Global surveillance and journalism

The best case is the four whistleblowers from the National Security Agency and their names were Thomas Drake, William Binney, J. Kirk Wiebe and Edward Loomis. They had criticized the project called Trailblazer, exposing the NSA for its Multibillion-dollar contact that went awry. It was cancelled in 2006 but it was supposed to bring in an era to surveillance in the digital age it was called SIGINT. The lost money in the projects failure still remains unknown to the public but kept a state secret. This goes all the way back to 2002 when another in-house program was denied by the agency director Gen. Michael Haydenhow devoted it just three weeks before 9/11. So in 2002 the three whistleblowers went to the pentagon to advise them to do an investigation on the NSA.

Binney had claimed the United States is in a police state, that concedes with other regimes such as the KGB, the Stasi, Gestapo, and the SS. But the U.S has more power than them because of the technology they have acquired. He describes the U.S state now as the Weimar Republicwas the prior liberal democracy before the Nazi regime. Back in 2011 the Pentagon's Office of Inspector General(OIG) declassified documents that are the only response for the claims that come from the four whistleblowers. The documents go further into the fault of the NSA for wasting resources on the failed attempt at Trailblazer.[10]

Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, a State Department contractor who allegedly had a conversation about North Korea with James Rosen of Fox News Channel,[11] and Jeffrey Sterling, who allegedly was a source for James Risen's book State of War. Risen has also been subpoenaed to reveal his sources, another rare action by the government. Also, Shamai Leibowitz, a contract linguist for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was convicted of leaking information from embassy wiretaps,[12] Such as John Kiriakou, he is serving thirty-month term due to making public that an intelligence ops is using torture. This is where most whistleblowers find themselves viewing awful crimes but while they exposing what is going on they get punished serval, as the ones who have committed the original act goes untouched.[10]

Chelsea Manning was a United States Army soldier who in 2013 was convicted of illegally downloading military reports that were unclassified and sensitive military documents. The documents were from both wars the U.S was involved in, Iraq and Afghanistan. Where she had acquired the documents, was on the military base in Baghdad.[13]

With the documents that were leaked Manning wanted to put censorship on the sources that would in danger troops or national security such as Nuclear information. She didn't want to in danger any troops by giving away there movements and patterns during the war but instead she wanted to expose the missteps and misguided policies that pledged the war.

She had provided Wikileaks with the evidence of the Collateral Murder where the U.S army had killed 12 unarmed citizens with an Apache attack helicopter. They were attacked in a Baghdad suburb. Among the killed two of the victims were Reuters staff. Manning stated that the act was "Bloodlust", and example of the U.S military acting irresponsible in the Iraq War. As seen on the footage one aerial weapons team eggs on a wounded Iraqi to put up a gun so that they could have probable reason to keep firing.[14]

On August 21, 2013 was sentenced to thirty-five years for providing the sensitive documents to WikiLeaks. She only served seven of those years due to be commuted by the out going president Barack Obama. While in prison Manning tried taking her life twice due to the struggles over her gender, trying to fight to get a gender reassignment.[15]

During a court case that was for investigating Julien Assange ties to Manning herself back prior in 2010. She was ordered to testify in front of a grand jury but since it was a secret panel she refused to testify. So on March 8 was ordered to be put back to jail in Alexandria, VA. She will be locked in there until she testifies or the jury is wound up. She still remains behind bars even till today.[16]

External video
Video from The Guardian including footage of destruction

In June and July 2013, Prime Minister David Cameron sent Jeremy Heywood, the Cabinet Secretary, to meet with Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian.[23] Accordingly, Heywood ordered the editor to cease publishing articles based on the Snowden disclosures. According to The Guardian, Heywood said: "We can do this nicely or we can go to law", adding that "A lot of people in government think you should be closed down".[23]

On July 20, the destruction of computer hard-drives was carried out by several Guardian staff members under the observation of experts from GCHQ.[23][24]

The Guardian said the authorities were told of the existence of multiple copies of the data outside the UK. The deputy editor, Paul Johnson, who was involved in the destruction told Luke Harding about the experience. "It was purely a symbolic act", Johnson said. "We knew that. GCHQ knew that. And the government knew that. It was the most surreal event I have witnessed in British journalism".[25]

Greenwald and his partner David Miranda in 2013

In August 2013 the Metropolitan Police detained Greenwald's partner David Miranda at London's Heathrow Airport under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000, while he was traveling home from Berlin.[26][27][28] A February 2014 court decision upheld the detention as appropriate.[29]

Greenwald described his partner's detention as "clearly intended to send a message of intimidation to those of us who have been reporting on the NSA and GCHQ".[30] Miranda was detained for nine hours and his laptop and other items were seized. He has since sued the Metropolitan Police for misuse of their powers. According to The Guardian the claim, "challenging controversial powers used under schedule 7 to the Terrorism Act 2000, maintains that Miranda was not involved in terrorism and says his right to freedom of expression was curtailed".[31]

In December 2013, Greenwald and Miranda openly advocated for asylum in Brazil for Edward Snowden in exchange for the fugitive leaker's cooperation in investigating the NSA.[32] Brazil responded by saying that it was not interested in investigating the NSA.[33]

On April 11, 2019 Assange was arrested after being taken from the Ecuadorian embassy. The U.S in the Justice Department believes that with the position at Wikileaks during the 2016 elections he had a key role in the Russian attack on the 2016 elections. During the same election had had released DNC staff flies as well, many believe that he released them because the next day was democratic election. Soon after a DNC staffer named Seth Rich was murder and was to believed to be leaking the e-mails. Also the U.S Department of Defense believes that Assange had conspired with Chelsea Manning in cracking a password that was on a U.S Department of Defense computer. Which is stored on a U.S government network and she had downloaded 1,000 of classified documents.[35]