Stefan Mileschin

Bradley Manning has been sentenced to 35 years in prison for leaking classified US government information to WikiLeaks.

According to the Wall Street Journal, presiding judge, Denise Lind, delivered a sentence that means the former intelligence analyst will likely spend at least eight more years behind bars before he could be freed.

Manning downloaded some 700,000 classified military and diplomatic documents that he sent to WikiLeaks and admitted doing it.

However his attorneys and antisecrecy advocates have said that it would have a chilling effect on whistleblowers looking to expose government wrongdoing.

Manning's sentence was the longest meted out in recent history for a would-be whistleblower however to be fair it was one of the biggest leaks ever.

Thanks to Manning WikiLeaks released 250,000 diplomatic cables, nearly 400,000 military reports and video of a 2007 US airstrike in Baghdad that killed two Reuters employees.

However there are some who think the punishment is too light, particularly as some of the more right wing types believed he should have been executed for treason.

Republican Buck McKeon who is the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said the sentence was "light" given the vast damage Manning did to US national security.

http://news.techeye.net/security/man...years-in-clink