Written by From Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation, comes an interesting piece published by the Huffington Post.
After months of isolation and sleep deprivation — psychological torture — Bradley Manning probably no longer knows whether he was involved in leaking collateral murder video and various other scandalous documents. True or not, he is likely to confess to it, but what his captors really want is to get Julian Assange. They want to claim he was involved in convincing Manning to leak the documents so they can punish him too. They could make Manning say so, but testimony from a broken co-defendent may not be very convincing. They need more.
They may try to use you to get it.
And more. He describes how law enforcement can pressure you, how they can use innocent statements to convict you of things you didn’t do, and finishes with a somewhat stark warning.
If you’re in the computing community or the dissident community, or you know someone who is, be careful for your friends’ sake. It is a crime to lie to investigators, and they can twist most anything you might say to them into a lie; but it is lawful to refuse to answer, or (much better) to bring a lawyer who will remind you to say nothing.
Meanwhile, and don’t gossip about your acquaintances with people you don’t know very well — nor on the telephone even with friends — nor in a room where there is an eavesdropping device (aka cell phone) unless ALL its batteries have been removed.