The Bradley Manning Support Network is a grassroots organization created in order to raise support, and assist in paying legal fees, for the Army solider accused of leaking classified documents to Wikileaks. It points out on its website that it is an "autonomous network of supporters with no official ties to political parties," has no connection to Wikileaks, and is "not a division of any larger nonprofit entity."Massachusetts resident David House is associated with the network and, in November of 2010, he was stopped at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago by Department of Homeland Security agents and asked a number of questions about his connection to the pending case. His laptop, USB drive, and camera were snatched and returned (after likely having been examined and copied) almost two months later. The detention of House, and confiscation of his private belongings, was clearly in violation of his First and Fourth Amendment rights, as the search was clearly unlawful and he was specifically targeted because of his personal political beliefs.In May of 2011, the ACLU of Massachusetts filed a lawsuit against the government challenging the basis of the search. The government motioned to dismiss the suit, saying, “There is no basis for the Court to conclude that searches of laptops or other electronic devices at the border should be subjected to a different standard than that for other closed containers. Nor is there a basis for the Court to conclude that Plaintiff's First Amendment rights were violated by the routine search and detention of his devices at the border." But last week, in a crucial ruling, United States District Court Judge Denise Casper denied the motion and called into question the problematic nature of the search and seizure. The ruling cited the obvious, that the government cannot, "target someone for their political association and seize his electronic devices and review the information pertinent to that association and its members and supporters simply because the initial search occurred at the border.”I got on the phone with House over the weekend. He spoke of the “climate of the times,” that the idea that someone’s laptop is nothing more than a suitcase is “ridiculous” and detailed the feeling of shock surrounding the Boston area after the Manning bust, when several friends of Manning were questioned about their connections to the soldier and Wikileaks. The FBI even showed up at House’s job to interview him. “They confused our intense organization for…something else” he noted and despite all this, when I asked if he was in any way prepared for the detention at O’Hare, he concluded, “The answer is, unfortunately, no”House's lawsuit proceeds, receiving nearly no media coverage, in a disturbing political climate. Obama has prosecuted more whistleblowers than every other previous administration combined, dished out far less pardons, and probably placed the call that landed Yemeni journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye behind bars. "We're a nation of laws," the president once said of Manning. "We don't individually make our own decisions about how the laws operate." That remains a noble sentiment despite its irony.House, who’d still like to know who the government shared his information with, perceives the backlash against these draconian actions as a something that “must be fought on multiple fronts.” Legal action is simply one facet of a movement that continues to grow with each crackdown or illegal detention. “We need to codify some kind of value system that separates us from the status quo,” he told me. “We are all activists now.”
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