
Chelsea Manning is tweeting from prison - SwellJoe
https://twitter.com/xychelsea
======
clamprecht
When I was doing my time in the Fed (1995-2000), my friends & mom had set up a
web page for me.[1] Sometime around '96 or '97, the prison Captain
(responsible for security) found out and had me fired from my "good" job.
(Good job meant I was working at the Unicor factory, where I could have
eventually made $200/month). I was transferred to be an "orderly" (which means
janitor), earning $5/month at the Captain's office, so he could keep an eye on
me.

Eventually I found out the reason he had me fired was because the prison
officials didn't like the attention that my web page brought, and they also
though I was somehow accessing the Internet from the Unicor factory (they had
terminals there, which I wasn't allowed to be near). My case started getting
attention, media interviews, etc. At one point, I was told directly by the
prison staff attorney to stop all the attention. I scaled it back enough to
where they stopped harassing me. It's definitely a tradeoff - the more
attention you get, the more they will fuck with you in there.

[1]
[https://web.archive.org/web/19990222022940/http://www.parano...](https://web.archive.org/web/19990222022940/http://www.paranoia.com/~mthreat/)

~~~
byuu
It's amazing the way prisoners work for $5 a month; and the best possible
outcome is $200/mo. Even though slavery was supposedly abolished, it seems
like prisons never got that memo.

And since most people won't ever step foot inside one, we just pretend it's a
non-issue because a) they must be bad people for being in there; and b) it's
not our problem.

You know, until it is. But don't worry, if and when that happens, I'm sure
we'll get the same sympathy for our plight as we have spared to those before
us.

~~~
shantanubala
Slavery is explicitly permitted in prisons by the constitution.

> Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime
> whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the
> United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

[https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiii](https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiii)

~~~
nitrogen
It could be argued that prison labor is "cruel and unusual" by modern
standards.

~~~
maccard
AFAIK it's voluntary, no? Also, given the choice between working 8(?) hours a
day, or sitting staring at a cell wall for the same hours, which would you
pick? (I'd pick the work)

~~~
byuu
I'd absolutely choose staring at walls to cleaning toilets for $5 a month.

But if it's completely voluntary, and you won't face any direct nor indirect
retaliation for refusing, then I have less of a problem with it (it still
distorts the labor market when they take jobs from people not incarcerated,
and the taxpayers are the ones subsidizing those jobs.)

~~~
jarin
You still need stuff from the commissary though, so unless someone is putting
money in your prison account you'll need to get money somehow. I'd rather
clean toilets for $5/month than some of the other alternatives (I don't know
what they would be but I imagine they're not pleasant).

------
rtkwe
> Also for those of you asking: @fitzgibbonmedia is handling my account for
> the time being

So it sounds like Manning doesn't have Twitter access but instead is probably
giving whatever tweets she wants to send out to the Fitz Gibbon Media. Not
much different from the old statements and letters from prison other than
where it ends up.

PS: For anyone else who was confused like me since it's been a while: Chelsea
Manning == Bradley Manning.

------
fluxist
When I was in, there was at least one "celebrity" inmate living with me
maintaining his twitter feed in the same way -- dictating to a friend over the
phone. A twitter feed on its own is not indicative of the experience and
brutality of his incarceration. Hopefully he'll speak to that himself and
raise awareness. But do not doubt, he faces a threat to his safety by doing
so.

I think, with an eye toward's the arc of history, that some day I'll see
Chelsea Manning's term commuted and Edward Snowden pardoned.

I hope, at least. It's a disturbing alternative to countenance. In this
country the prisoner is always regarded as subhuman. And his suffering is
effectively irrelevant.

------
forrestthewoods
Many prisoners get daily e-mail access. For outsiders there's either a web
portal or an app. With the app you get a push notification when there's a new
message. It's _almost_ like texting, except it takes a few hours for any
message to go through. Roundtrip can be a few more hours since e-mail access
from the inside isn't continuous.

[https://www.corrlinks.com](https://www.corrlinks.com)

------
AlwaysBCoding
This is unbelievable if true. Why has nobody thought of tweeting from prison
before? It's genius. Is there anything the government can legally do to
prevent this from happening? Do you have the right to freely distribute your
thoughts while incarcerated?

If there were more prison twitter accounts it would do wonders towards
expsosing how absurd our judicial / prison system is. More people should be
live tweeting court cases / prison sentences. Could Adnan Syed have done
companion tweets to the Serial podcast? This idea is so interesting.

~~~
A_COMPUTER
Weev did it: [http://www.dailydot.com/news/andrew-weev-auernheimer-
prison-...](http://www.dailydot.com/news/andrew-weev-auernheimer-prison-
livetweeting/)

An apparently was punished for it: [http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-
media/weev-in-solitary-c...](http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/weev-
in-solitary-confinement-for-remotely-tweeting-from-prison/)

------
EGreg
Wait, don't prisons penalize social media use by inmates very harshly? Does
Chelsea manning have a lifetime sentence?

[http://rt.com/usa/232235-prison-facebook-solitary-
southcarol...](http://rt.com/usa/232235-prison-facebook-solitary-
southcarolina/)

------
xnull2guest
Has this been confirmed?

 _Edit_ : Looks like CNN, RollingStone, and The Guardian are all reporting
this.

~~~
SwellJoe
It has been covered by USAToday, NBC News, etc. If it's not legit, it's a
reasonably elaborate hoax. Though the source always seems to be the media
company in question, I guess it's still actually up in the air. But, tweets
have mentioned Glen Greenwald and others who would be among the most capable
of debunking it, and most likely to do so, if it's fake.

[http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/chelsea-manning-joins-
tw...](http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/chelsea-manning-joins-twitter-
prison-n335461)

[http://news.yahoo.com/supporters-help-chelsea-manning-
starts...](http://news.yahoo.com/supporters-help-chelsea-manning-starts-
tweeting-181100521.html)

~~~
xnull2guest
Agreed on all points. Compelling.

Kind of a scandal: "US's largest leaker broadcasting from military prison".

I wonder how long the Twitter access will last.

~~~
dublinben
Manning isn't using Twitter directly. An outside group is transcribing phone
calls.

~~~
pakled_engineer
Marc Emery did the same thing and BOP threw him in solitary for criticism on
his blog that his wife transcribed for him. I imagine Manning's privs will
disappear quickly now that this story is out.

------
VOYD
Lame.

------
dpritchett
Does HN still have those frustrating title renaming rules? If so this would be
a good time to insist on using them.

~~~
SwellJoe
What's wrong with the title? (Genuinely would like to do better next time.)

~~~
cachvico
Second that - what's wrong with the title? It's descriptive, neutral, factual.

~~~
kzrdude
It's missing an indication that she is tweeting via an intermediary.

~~~
cachvico
I think the important part is that she has a Twitter account, and is using it.

