Disturbingly, the First Amendment, along with the Fourth Amendment - protecting against unreasonable searches and seizures, and requiring warrants - have been the major casualties of the shift in government policy in the last two decades. Unfortunately, I think that the biggest consequences of this tragedy won't be clear until it is far, far too late.
Chelsea ManningThe press and free speech landscape has totally changed. There is far less news reporting today. Instead, we have this endless stream of - largely meaningless and speculative - analysis by sideline commentators and self-proclaimed "experts."
Chelsea ManningWhile being tossed around the world from place to place as a teenager, I wasn't really tethered to any place or anyone.
Chelsea ManningI don't believe that Freedom of Information laws, which have arbitrary time periods or broad blanket exemptions, meet the level of transparency that society needs today.
Chelsea ManningI think that the next two generations of Americans will be grappling with the very real specter of finding themselves living in a new and bizarre kind of digital totalitarian state - one that looks and feels democratic on the surface, but has a fierce undercurrent of fear and technologically enforced fascism any time you step out of line. I really hope this isn't the case, but it looks really bad right now, doesn't it?
Chelsea ManningI think the increased ubiquity of the internet and networked computing in general allowed me to have some tether no matter where I was geographically. I could log in to a computer from anywhere in the world and access the same information and the same people. It allowed me to transcend the physical differences.
Chelsea ManningI lived a few miles outside of a tiny town in central Oklahoma. I would often run amok though the fields of wheat, the patches of trees, along the railroad tracks, and on red dirt roads. This had a profound effect on my view of the world - vast, open-ended, full of opportunity, and ready for exploration.
Chelsea Manning