Here's the thing: Bradley Manning made a promise and signed a contract to protect classified information. He broke that promise and was found guilty. Unlike Snowden or Daniel Ellsberg, he was indiscriminate in his disclosure. He basically grabbed a bunch of secret stuff and mailed it to Wikileaks.
The computer fraud law may need changing, but using Manning instead of Swartz as the poster boy wins absolutely zero hearts and minds.
> Unlike Snowden or Daniel Ellsberg, he was indiscriminate in his disclosure.
Well, it was a lot of data, so he passed it to an organization that supposedly had people who could sift through it and post the relevant stuff in redacted form. Unfortunately, those people screwed up and published the encryption key for the unredacted data.
As far as we can tell, Snowden has also leaked things that haven't been published (e.g. most of the PRISM slide deck). It's hard to say how much he's actually leaked, versus how much the press is choosing not to publish for lack of relevance.
> Well, it was a lot of data, so he passed it to an organization that supposedly had people who could sift through it and post the relevant stuff in redacted form. Unfortunately, those people screwed up and published the encryption key for the unredacted data.
That is exactly what was illegal. When Manning couldn't be bothered to even choose what data to leak or not he lost the ability to claim any kind of moral high ground over what happened to it. Unless he personally knew and could trust everyone with access in the WikiLeaks organization he had no way of even truly knowing what would happen if he leaked data that was dangerous to the U.S. or other people.
That's not just a theoretical tweak either; WikiLeaks has had at least two major instances of insiders in the news that don't fully agree with Assange, including the one of their higher-ups, Daniel Domscheit-Berg.
Additionally, whether a leak has been published is completely orthogonal to the question of whether that leak was discriminate. You're right that it's hard to tell that Snowden's leaks are discriminate until the extent of them has been published, but it's at least possible that Snowden chose each leaked briefing judiciously and precisely.
Yes, because blunt analysis of the Mexican government is a war crime.
>U.S. Ambassador Carlos Pascual left Mexico in May 2011 amid furor over leaked cables that angered the Mexican government. Mexican President Felipe Calderon had publicly criticized a cable in which Pacual complained about inefficiency and infighting among Mexican security forces in the campaign against drug cartels.
If Manning only released information about war crimes then he would be a true whistle-blower. Instead he released a whole bunch of information, mostly diplomatic cables which had no relevance to war crimes. He has set back protection for genuine whistleblowers because of his actions.
The computer fraud law may need changing, but using Manning instead of Swartz as the poster boy wins absolutely zero hearts and minds.