Wikileaks: Expert says enemy could've used info

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By DAVID DISHNEAU Associated Press
Posted: 08/08/2013 02:42:11 AM MDT
Updated: 08/08/2013 01:13:15 PM MDT

FORT MEADE, Md.— ... Navy Cmdr. Youssef Aboul-Enein (ah-BOOL' ah-NYN'), author of the book, "Militant Islamist Ideology," and an adviser at the Pentagon's Defense Combatting Terrorism Center, noted that the leaked information included reports of significant battlefield activities, known as "SIGACTS."

Based upon al-Qaida's previous use of training materials obtained from adversaries, "one can only deduce that out of the thousands of SIGACTs that have been leaked, they could possibly, potentially deduce a pattern of behavior by United States combat forces," Aboul-Enein said.

But the commander also acknowledged the speculative nature of his testimony during Manning's sentencing hearing, at Fort Meade, near Baltimore.

The military judge allowed him to testify over strenuous defense objections. Army Col. Denise Lind will rule as early as Friday on whether the evidence is admissible ...

http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_23819982/author-militant-islam-is-manning-trial-witness

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1. Judge casts doubt on damage caused by whistleblower Bradley Manning’s US secret data leaks

David Usborne
Wednesday 07 August 2013

... Judge Denise Lind said she would only admit evidence of the “chilling effects” his actions have had on US diplomacy if those effects were observed directly after the information was made public ...

As part of the ruling, Judge Lind threw out testimony given on Tuesday by Patrick Kennedy, an Under-Secretary of State, in which he said information published online more than two years ago, which was traced to Manning, continued to hurt US diplomatic efforts around the world. He said diplomats now felt they had to be more restrained in what they could write in a cable for fear that it might be leaked.

“The State Department has had situations in which individuals have felt they ‘don’t have the same ability to engage in the level of full and frank discussion’ prior to the disclosures,” Mr Kennedy told the court ...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/judge-casts-doubt-on-damage-caused-by-whistleblower-bradley-mannings-us-secret-data-leaks-8750981.html

[msongs]

2. or he could just be making sh** up on orders from his superiors nt

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3. Manning's WikiLeaks breach triggered costly U.S. Army scramble - witness

August 7, 2013 - 18:52
By Tom Ramstack

FORT MEADE, Maryland (Reuters) - ... Retired Colonel James McCarl said the release of hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables, battlefield videos and other classified data on the WikiLeaks pro-transparency website prompted a flurry of activity as officials scrambled to assess the potential degree of impact on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ...

McCarl said commanders were concerned that enemy fighters might use the information released in 2010 to hone their strategies against the United States.

An initial military review included assigning personnel to read the first 2,000 documents in a set of 110,000 that might include military information, then write a computer program to sort through them, said McCarl, who oversaw part of the review ...

"Our calculation is that we spent 855 man-hours, which equates to roughly about $200,000 (129,007.29 pounds) to do all that work," McCarl said ...

http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/news/international/Mannings_WikiLeaks_breach_triggered_costly_U.S._Army_scramble_-_witness.html?cid=36628242

The McCarl estimate comes out to over 2 hrs/document for the 2000 documents assessed. Reading these 110K documents as a fulltime job (8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year) and devoting 5 minutes/document, a person could get through this subset of Manning's release in about four and a half years

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4. shouldawouldacoulda -- what excuse wouldn't a sponge use that soaks up that much

money use to justify it's appetite.