Chelsea Manning
Bradley Manning is a United States Army soldier who is facing a court-martial for allegedly releasing vast amounts of classified documents to WikiLeaks (He is the prime suspect of giving files to WikiLeaks). Manning is being held at the Marine Corps Brig, Quantico, Virginia, charged with "transferring classified data" and "delivering national defense information to an unauthorised source", and "aiding the enemy".[1] Manning is gay, and there is speculation that his homosexuality motivated him to leak classified information.[1]
The Australian hacker and founder of the controversial website WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, considers him an unparalleled hero.
Data Leak
Manning was assigned to an unit based near Baghdad, Iraq. He had access to databases used by the United States government to store classified information. He was arrested after Adrian Lamo, a computer hacker, and journalist, informed the FBI that Manning had confided during online IRC chats that he had downloaded material from the confidential databases and passed it to WikiLeaks. The material leaked included videos of American airstrikes, and hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables. It was the largest set of restricted documents ever leaked to the public. Much of it was published subsequently by WikiLeaks or its media partners between April and November 2010.
