Will Porayouw, Contributing Photographer
In 2013, Former United States Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning was convicted for violations of the Espionage Act in 2013 after disclosing over 750,000 classified or sensitive military and diplomatic documents to the media organization WikiLeaks. The incident sparked years of national debate over privacy and data collection — a conversation she continued at a Dec. 6 event on campus.
Manning — who was pardoned by former President Barack Obama in 2017 — spoke to the Yale Political Union in William L. Harkness Hall about her views on the regulation of information collection by private companies like Facebook and TikTok. Her talk set up a YPU debate on regulating consumer surveillance.
“I think that the private sector has a lot more leeway with information collection,” Manning told the News. “And there’s a lot less transparency, in terms of where this information goes [and] what they do with it.”
Manning explained that currently, most people “don’t even know” what kind of information is being collected about them. Individuals are so detached from the non-advertising implications of data mining, she said, that it has reached a worrying state.
The real truth, according to her, is that private companies are able to make intuitive observations about you — not just about simple preferences, but about more detailed traits such as your sexual orientation or gender identity, political affiliation and whether you’re susceptible to...
A purported image showing the design of the new identity cards, featuring the Malaysian coat of arms, flag and a digital thumbprint, was shared on Facebook on April 14, 2026. "Said to be the new m...