The mixed verdict from a small American courtroom at Fort Meade, Maryland, in the Bradley Manning case has a message for democracies across the world and their citizens. The US military judge may have found Manning guilty on several counts that leaves him facing up to 136 years in prison, but he did not deem the soldier guilty of aiding the enemy.
Prosecutors who were trying to establish that Manning’s leak of a trove of secret US government documents aided the terrorist network Al-Qaeda could not sell that argument to the judge. This is significant as the leak of classified information may be anathema to governments that have a lot to hide. Such leaks may, however, be in the public interest, at least to the extent of exposing what dirty tricks officialdom is up to.
The trickiest part of governance of modern societies is to find the right balance between the need for secrecy in the functioning of governments and civil liberties. These arguments are of even greater import in the light of the Edward Snowden revelations of the astonishing level of anti-terrorism surveillance programmes like the ones run by America’s NSA, which pried into the communications of millions of people around the world.
It’s clear that either governments must take greater care in preserving their secrets or be subjected to action in the public interest by outfits like WikiLeaks highlighting the work of whistleblowers like Manning and Snowden. People will commonly tend to see such men only in a sympathetic light.