The terrorists/spies have definitely changed tactics. They're putting on government uniforms now.

This amendment was expected to be voted down by a large margin, which is why it was allowed to be voted on. In light of that fact, the 205 to 217 result actually makes this a significant victory for privacy advocates.

My first thought when reading this: So, the CIA has realized climate change could be a problem in the future. It sounds like the CIA is putting together a research group tasked with looking at alternatives if existing methods for reducing pollution don't end up working or if we can't get enough of the population to buy into them. For that matter, I've seen reports that global warming is irreversible. If that's true, shouldn't we be looking into these alternatives?

That's probably reasonable. Some of the claims the government are making, such as that the Whistleblowers may not have had a broad enough perspective to fully understand the systems in question, aren't that unreasonable. However, much of the speculation I'm hearing about the system sounds reasonable and accurate. The amount of information that one could infer through the collection of sender, receiver, duration, and a time-stamp is crazy... particularly if one had a known data set to train the system with.

Ordinarily, this guy is full of crap and his videos about guns are way off base. However, he has provided the best account of metadata and metadata analysis I've seen aimed at the layperson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o2djiZOxyA

... are confirming what Snowden says. I'm certain someone is lying, though.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/14/nsa-partisanship-propaganda-prism

Let's be a little precise about our choice of words. This chemistry experiment doesn't create a giant fireball or spray of metallic shrapnel. It creates an exploding plastic soft drink bottle. The explosion itself is also low velocity. Rather than saying "lots of children", we really mean "about a dozen children." When we say "harmed", we really mean "scratched by flying plastic" as long as proper eye protection is worn. This was, unquestionably, a violation of the school's rules and being expelled may be an appropriate response. Let's not pretend, though, that this was really a significant public safety hazard. There's no reason to make an "example" out of this student.

As a side note, I actually had a teacher demonstrate this experiment in my high school physics class(more than 10 years ago, at this point). We determined the force of explosion and then used the force of the exposition to calculate to how far away we would have to stand in order to be safe. I directly attribute my interest in physics to how fun and exciting this experiment was.

I recognized that corresponds is hiding behind an 'or' operator. That was my point. There are six conditions here joined by an 'or'

1. knowlingly harbors.

2. Protects

3. gives intelligence to

4. communicates [with]

5. corresponds with

6. holds any intercourse with the enemy [Woohoo! - kidding]

1 is obviously not applicable here. 2 is probably not applicable. I was arguing that 4-6 weren't applicable. Item #3 depends on whether one considers Wikileaks to be "the enemy" unless one thinks that any whistleblower, by definition, is guilty of treason. If dywolf is correct in his/her response to me, I would argue an overly broad definition of the concept of "the enemy". 6 Falses joined with an Or is a false.

I may be wrong here, though. I'm not a legal expert. Maybe there's an inferred comma I'm missing.

If I were Manning's defender, I would argue that he did not either communicate or correspond with the enemy either directly or indirectly. It's pretty clear there wasn't any correspondence. Manning and Bin Laden weren't writing letters back and forth to each other. He communicated with Wikileaks. To my knowledge, Congress hasn't declared war on Wikileaks. It isn't even a foreign government. Direct communication is out, then. How about indirect communication? Well, maybe. If that's so, then any soldier appearing in the media is communicating with the enemy since section 2 doesn't actually require any information change hands.

I may be wrong here, but I'm relatively certain that since the UCMJ uses the word "attempt" that the prosecution needs to establish Manning's intent in releasing the information. Was his intent to aid the enemy? I don't know. The fact that he attempted to go to the New York Times first seems to suggest that his intent was to release important information that he probably thought the military was inappropriately covering up.

Suppose there's a soldier interested in math and cryptography stationed in a less than pleasant section of Afganistan. Suppose, when he isn't on duty, he's reading an applied cryptography text and suppose that text gets damaged somehow. Finally, suppose he decides to throw the damage text away but it is retrieved by some enemy combatant with a talent for math who uses it to learn how to encrypt his cell's communications more effectively. Was the soldier attempting to aid the enemy? No. There's clearly no intent. One might suppose the soldier was behaving negligently... but he clearly wasn't acting treasonous.

That's true. There may, however, be a need to prove that Manning believed the information to be valuable to the enemy. It's difficult intend to aid the enemy by giving them something that wouldn't help them. If Manning didn't believe the information would be beneficial to the enemy, he couldn't have been attempting to aid them. Furthermore, it doesn't follow that information important to the American public would necessarily be information valuable to the enemy.

Suppose the army started giving soldiers some pill packed full of nutrients which could be carried in place of food. Given all the organic food freaks out there, this might be something the public would care about. It might even be a source of criticism. If the organic food freaks end up convincing congress that this pills is unhealthy, it might also hamper military operations. Would blowing the whistle on this nutrient pill be aiding the enemy? No way.

Shouldn't this read 'subconscious' rather than 'unconscious'? I doubt the students in these trials were hit in the head with baseball bats.

I love my Windows Phone (HTC Arrive). For comparison, I have a personal Android tablet and an iPad I use at work, so I've got a little bit of experience with all of the operating systems. I regularly use my phone for watching Netflix, web-browsing, quick email responses, minor document editing, and minor sys admin work. I think the WP OS is very intuitive and I love that SkyDrive is native. I think the default web browser interface could probably be refined a bit, but I fully intend to stick with this OS as long as Microsoft supports it. My only complaint is that I would like the ability to write Apps for myself without having to go through the WP Marketplace.

I have to wonder if more arrests will be coming soon. A mole is only as good as long as the group the mole is infiltrating doesn't know the mole is a mole. While Lulzsec is generally thought of as distinct from Anonymous, there is overlap and this guy might have passed information about that overlap.