A Mixed Message !

It is traditional that in the final hours of holding office the outgoing president of the United States of America has the right to confer pardons on prisoners - without having to give an account or reason for those decisions.  Barack Obama has astonished many people by ordering the release from prison of Chelsea Manning.

In  2010 Private Bradley Manning was serving  in the US Army.  He had a sensitive job processing military signals and information and fellow workers remembered that he always worked with music playing in the background.   What they failed to realise  was that these music discs were really a decoy.  Manning was transferring top secret government files onto blank discs which he was smuggling out at the end of his shift.

A huge trove of critically sensitive information was made available by Manning to Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.   When WikiLeaks released this on the Internet it caused a huge stir and great embarrassment in government circles.  Manning was arrested and sentenced to thirty-five years in America's military prison of Fort Leavenworth in Kansas.  He was not found guilty of the most serious charge - of  "aiding the enemy "- which would have attracted the death penalty.

Bradley Manning, now 29 was granted medical permission for a sex change while in Leavenworth and is now a woman known as Chelsea Manning.  She is likely to walk out the gates a free woman in a few days time.

This Obama act of mercy is certainly sending mixed signals.  Manning is reviled by many people as a traitor, while others hail him - or now her - as a whistleblower because the released documents revealed many American law breaches.   It is uncertain how this message will be received by others handling sensitive government information across both the civilian and military spectrum.  It does seem to give a seal of approval to releasing the nation's secrets where they conflict with the law.

To further complicate the issue, Julian Assange has been holed up in a foreign embassy in London because he fears extradition to Sweden to face a controversial rape charge.   He believes that the moment he sets foot on Swedish soil the US will implement extradition proceedings and if he faces an American court he will get a life term for espionage.   It is reported that he recently gave an assurance that he would surrender to transportation to Sweden - if Manning is released.  So far, Assange has remained silent since the announcement of Obama's clemency.

If nothing else, this highlights the almost impossible task of maintaining secrecy that confronts governments  across the world.   The wonders of computers and the Internet are finely balance by the barriers of passwords and firewalls to prevent unauthorised access, but there still needs to be input by people who are screened and cleared to pose no danger.   As the Manning data theft illustrated, security is only as strong as the weakest link in the processing chain.   As a serving soldier in the army there would be a reasonable assumption that processing sensitive information could be safely left in his hands.

Many people will deplore this pardon.   Many others will hail it as a victory for whistleblowers to unmask illegal actions by governments and bring them to the attention of the world.   It will certainly bring home the sheer impossibility of guaranteeing state secrets in this age of the computer !