yet again fall under the control of the authorities and the legal system.If the majority of people are not aware of what these individuals have done, and are not interested in taking the time to understand the implications of these released information to communities regardless if you’re in them or not, no ground shaking shifts will occur.
