Not sure why swatting isn’t treated like attempted murder
replies(3):
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.
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.