2010-12-09, 11:22 PM
Cancambo Wrote:He did not illegally publish the documents. Court decisions have already upheld the rights of journalists to publish things like this. WikiLeaks has put forth the message that if they get informationt hey feel is worth publishing then they will publish it. They did nto steal anything. They were just given information and they published it.
Technically, if Manning was the leaker, he did break a law. He was given access to the documents under the presumption that he would keep them secret. If he was the leaker, then his actions were illegal, but that also doesn't necessarily make it wrong.
The information is extremely highly classified and the government has the ability to prosecute people for simply possessing it, let alone publishing it. Illegal may be the wrong word, but it was highly immoral and irresponsible of him to do so. I personally hold what he did to be espionage - he encouraged people to deliver classified information to him so that he could publish it.