President Obama Should Give Chelsea Manning Time Served

ChelseaManning-TimeServedSoon after Chelsea Manning prepared her statement for this year’s Aaron Swartz Day, her legal appeal team launched a #timeserved campaign (link to official commutation petition), asking President Obama to commute her 35 year sentence.

 

There’s a petition at Whitehouse.gov that needs 100,000 signatures by December 14th.

As the November 14th announcement by Fight for the Future explains, Commuting Chelsea’s sentence makes sense for a number of reasons:

  • She has already been in prison for almost 7 years.
  • 11 months of that was in solitary confinement. (This was before she had ever been tried and convicted of any crimes.)
  • Chelsea’s 11 months in solitary confinement was particularly brutal.  2 months was spent in 105 degree temperatures in complete darkness, in a cage in a tent *in Kuwait). (Yes, literally, a cage inside of a tent. In the dark for two months straight.
  • For the next 9 months, spent in solitary confinement at Quantico, Virginia, she had to stare straight ahead at the wall all day. (Read this first hand account from Chelsea about her time in solitary confinement.
  • Since that time, she has been incarcerated for another 6 years.
  • This means that Chelsea has already served more time than any whistleblower in U.S. history.

She writes in her commutation statement that she decided to not accept a plea deal because she thought the court would sentence her fairly.  (Alas, she made a mistake in doing so, as it obviously did not sentence her fairly.)

Just last month, after initially disappearing for a week, her lawyers announced that she had been placed in solitary confinement as punishment for her suicide attempt last July.

As soon as she was placed in solitary confinement again, it was too much for her, and she attempted to take her own life again. (The Guardian provides this excellent account of medical experts decrying the use of solitary confinement for this purpose.)

Chelsea has now been told that she will soon be charged for the second suicide attempt, and will most likely receive more solitary confinement as punishment for it.

How long can this go on? Indefinitely, apparently.

If President Obama doesn’t commute her sentence, there is nothing to stop this pattern from repeating.

Chase Strangio, Chelsea’s attorney for her ACLU case,  has written a letter to President Obama asking him to commute Chelsea’s sentence. As he explains in the New York Times article, “I worry about the sustainability of her current conditions and her ability to keep fighting under these relentless abuses.”

Please sign the petition and help spread the word.

Resources:

Whitehouse.gov petition

Blog post from Fight for the Future announcing the #timeserved campaign

Official commutation application/petition

Chelsea’s medium post with her statement, from the application:

Chase’s Strangio, Chelsea’s ACLU attorney, writes a post to Obama

Please Sign and Share Chelsea Manning’s Petition for Time Served

Please sign the petition: Tell Obama to give Chelsea #timeserved

ChelseaManning-TimeServed

 

 

 

 

 

 

Full text of the Whitehouse.gov petition:

Commute Chelsea Manning’s Sentence to Time Served

Chelsea Manning has been incarcerated since May 2010, including in unlawful, unusually harsh solitary confinement for 11 months before her trial. She has spent the past six years helping others.

Chelsea has already served more time in prison than any individual in United States history who disclosed information in the public interest. Her disclosures harmed no one.

President Obama, as you and the medical community have recognized, prisoners who face solitary confinement are more likely to commit suicide.

Chelsea is a woman in a men’s facility facing ongoing mistreatment. She has attempted suicide and has been punished with additional time in solitary confinement for her desperation. Her life is at risk and you can save her.

Please commute Chelsea Manning’s sentence to time served.

Chelsea Manning’s Statement for the Fourth Annual Aaron Swartz Day and International Hackathon

Please sign the petition: “President Obama: Give Chelsea Manning #timeserved.”

chelsea_large clean cropped(As read to the crowd at Aaron Swartz Day, at the Internet Archive, San Francisco, November 5, 2016)

By Chelsea Manning

Thinking forward, I can imagine — or envision really — a world of endless possibilities. This is a world where new technology can clean up the environment and start to repair centuries of human activity. Our cities become more integrated, optimized, and harmonized. Our health would improve, and improvements in safety would dramatically decrease accidental deaths. New opportunities for work, education and recreation would spread. Our lives would be better — a “utopia.”

That said — I can also envision a world of despair. This is a world where technology has divided society into two distinctly unequal classes. Military, law enforcement, and intelligence, and indistinguishably blended. This world fosters an extensive police and surveillance state. What I like to call “microcrimes,” which are relatively minor actions that — for those who don’t have power — are policed and enforced aggressively, and follows you for the rest of your life. Identification cards and keys, as well as arfits and their cousins intertwined and enmeshed into all aspects of life — from shopping at the store, to walking into a subway station. Loss of unskilled jobs would cause depression and idolness. In essence, our lives would be worse — a “dystopia.”

Yet, these two worlds are not mutually exclusive. These worlds, in some regard, actually exist. The debates over issues such as income inequality, economic policy, and civil liberties are no longer separated from the technology sector. Our actions when it comes to the development of algorithms and platforms are increasingly acting as a new “invisible arbiter,” determining who wins and who loses in a zero sum game. There’s now commercial, political and legal separation — and sometimes discrimination.

In fact, our technology has rapidly gentrified our cities. Just take a moment sometime and look around you. We have created an increasingly segregated society. This is especially visible there in the San Francisco Bay Area. Of course, there is no conspiracy, but it is becoming clear that those of us who are skilled and lucky can end up working in Palo Alto, Mountain View, or downtown San Francisco — while others move further and further away from the opportunities in our cities and in our corporations.

Consider machine learning — how are our logical “black boxes” working? Neural Networks provide us with opportunities for noticing correlations — like how Republicans are more likely to own a truck or SUV, and Democrats are more likely to use public transportation or car sharing. The enormous information asymmetry that is developing between algorithms, their mechanisms, and public understanding is particularly troubling. Are our algorithms creating self-fulfilling prophecies? Can they go horribly wrong? Sometimes this can be comical — just look at the “deep dream” technique that produces trippy jpegs. Or it can be dangerous and deadly. This is especially the case for “self-driving” or “self-flying” vehicles. If we weaponize our algorithms for the politically uncertain “cyberwar gap” — I must point out here that the prefix “cyber” makes me gag — are we going to be able to contain and control these when they can start to adapt?

Is the Google search engine going to suddenly “come alive” and claim global, military, and political superiority in order to more effectively provide relevant search results? You might laugh, but, do we know whether this is really possible or not? I suspect you know the answer.

Who is responsible if things go wrong? If a car crashes and injures you, who takes the blame? If a state created computer virus goes berserk, who do you point the finger at?

We need to make our algorithms and machine learning mechanisms as accountable and transparent as possible. We should carefully and thoughtfully tread, as our sometimes awkward selves quickly enter into the politics and ethics of technology.

There’s already been a promising debate in the public. Even in the “mainstream,” we are seeing opinion columns and editorials that are asking these questions. We are bringing our conundrums to light of an increasingly curious, diligent and aware public. We have a responsibility to continue to encourage the spread of this debate. Now, what about our “sprawling surveillance apparatus?” Apple and the FBI had a legal feud over phone encryption this year. How many other feuds are happening behind the scenes? How many small and medium-sized companies and organizations responding? Are they quietly complying?

Even if we can legally protect our information, how do we protect our information for the long term, when someone can potentially just build a quantum computer 10 or 15 years from now that makes it horribly obsolete? We need to develop a viable “post-quantum” encryption system. There are several current proposals — such as “lattice-based cryptography,” which I have found an interest in myself lately — out there that are worth exploring.

Time is not on our side. It’s one thing to worry about encryption of frequently expiring credit card information. What about medical records — or, mental health records? What about users of SecureDrop? How can we protect journalistic sources for years to come?

I just want you to ponder these things when you go home, or to your hotel, or wherever you just happen to sleep: Are we doing the right things? Are we paying attention to the right issues? Is what we are creating, developing or modifying going to have an impact on someone? What is it going to look like? Can you think of anything from your own work and experience?

Aaron was an insatiably curious person. His boundless curiosity reminds me of the physicist Richard Feinman. This was his greatest strength. Yet we now know, from Aaron, that curiosity might be punished, so it might be good to think through any necessary legal defenses ahead of time.

Nevertheless, we need to continue to be curious. We need to ask questions. How else are we going to understand our world?

Taking A Break To Watch History Unfold Real Quick… and Archive It!

Hi Folks,

We’ve decided to take just two days off from publishing Aaron Swartz Day content, and pick up Wednesday morning with the videos and transcripts from last this last weekend’s event.

Remember to VOTE! If you are in San Francisco on Tuesday evening at 6pm, come down and hang out with us at the Internet Archive:

Election Night at the Internet Archive

The Internet Archive is informally open to our employees, their families and friends, and our community to watch the election results next Tuesday night. This is a spur-of-the-moment invitation and an experiment. If there are enough people interested, we will use the great room.

The Internet Archive’s blog post mentions a $10 ticket cost (Eventbrite) to cover the cost of pizza and soda. Additionally though, we also still have lots of awesomely fresh made salsa and other goodies from Aaron Swartz Day.

The event will run from 6pm until the election is called — 11pm at the latest. We will limit the number of people and we reserve the right to ask anyone to leave for any reason.

If you are interested in volunteering to help that evening, please contact Salem at salem(@)archive.org.

RE: voting and the Internet Archive

You can also read these articles about the Political Ad Archive and use the actual Political Ad Archive itself, or even just the the data from the Political Ad Archive.

We are just scratching the surface of information that we are going to glean from this year’s amazing archive!

See you there! 6pm! Internet Archive!

Chelsea’s OK. A little message of clarification…

Message of clarification from Chelsea Manning (as read before her statement was read, at Aaron Swartz Day, November 5, 2016):

“I know that all of you must be worried. Surely, many of you, have seen or heard about last month’s suicide attempt. This was covered in the NY Times by Charlie Savage. I am fine. Thankfully, I was not hospitalized.

I want to thank you all for your concern, and your well wishes. However, I think we should focus on the statement that I provided to the Times which explains a much more immediate concern.”

Editor’s note: This post went up retroactively. Sorry! Trying to get everything up in order, even it if takes a bit…

Come to Today’s Aaron Swartz Day and International Hackathon

TICKETS TO EVENING EVENT

Hello there :-)

I wanted to take a moment to fill you in on everything going on this weekend.

In San Francisco, we have a hackathon going on, with an upstairs, where speakers are going on, and a downstairs, where code and society are being “hacked” on.

Saturday morning, I’ll be there at 9:30 am with bagels and cream cheese, blueberry muffins and english muffins, fruit, yogurt and COFFEE for breakfast.

Jeremy Stribling will start at 10:00 upstairs in the Great Room, giving a tutorial about Keybase and usable encryption (yay!)

Note that, there are many folks coming from out of town, and it has turned into quite the nice conference hang out atmosphere, over the years. So, this year, you may just want to come by and hang, whether you feel like hacking or not. (So, perhaps, for some of you, it will be more of a “hangathon.” Hehehe … sorry :)

The evening event starts at 6:30 with a reception with chips & salsa (really good salsa), wine, beer, nectar, and other nibbles (yes some vegan)*, and that’s all going on till 7:30 pm…

And since, as many of you know, it can be really hard at the Internet Archive to make your way upstairs sometimes, this year, I’m giving you lushes an entire half hour to make your way upstairs.

The speakers will start promptly at 8! :-)

More about Sunday Soon! :-)

*Welcome vegans, here’s the vegan food on hand for you: 1) chips and salsa 2) soylent 2) salad 3) nuts 4) trail mix 5) a few sandwiches that will be stashed away and available on request.