Chelsea Manning: government anti-leak program a 'blank check for surveillance'

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http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/18/chelsea-manning-insider-threat-surveillance-government-employees

Exclusive: ‘Insider Threat’ program, based largely on Manning’s WikiLeaks disclosures, targets government employees for ‘continuous evaulation’ using a variety of subjective labels

Chelsea Manning: government anti-leak program a 'blank check for surveillance'
Ed Pilkington in New York
Friday 18 March 2016 08.09 EDT

Thousands of US government employees under permanent surveillance are being investigated for signs of “greed”, “ego”, money worries, disgruntlement or other flaws in the hope of intercepting the next big official leak, according to a document obtained by Chelsea Manning.

The extent of the government’s internal surveillance system designed to prevent massive leaks of the sort linked to WikiLeaks and the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden is revealed in the document, published here by the Guardian for the first time. The US soldier, who is serving 35 years in military prison as the source of the 2010 WikiLeaks disclosure of secret state documents, requested her own intelligence file under freedom of information laws.

~snip~

At the start of the 31-page file, government officials list the eight characteristics that agents should look for in employees as tell-tale signs that they might be tempted to reveal state secrets. The character traits are called “Insider Threat motives”.

Those surveillance categories are themselves extracted from an analysis of Chelsea Manning’s story. In the document Manning is referred to in male gender pronouns as the file was composed on 14 April 2014 – nine days before the prisoner was legally allowed to change her name as part of her transition as a transgender woman.