<story><title>Bradley Manning Takes &quot;Full Responsibility&quot; for Giving WikiLeaks Government Data</title><url>http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/02/bradley-manning/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>slurgfest</author><text>Getting disgruntled and indiscriminately dumping whatever you find on sensitive internal networks, in violation of the military law you agreed to be governed by when you VOLUNTEERED for the US military, is not an honorable self-sacrifice.&lt;p&gt;If we believe that, then we should believe that any employee of any startup has an honorable sacrificial duty to leak that startup&apos;s code along with a dump of its databases.</text></item><item><author>bdcravens</author><text>I can&apos;t deny that he violated the trust placed in him by the military. That&apos;s a scary game, and one that I can&apos;t honestly take a position in, as I&apos;ve never served.&lt;p&gt;However, I feel that service is more than to your branch, commander, or unit. What is a soldier? Someone willing to sacrifice themselves for a greater, to defend those who can&apos;t defend themselves, to bring honor to their service. A US soldier serves the people first, the government second. Manning realized the risk he was placing his life in, and like a true soldier, he didn&apos;t let that knowledge deter him. In taking responsibility, he&apos;s holding his head high, not cowering behind attorneys and HTTP proxies.&lt;p&gt;I can&apos;t say if he&apos;s right or wrong, but I can say that he showed courage befitting his title.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nuclear_eclipse</author><text>So if a volunteer army is committing mass atrocities in the name of protecting state secrets, nobody should blow the whistle because they volunteered for the position before they knew what they were going to be doing?&lt;p&gt;I&apos;m just wondering where the line is drawn here.</text></comment>
<story><title>Bradley Manning Takes &quot;Full Responsibility&quot; for Giving WikiLeaks Government Data</title><url>http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/02/bradley-manning/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>slurgfest</author><text>Getting disgruntled and indiscriminately dumping whatever you find on sensitive internal networks, in violation of the military law you agreed to be governed by when you VOLUNTEERED for the US military, is not an honorable self-sacrifice.&lt;p&gt;If we believe that, then we should believe that any employee of any startup has an honorable sacrificial duty to leak that startup&apos;s code along with a dump of its databases.</text></item><item><author>bdcravens</author><text>I can&apos;t deny that he violated the trust placed in him by the military. That&apos;s a scary game, and one that I can&apos;t honestly take a position in, as I&apos;ve never served.&lt;p&gt;However, I feel that service is more than to your branch, commander, or unit. What is a soldier? Someone willing to sacrifice themselves for a greater, to defend those who can&apos;t defend themselves, to bring honor to their service. A US soldier serves the people first, the government second. Manning realized the risk he was placing his life in, and like a true soldier, he didn&apos;t let that knowledge deter him. In taking responsibility, he&apos;s holding his head high, not cowering behind attorneys and HTTP proxies.&lt;p&gt;I can&apos;t say if he&apos;s right or wrong, but I can say that he showed courage befitting his title.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>malbs</author><text>Not really a fair comparison. Unless the start-up was tax payer funded, and was doing objectionable things like selling customers credit card/personal information to third parties, and you knew about it, maybe then you would be lauded for exposing it. However no one would label you a hero for releasing a companies IP for the sake of it.&lt;p&gt;MAYBE if it was some company making bucket loads of money off of GPL code they were deliberately and knowingly abusing the license!</text></comment>