Teen behind hundreds of swatting attacks pleads guilty to federal charges

That's more than a decade less than what Chelsea Manning or John Kiriakou was sentenced to. It's absurd that the punishment is much harsher for unspecified theoretical harm caused by whistleblowing than the very real harm caused by literal murder attempts.

Perhaps, but 20 years is a significan portion of someone's life.

The courts wanting to make an example of those that have embarrassed the government is a different issue entirely.

Crimes against the state or that that thumb their nose at the authority of the state always carry disproportionate punishments because the state is who's writing the rules, running the systems, creating the sentencing guidelines, etc.

There's a 0% chance he spends the next 20 years of his life incarcerated.

Kiriakou was sentenced to 30 months not 30 years.

As far as harm goes Manning's leaks exposed the identities of a lot of people who cooperated with the US or the Afghanistan government against the Taliban. When the Taliban found out about such people they would go after them.

We probably will never know how many, if any, people got killed from being exposed in the leaks because there is no way to know if the Taliban found them out through the leaks or through some other source. The odds are pretty good that it was more than one, probably a lot more.

The swatting teen on the other hand is known to have not actually gotten anyone killed.

A crucial difference is that when the teen sent someone to your house they were not there to kill you. They were there to do something that sometimes goes wrong and does kill, but most of the time that doesn't happen.

Someone coming to your house because the Manning leaks identified you as cooperating against the Taliban was there to kill you.

> Kiriakou was sentenced to 30 months not 30 years.

My bad, but still egregious nonetheless.

> As far as harm goes Manning's leaks exposed the identities of a lot of people

You're after different people. It's Luke Harding and David Leigh from the Guardian that published the password to the unredacted files.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/09/unredacted_us...

> We probably will never know how many, if any, people got killed from being exposed in the leaks

This is exactly what I meant by "unspecified and theoretical." The government had over 2 decades to point to any instances of harm. Where are they?

Also again, Chelsea Manning didn't publish the unredacted files. It's rich to blame her for Afghanistan deaths while ignoring the actions of Bush and every president after him, where the ultimate responsibility lies.

> A crucial difference is that when the teen sent someone to your house they were not there to kill you.

No, the crucial difference is intent. Swatting kills people, swatters know that, but they do it anyways for their own pleasure. Obviously, swatters aren't sending trigger-happy cops so that their victims can survive.

Meanwhile, Chelsea Manning exposed war crimes. This is whistleblowing, not some selfish "leak." The intent here is to save lives, the exact opposite of swatting. I don't know how anyone can demonize whistleblowing while trivializing swatting.