Obama Pardoned Chelsea Manning – The biggest secret document leaker ever

Was it the right thing to do? Will it harm our future security? John McAfee says we need a security reboot, and I agree. But I don’t think the government can help us there.

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Transcript

TTWCP-DAILY-13_2017-01-18-Obamas-Chelsea-Manning-Pardon

Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors.

Airing date: 01/18/2017

Obama’s Chelsea Manning Pardon – Security Needs a Reboot

Craig Peterson: Wow, today’s show is really necessary. Let me tell you. Little Sanity Check this morning on a couple of different things. First of all, this whole Chelsea Manning thing, what’s going on? Why the pardon from president Obama and how is that gonna affect our cybertechnology spycraft etcetera. And then also, we’re gonna talk about how that folds over into our businesses out there. What is going on? What has been happening here? You know, America really needs a cyber-reboot. All of that and a lot more. Stick around.

(TTWCP EARWORM)

Wow, there is never a boring moment here in the tech world and if you try and move in to also a little bit of politics, wow. Then it really gets interesting because let’s look at WikiLeaks. Let’s look at what has happened here. President Obama just pardoned Bradley Manning, Chelsea Manning, he’s going by Chelsea Manning now. Now, the big question is why?

Now some people are saying well, you know Bradley wants to undergo the sex change surgery and President Obama doesn’t want him to become Chelsea Manning physically while he is in prison. No one should have to go through that. And whether or not you think that our taxpayers should be paying for sexual transition surgery is a different issue. But what is the issue here is the sentence. 35 year sentence for leaking highly classified documents. Now I looked at those documents early this week. I went through a few of them. And in fact we talked about one just a couple of days ago here on my daily podcast Tech Talk with Craig Peterson’s Daily. But what’s interesting to me is looking at some of the dates. I noticed right off the bat, in the headers of these documents, it said that it was to remain secret until 2032. Now that’s a very, very long time.

Now, Bradley was looking at these documents and, you know, looked at those and said well wait a minute now, the United States doing things it shouldn’t be doing here. It’s doing things that are illegal under US law. Certainly unconstitutional by monitoring the United States public. The United States citizens without right. Without cause. Without warrant. And so he releases them. Let’s just assume that that’s what he was thinking. Let’s not get into the debate. You never know what someone was thinking. You’ll never, ever know. What you know is what they did. So let’s assume that’s the case. Let’s assume that Bradley Manning was a true patriot. He was trying to help the American public know what its government was doing illegally, immorally, unconstitutionally, and so he figured he had come up with the way to get that information out. So out it goes and it’s released. Now, you know, WikiLeaks, blah, blah. That was the mechanism. But what really does it do here? Are we wiser because of it as an American public? Absolutely. Has it exposed the government spying on all of us? Of course it has. We didn’t know about this before Snowden and before Manning, right? We really didn’t know. You know we had our suspicions.

Government’s forever have been involved in spycraft where we spy on the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians. We’re probably frankly spying on every country in the world. And that’s kinda legitimate, right? Sometimes they get upset when they are our allies. Our enemies suspect that we’re behind every rock out there. But how about us as US citizens? Should we be monitored? Should the government be recording everything in a data center out in Utah that it can later

use to figure out what our ties are, what our ties were. The whole idea is we recorded all. We don’t process. We don’t really analyze it, unless you are within 3 people of someone else. Like the Kevin Bacon principle, right? 5 degrees of separation.

So if, for instance me, I’m a media guy. You know, in real life I’m a security guy and helped with networks and helped develop the internet. I’ve been doing that since 1981, ok? Very, very long time. But I’m a media guy. No question about it. Radio show, TV. Been doing this for decades. So as a radio guy, as a media person, as kind of a super minor celebrity, I have certain ability to talk about things that maybe, maybe other people just don’t have. And I’ve interviewed more than now, I think 8,000 CEOs worldwide. CEOs, CTOs, CMOs, all those types. Guess what? I am positive, I have interviewed someone who was within 3 degrees of separation from a person of interest by the NSA, CIA, maybe even the FBI.

So I have to suspect that I’m being monitored. That I’m being recorded. But the idea behind keeping all this data is they find someone who is a person of interest now they can go back years and see who that person spoke with. What emails did they send? What did those emails say? In many cases, not every case. What apps did they use? You know you can get right down to it. It gets kinda crazy. But they wanted the ability to peer into the past. And that’s what they got. So, how legitimate is that? How good is it for our national defense? And I remember last year where… oh my, who was it? Was it Comey? I can’t remember. It was someone from the FBI. And it was asked by congress, hey listen, have you ever been able to solve a case, prevent a crime using all these data that’s collected on Americans and the answer was no. they hadn’t solved a single crime using all that data.

So you and I look at it and say well, I don’t really have anything to hide. But yet on the other hand, do you? Could the government make a case that you have done something illegal? That you’ve misrepresented something? You know the police can lie to you all day long but you cannot lie to the police. So it’s kinda interesting here. They could set you up, they could corner you. They could put you into a corner. And maybe it’s not gonna happen now, right? But in 5 years, 10 years now. And what happens all of that data is hacked? It’s happened right? People have used that data. They’re working for government agencies to track spouses, girlfriends. It’s absolutely crazy. We should not have that information.

So the question here with Manning is was it legit for him release it on one hand absolutely not. Top secret, classified information. But now you get into the whistleblower’s side of it and say should he have released it? Then there’s people who would say no, he should not have released it. And then there’s other people who look at it and say, well, ok. Yeah, he shouldn’t have released it but it had good information. So now we get down to Obama’s pardon. Was it something that he shouldn’t have done? I think absolutely he shouldn’t have done that. Was it information that we the public needed to have? Yes it was. So, should he have been convicted? Yes. Should he receive the sentence? I don’t think so. I really don’t think so on my part. So, having Obama give him a… he hasn’t been relieved of having committed the crime, but cutting his sentence way back, I think, makes sense. So, I think that’s something I can agree with president Obama on.

Now those businesses out there who think that they don’t really have to do much about security, yeah, we got some anti-virus and so, but you’re not keeping up with the patches. You’re not keeping up with the updates and that’s something that Windows 10 has helped with, but it hasn’t solved that problem, where it’s doing some of those updates automatically for you. If you have a Mac, yeah, it’s doing some of those updates for you. But I gotta tell you, just remind you, you’re not getting all the updates you should. So an interesting article came out in town hall today. You’ll find that on my website, http://CraigPeterson.com, America Needs a Cybersecurity Reboot. It’s really an interesting read. You should have a look at it. It’s talking about John McAfee, of course, a security pioneer with a very big mouth. But he’s not

optimistic about the future. And he thinks that we need to change our cybersecurity immediately. And I have to agree with him. And I’ve got to warn the business people up there that the federal government is not going to be able to help you solve these problems. These security problems you have you have to solve yourself.

And I’ve got some stuff going on that’s gonna make it easier for you to solve these problems yourselves. I’ve got a whole new business model that I’m launching frankly. But we’re gonna be putting together videos and audio and some training and some tools that you just can’t get anywhere else that you need. But you also have to remember the government’s gonna come after you when your information’s stolen. They’re gonna lose money and we’ve talked about that before in my radio show. One company just lost $43 million on a very, very simple social engineering hack.

And the government on the other side, they’ll find you. They’ll even throw you in jail. But on the other side, they’re not going to help. The government cannot take care of your cybersecurity. You have to do it yourself. So really, really pay attention. If you need some help, reach out to me, that’s what I do. That’s what my company does. We have a family owned company. Been in business since ’91. And we’ve been helping businesses ever since. So if you need some help let me know. And also keep an eye out. Make sure you subscribe to my email. It comes out every Saturday morning and it’s a summary of the week’s articles. I’ll let you know when they’re when I’m looking for some kinda beta testers if you will of this whole new business model on security. It’s so important and I’ve been so frustrated for so long that people aren’t doing what they should be doing but I get it. It’s confusing. It’s difficult. And it’s expensive and I think we’re gonna take care of all of that for you.

Anyways, I agree with John McAfee, cybersecurity needs a reboot and the federal government is not gonna be able to solve this problem. I don’t care how big they are. China, with their huge federal government. Of course the communists don’t forget the government owning the means of production. The government controlling everyone’s lives. The government controlling all of the computers. The government having the great firewall of China. They’re still getting hacked. They’re still getting infected. They still get the viruses and everything else. So the government’s not gonna be able to help here. You have to help yourself. So hopefully we’ll get that stuff out to you soon. Make sure you subscribe to my daily. And also of course by doing that, you get my weekly radio show and also my As Heard Ons as I’m covering these news items on multiple radio stations. Dozens of them throughout the Northeast every week. So all of that right there at http://CraigPeterson.com/itunes. We’re also on TuneIn and a few other places out there so have a look and thanks for being with us today. We’ll be back tomorrow for another TechSanity Check with Craig Peterson. Have a great day.

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Obama Pardoned Chelsea Manning – The biggest secret document leaker ever

Transcript

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