Royal Marines Trial And Wikileaks

[Gromit]

// Three Royal Marines, who cannot be named, are charged with murdering the unknown man while on duty in 2011.

One of the men, known as Marine A, is accused of shooting the prisoner in the chest at close range.

The Afghan prisoner had been seriously injured by gunfire fired from an Apache helicopter sent to provide air support, which he described as a legitimate operation.

Mr Perry accused the three defendants of using the Afghan man's injuries as a "cloak" to conceal their own actions, reporting he had died from wounds inflicted by the helicopter.

Courtroom 1 fell absolutely silent as the jurors, legal teams and press watched five segments of video, mostly a few minutes long, which were all filmed on the day -inadvertently for the most part - by one of the accused.

Some in court shook their heads as they watched, though the jurors remained impassive throughout. //

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24639642

This was inadvertently filmed by one of the defendents, and the prosecution brought after it was found on a laptop back in England. Is this stealing of data and using it for entertainment any different from Wikileaks releasing footage of Reuters journalists being shot to bits? Regardless of the verdict of this trial, should they be charged with stealing the data (which could aid the enemy)?

[FredPuli43]

How is that stealing data ? You might as well say that taking child porn off a accused's laptop or taking his own video camera and taking pictures from it of his committing a crime is stealing data

[Gromit]

Fred,
The MOD do not supply helmeted video cams for the puropse of entertaining a soldiers friends with the film.
It is data collected by and for the military to use, not for private amusement. Obviously the soldiers can be identified from it (which is how they ate in court). If this footage ended up in terrorist hands via email or YouTube then it could make these men the targets of terrorists.

[FredPuli43]

So do you want the men or their soldier friends punished for abuse or misuse of military equipment, Gromit? Was this footage being used for the entertainment of soldier friends?

[mikey4444]

Grmot. We agree on most things but this time I'm afraid you are out on your own here. I really couldn't give a tinkers cuss where the video evidence came from. If things happened as the prosecution says it did, all three soldiers should be dealt with very severely. One of them, at least, appears to be guilty of murder. End of story.

[Peter Pedant]

Is this stealing of data and using it for entertainment any different from Wikileaks releasing footage of Reuters journalists being shot to bits? Regardless of the verdict of this trial, should they be charged with stealing the data (which could aid the enemy)? {Gromit]

is this stealing of data any different from the Reuters death ?
yes of course it is
it is a video that shows a murder.

The data side pales to insignificance.....