Chelsea Manning: ‘Insider Threat’ Program Seeks to Identify Next Government Whistleblower

The U.S. government is investigating thousands of its employees (whom it has placed under permanent surveillance) for signs of “greed,” “ego,” money worries, disgruntlement or other problems — all in the hope of preventing the next big leak, a document obtained by whistleblower Chelsea Manning reveals.

Ed Pilkington reports at The Guardian:

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.

The file was compiled under the “Insider Threat” program that was set up by President Obama in the wake of Manning’s disclosures. The file shows that officials have been using Manning’s story as a case study from which they have built a profile of the modern official leaker in the hope of catching future disclosures before they happen.

At the start of the 31-page file, government officials list the eight characteristics that agents should look for in employees as telltale 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.

The Insider Threat analysis claims that Manning displayed several of those eight core motives of the prototype leaker. Before she transmitted hundreds of thousands of secret documents to WikiLeaks, she showed signs of disgruntlement, the file states.

Continue reading here.

—Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.