Jens David Ohlin, an international and criminal law expert and professor of law at Cornell University, argues that the Bradley Manning conviction illustrates the pitfalls of an ‘ever increasing’ reliance on classified data collection.
Ohlin says:“Bradley Manning's sentence of 35 years in prison finally brings to a close the most stunning information disclosure in the history of the U.S. military. The case ushered in the era of Wikileaks and foreshadowed the Edward Snowden affair. Information – and secrecy – will never be the same again.”
“If we have learned anything from these events, it is that the ever-increasing technological foundation of data collection is also its greatest weakness. Network computers and electronic databases have radically increased the government's ability to collect and store data, but they have also facilitated the leaking of this data to the public. Fifty years ago it was inconceivable that a single individual would have access to, or the ability to transmit, such a large trove of documents.”
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