Chelsea Manning Revealed How
the US 'Insider Threat' Program Tries to Catch Whistleblowers
By Tess
Owen
March
19, 2016 | 11:25 am
Do you work with
an egomaniac? Does your colleague seem disgruntled? Are they worried about
money? Are they greedy? Or a pushover?
If so, they might
be a whistleblower, according to the US government's handbook for its
"Insider Threat" program. The program surveils the internal
communications of the government's military and civilian contractors, combing
them for evidence of particular personality traits and flagging would-be
whistleblowers — like US soldier Chelsea Manning and former NSA staffer Edward
Snowden — to prevent future intelligence leaks.
Manning, who is
serving a 35-year sentence for leaking classified information to Wikileaks in
2010, obtained documents about the program after she submitted a Freedom of
Information Act request from behind bars in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The
documents show how officials used Manning to establish a prototype of a
whistleblower. Her character and personality are dissected and presented as
being symptomatic of the kind of person who would reveal state secrets.
The document,
which was first published by the Guardian, lists broad categories at
the beginning of the soldier's 31-page file. The main categories are listed as
"greed or financial difficulties," "disgruntled or wants
revenge," "ideology," "divided loyalties,"
"vulnerable to blackmail," "ego/self image," "ingratiation,"
and "family/personal issues."
Manning contends that those purported "motives" are
overly broad and subjective, and essentially give US officials the green light
to spy on whoever they want. "The broad sweep of the program means
officials have been given a blank check for surveillance," Manning said.
"This lack of
focus has already led to the program becoming industrialized," Manning
said, referring to a document from 2015 in which the US Department of Defense
revealed the existence of "continuing evaluations" of 100,000
personnel on and off the job.
In the aftermath
of the Wikileaks revelations in 2010, where Manning downloaded and distributed
thousands of classified documents, the Obama administration formed the National
Insider Threat Task Force. The task force was comprised of a number of
government agencies, including the Office of the Director of National
Intelligence and the Department of Justice. That initiative was applicable to
anyone who worked for a federal agency.
Some civil rights
groups have found the way Manning's gender dysphoria is cast in the document to
be particularly egregious. US officials imply that Manning's gender identity
had a significant part to play in her decision to leak the documents. The
version of the document using Manning as a case study was drawn up in 2014, 10
days before she legally changed her gender from male to female. As a result,
the document uses male pronouns to describe Manning.
"During PVT
Manning's service in the US army, he struggled with his self-image as a man
when he wanted to be an openly accepted female in the US army."
"The program
alleges that I am 'disgruntled' based on my perceived sexual orientation and
gender identity," Manning wrote in response to the documents. "It
describes me as an 'advocate for homosexuals openly serving' in the military,
and my concern and advocacy of queer and trans rights as being expressed
'obsessively.'"
The ideology
Manning espoused, according to the document, was that of a hacker who deemed
"all information (government in particular) should be public
knowledge."
That Manning had
reportedly broken up with her boyfriend before being deployed to Iraq, that she
worked the late shift, and that she researched gay rights
"obsessively," were also red flags, according to the document.
There are no
federal statutes that limit a private employer from surveilling their staff.
However, the Federal Privacy Act does limit the amount of information a federal
employer can collect on their employees. As a way of getting around those
restrictions, the "Insider Threat" initiative basically provides all
federal employers with a warrant.
The program also
fosters a "if you see something, say something" mentality in the
workplace — effectively encouraging people to keep tabs on their co-workers.
"In past espionage cases, we find people saw things that may have helped
identify a spy, but never reported it," Gene Barlow, a spokesman for the
Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive said in 2013. "That is why the awareness effort of
the program is to teach people not only what types of activity to report, but
how to report it and why it is so important to report it."
Follow Tess Owen
on Twitter: @misstessowen
TOPICS: chelsea manning, edward snowden, manning, insider threat, americas, federal government,government, espionage, wikileaks, civil liberties, transgender, gender dysphoria, defense & security,united states, surveillance, spying, nsa
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The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
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