Snowden . Whistleblowers. Assange . "We steal Secrets".

Como contextualizaçào, O Voo do Corvo publica hoje, junto às tentativas de caracterização de Snowden, informaçào sobre o controverso Documentário de Alex Gibney"We Steal Secrets" dedicado a Julian Assange e Wikileaks.

 (Alex Gibney,  vencedor de um Oscar em 2007 com "Taxi to the dark side")
A intenção do Voo do Corvo é apenas informar e contextualizar. Junto também, dois artigos do New York Times e do Guardian e uma entrevista com Gibney sobre o "We Steal Secrets".

Edward Snowden disse ter acreditado que a chegada de um democrata à presidência mudaria as agências de espionagem

Snowden pode ser narcisista ou corajoso, mas será que isso interessa?


Por Alexandre Martins in Público
16/06/2013

A questão regressa sempre que os Estados Unidos são confrontados com um novo whistleblower: há quem se preocupe mais com o mensageiro e quem prefira discutir a mensagem

Ainda não tinha passado um dia desde que Edward Snowden saíra do anonimato para revelar os programas secretos da Agência de Segurança Interna norte-americana (NSA) e já a Internet fervilhava com pormenores do seu passado.
Como é que um rapaz que não terminou o ensino secundário, que foi fotografado a baixar as calças numa festa de aniversário e que se apresentava no perfil de uma empresa gerida por adolescentes como "Edowaado" podia ter credibilidade enquanto responsável por uma das mais importantes denúncias da História recente dos Estados Unidos?
Como é que o namorado de uma bailarina da Trupe Acrobática de Waikiki, que partilhava imagens em que pode ser visto a mexer no cabelo - ao lado do comentário "So Seeeexy it HURTS!" - podia ser levado a sério? A opinião pública norte-americana dividiu-se entre o Snowden herói e o Snowden traidor; entre o "Team Snowden" e o "Team NSA", como assinalou James Poniewozic no site da revista Time.
As posições extremaram-se. Para David Brooks, antigo correspondente em Bruxelas do The Wall Street Journal e actual colunista do The New York Times, Snowden é "um produto de uma das tendências mais infelizes da era actual: a atomização da sociedade, a perda de laços sociais, o aparente crescimento da quota de jovens na casa dos 20 anos que vivem existências tecnológicas na terra difusa entre as suas infâncias e as responsabilidades familiares enquanto adultos".
Uma opinião partilhada pelo veterano repórter Richard Cohn, no The Washington Post: "Tudo o que rodeia Edward Snowden é ridiculamente cinematográfico. Ele não é paranóico; é apenas narcisista. Perdeu uma namorada, uma carreira e, sem dúvida, a liberdade individual por revelar programas que eram do conhecimento dos nossos responsáveis eleitos e cujo conteúdo podia ser deduzido por qualquer pessoa que já fez pesquisas no Google."
Os rótulos foram tantos que o site da revista Foreign Policy fez uma lista, com o título "Que comece a campanha negra contra Edward Snowden". Há o traidor, o covarde, o narcisista, o desertor, o solitário, e até o Capuchinho Vermelho travesti - é assim que Richard Cohn o classifica no Washington Post, por Snowden tapar a cabeça e o seu computador portátil com "um grande capuz vermelho" quando tem de usar passwords, "para prevenir ser filmado por câmaras escondidas", segundo o relato de Glenn Greenwald, do The Guardian, que o entrevistou num quarto de hotel em Hong Kong, onde ele se refugiou em Maio.
Edward desistiu da escola
Do outro lado da barricada, os vestígios do passado do norte-americano de 29 anos são recebidos com aparente indiferença, que não disfarça uma encapotada indignação. O escritor, historiador e analista político Thomas E. Woods, conhecido simpatizante do Partido Libertário, resumiu na sua página no Facebook, com ironia, os argumentos reflectidos em muitos comentários partilhados na Internet: "Os opositores de Edward Snowden divulgaram uma fotografia dele a baixar as calças em 2002. Bem, isso muda tudo!" Para além do apoio na Internet, há também manifestações nas ruas. Ainda ontem, centenas de pessoas mostraram que estão ao lado de Snowden, num protesto às portas do consulado dos EUA em Hong Kong.
Todos têm uma opinião sobre o perfil de Snowden, mas há muito a analisar para além das fotografias com as calças em baixo. Ou, como ironizou a The Atlantic, "parece que Snowden foi em tempos adolescente e, pior do que isso, esse período da sua vida ficou registado online".
Ao contrário da maioria dos whistleblowers (denunciadores) mais conhecidos dos Estados Unidos, Edward Snowden não teve um passado brilhante na universidade - não teve sequer um passado na universidade, e obteve equivalência ao ensino secundário anos depois de ter desistido das aulas -, nem passou grande parte da sua vida a lidar com documentos ultra-secretos.
Sabe-se que em 2004 - pouco antes de fazer 21 anos - se alistou no Exército, com a intenção de integrar as Forças Especiais. Ficou por lá cinco meses, antes de ser exonerado (ao The Guardian, disse que partiu as duas pernas num exercício).
A carreira nos serviços secretos começou depois da breve passagem pela vida militar, mas longe de qualquer computador com acesso a documentos secretos: foi segurança nas instalações da NSA na Universidade do Maryland, o estado onde vivia com a família. O ponto seguinte no currículo já o apresenta como funcionário da CIA, no departamento de segurança de tecnologias de informação, mas não é claro de que forma deu o salto. Em 2007, foi colocado em Genebra, na Suíça, com protecção oficial, onde ficou responsável pela segurança da rede de computadores. Por essa altura, segundo disse o próprio ao Guardian, pensou em divulgar os segredos dos programas de vigilância a que tinha acesso, mas a vitória do democrata Barack Obama nas eleições presidenciais de 2008 fê-lo acreditar que alguma coisa iria mudar nas agências de espionagem.
Despediu-se da CIA em 2009, para trabalhar em empresas privadas contratadas pela NSA - no Japão e no Havai -, onde chegou a ganhar entre 120 mil e 200 mil dólares por ano (entre 90 mil e 150 mil euros), de acordo com diferentes relatos.
Um denunciador descuidado
A partir destas informações - e de outras que o próprio deixou na entrevista em vídeo ao Guardian -, vários especialistas foram convidados a traçar o perfil do homem que expôs os programas de registos de chamadas telefónicas e de recolha de emails, fotografias, vídeos e conversações em tempo real na Internet da NSA, conhecido como PRISM.
"Ri-me quando ele disse que a CIA tinha um escritório no fim da rua" do hotel onde estava a ser gravada a entrevista, disse o especialista canadiano Jim van Allen ao The Daily Beast. "Pensei logo que isso reduzia o número de hotéis em que ele estava. Tudo me parece muito descuidado. Ele esteve no Exército, na CIA, e esteve envolvido em funções de segurança. Devia ser muito melhor a encobrir o seu rasto", considera.
Mas nada disto apaga o essencial, segundo o "Team Snowden": a NSA recolhe, guarda e analisa as chamadas telefónicas e os emails de milhões de pessoas, nos EUA e no resto do mundo. E mesmo quando Obama diz que os serviços de espionagem não ouvem as conversas telefónicas nem lêem os emails de norte-americanos no territórios dos EUA, não responde a uma das questões que mais preocupam os defensores dos direitos de privacidade: a tecnologia permite que isso seja feito - e as palavras escolhidas pelo Presidente não incluem os cidadãos dos outros países.
A questão da legalidade traz à memória uma notícia do The New York Times de 2005: "Meses após os ataques do 11 de Setembro, o Presidente George W. Bush autorizou secretamente a NSA a escutar cidadãos americanos e outras pessoas no território dos EUA em busca de indícios de actividade terrorista sem mandados aprovados pelos tribunais, normalmente requeridos para espionagem interna."


Vigilância da NSA, um "segredo" debatido nos media norte-americanos há quase uma década

Por Alexandre Martins in Público
16/06/2013

Os programas de vigilância em larga escala das agências de espionagem dos EUA, em particular da Agência de Segurança Interna (NSA), são conhecidos há quase uma década, e até já chegaram aos tribunais. Há sete anos, a organização sem fins lucrativos American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) apresentou uma queixa contra a operadora AT&T, por "ajudar o Governo na vigilância secreta de milhões de americanos comuns". A ACLU venceu em primeira instância, mas perdeu um recurso em 2007. No ano seguinte, o Supremo recusou-se a analisar o caso e o Congresso aprovou emendas à lei Foreign Intelligence Surveillance, entre as quais uma que conferia imunidade, com efeitos retroactivos, às empresas que colaborassem voluntariamente com os pedidos de vigilância do governo.
O caso começou depois de o jornal The New York Times ter revelado, em finais de 2005, que a Administração Bush mantinha desde 2001 (após os atentados do 11 de Setembro) um programa de espionagem sem autorização judicial, que "captou comunicações no interior dos EUA, apesar da exigência da Casa Branca de que pelo menos um dos interlocutores deve estar no estrangeiro". O programa, que ficou conhecido como "Warrantless Wiretapping" ("Escutas sem Mandado"), e a que a Administração Bush se referia como Terrorist Surveillance Program (programa de vigilância de terroristas), foi oficialmente encerrado em 2007.
Ao longo dos últimos anos, muito se tem escrito sobre os supostos excessos do sistema de vigilância norte-americano, e são muitos os whistleblowers (denunciadores) que antecederam Edward Snowden.
Um dos mais destacados é William Binney, que desempenhou cargos de alta responsabilidade na Agência de Segurança Interna durante mais de 30 anos. Depois de se ter despedido, em Outubro de 2001, denunciou aspectos dos programas de vigilância em muitas ocasiões. Em 2011, disse à revista New Yorker que a NSA tinha começado a guardar os dados das facturas e das chamadas telefónicas de "todas as pessoas".
Já em Maio passado, o antigo agente de contraterrorismo do FBI Tim Clemente deixou quase sem palavras uma jornalista da CNN, num programa sobre os atentados em Boston. Quando Erin Burnett lhe perguntou como é que as autoridades iriam ter acesso ao conteúdo de uma conversa entre Tamerlan Tsarnaev e a sua mulher, já que não seria possível ter acesso a chamadas em tempo real cuja existência se desconhecia até àquela data, Clemente respondeu: "Nas investigações sobre segurança nacional temos formas de saber exactamente o que foi dito nessa conversa. Não é algo que o FBI quererá apresentar em tribunal, mas pode ajudar a investigá-la ou a questioná-la. Não há dúvidas de que podemos descobrir isso."

WE STEAL SECRETS ( Wikipedia)


We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks is a 2013 American independent documentary film about the organization started by Julian Assange, and people involved in the collection and distribution of secret information and media by whistleblowers. It covers a period of several decades, including considerable background.

Synopsis
The 1989 WANK worm attack on NASA computers, originally thought to threaten the Galileo spacecraft, is depicted as the work of Australian hackers, including Assange. The founding of Wikileaks in 2006 is followed by coverage of several key events: its 2009-2010 leaks about the Icelandic financial collapse, Swiss banking tax evasion, Kenyan government corruption, toxic-waste dumping, Bradley Manning's communications with Adrian Lamo, uploads to Wikileaks of the Iraq and Afghanistan war documents, diplomatic cables, and video, exposure to the FBI by Lamo, and the accusations of sexual assault made against Assange. Interview subjects include Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, James Ball, Donald Bostom, Nick Davies, Mark Davis, Jason Edwards, Michael Hayden, Adrian Lamo, J. William Leonard, Gavin MacFadyen, Smári McCarthy, Iain Overton, and Vaughan Smith.

Production
Assange did not participate in the production, so previously recorded interviews were used.Manning was also unavailable. John Young and Deborah Natsios of Cryptome contributed contacts and research material, but after lengthy negotiations, ultimately declined to be interviewed for the film. About 35 minutes of chat animations, headline effects, and other visual effects were designed and rendered by Framestore in New York.
Release
The film previewed in December 2012, and debuted January 21, 2013 at the Sundance Film Festival. It is scheduled to be released May 24, 2013 in New York and Los Angeles, and widely in June.

Reception
According to the film's executive producer Jemima Khan, We Steal Secrets was "denounced before seeing" by Assange,[11] who tweeted "an unethical and biased title in the context of pending criminal trials. It is the prosecution’s claim and it is false." Khan asserts the title is based on a quote in the film "from Michael Hayden, a former director of the CIA, who told Gibney that the US government was in the business of 'stealing secrets' from other countries".
In the UK Guardian, Jeremy Kay gave the film 3 of 5 stars, noting that though the film explored facts and themes thoroughly and thoughtfully, and provided "insightful commentary" from government, media, and Wikileaks insiders, the film revealed little about Assange, who remained unavailable to be interviewed by the director. Kay wrote, "It's probably too soon for a meaningful perspective on the WikiLeaks saga."
Hollywood Reporter writer David Rooney found the film to be a "tremendously fascinating story told with probing insight and complexity." In Variety, Peter Debruge found the film "dramatically lacking" a central core conflict, especially when compared with Gibney's previous work. Like Kay in the Guardian, Debruge found Manning's story the most compelling part of the film.

Screen Daily's Anthony Kaufman wrote that the film "lacks the emotional weight" of Gibney’s previous documentary Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, but it has "the same high level of exhaustive research and engaging storytelling". Jordan Smith of IONCinema.com gave the film 4 of 5 stars, Indiewire "Criticwire" critics Anne Thompson and Ryland Aldrich each graded the film "A-".

Alexa O'Brien, the journalist who for her coverage of the Bradley Manning pre-trial was short listed for the 2013 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, reviewed the film. She wrote, "If We Steal Secrets or the subsequent Q & A with director, Alex Gibney, revealed anything, it's that the filmmaker is quite uninformed about the trial of Bradley Manning. He can barely speak on the topic or on that of the largest criminal probe of a publisher and its source in history."
Response from Wikileaks

Wikileaks published a putative transcript of the film, annotated with comments, asserted to be corrections, by Wikileaks. Director Gibney responded that the transcript was incomplete, lacked Bradley Manning's words, and was from an unreleased, incomplete version of the film.

The Fifth Estate is an upcoming film about the news-leaking website WikiLeaks starring Benedict Cumberbatch as its editor-in-chief and founder Julian Assange with Daniel Brühl as the former spokesperson of the website Daniel Domscheit-Berg. It is directed by Bill Condon with a screenplay by Josh Singer based in part on Domscheit-Berg's book Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange and the World’s Most Dangerous Website, as well as WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy by British journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding. The film is co-produced by DreamWorks and Participant Media and will be released on October 11, 2013 by DreamWorks through Disney's Touchstone distribution label and Mister Smith Entertainment worldwide.

Focus World
Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, in the film “We Steal Secrets.” Several moviemakers are eager to tell his story.

WikiLeaks, Hollywood’s Next Muse
By MICHAEL CIEPLY
Published: December 19, 2012 / http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/20/movies/we-steal-secrets-is-first-of-wikileaks-films.html?_r=2&

LOS ANGELES — At the end of Alex Gibney’s not-quite-finished documentary “We Steal Secrets” — about Julian Assange and WikiLeaks — is a screen crawl describing the fate of Pfc. Bradley Manning, the Army intelligence analyst who now faces trial for the release of confidential military and diplomatic documents.
“TK” is journalistic shorthand for facts yet to come. The syntax suggests that Mr. Gibney doesn’t see much ahead.

But it is Private Manning, even more than Mr. Assange, who has the breakout role in this first of several Hollywood films about the little-known people who grew larger than the most powerful of governments by using the Internet to broadcast their secrets.
Set for debut at the Sundance Film Festival next month, “We Steal Secrets” is a collaboration between the producer Marc Shmuger, who until 2009 was a chairman of Universal Pictures, and Mr. Gibney, a prolific documentarian who won an Oscar for “Taxi to the Dark Side.”
After leaving Universal, Mr. Shmuger started a film company, Global Produce. But he spent much of 2010 transfixed by reports about Mr. Assange, an Australian computer hacker who stepped into the limelight as a self-appointed czar of government and corporate transparency — and ultimately as a fugitive from authorities in Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning related to allegations of sexual assault. He is avoiding extradition from Britain by claiming asylum in Ecuador’s embassy in London.
Mr. Shmuger found an e-mail address for Mr. Gibney, whom he did not know, and proposed a documentary. Mr. Gibney, who had just finished “Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer” and always has prospective projects to pursue, recalls trying to avoid adding this one.
“It couldn’t have come at a worse time,” said Mr. Gibney, who spoke from New York this week in a joint interview with Mr. Shmuger, who is based here.
But Mr. Gibney, like Mr. Shmuger, was soon captivated by the unlikely characters and bizarre narrative that are promising to make the WikiLeaks story the subject of not one movie, but many.
“Underground: The Julian Assange Story,” an Australian television film about the young Mr. Assange, was screened at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.
In January, DreamWorks Studios and Participant Media plan to begin shooting a dramatic feature film to be directed by Bill Condon. It will be based on a script by Josh Singer and two books: “Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World’s Most Dangerous Website,” by a former Assange colleague, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, and “WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy,” by David Leigh and Luke Harding.
HBO also had plans for an Assange movie, but Nancy Lesser, a spokeswoman for the channel, said the film has been delayed. Mark Boal, the writer and a producer of “Zero Dark Thirty,” continues to work on a possible Assange drama based on a New York Times Magazine article, “The Boy Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest” by Bill Keller.
In an e-mail, Mr. Keller, a former executive editor of The Times, said Mr. Boal recently asked whether he had any interest in writing the script for that one. “I told him I thought screenplays were outside my skill set,” Mr. Keller said.
“We Steal Secrets” has moved more quickly than the dramas, threatening at times to outpace events. Mr. Manning’s trial, for instance, had been expected by some to occur this year. But it has been delayed — perhaps to keep it out of the presidential campaign, Mr. Gibney suggested this week — and is now scheduled for March.
Focus Features expects to release “We Steal Secrets” through its FocusWorld label in the months after Sundance, which runs Jan. 17 to 27. Mr. Shmuger’s company will have another film, a comedy called “The Spectacular Now,” at the festival.
Running more than two hours, the documentary is a relatively full retelling of Mr. Assange’s story. It ranges from his youthful hacking into a network connected to an American rocket launch, through an arrest for entering government and business computers in the 1990s, to his rise as the overlord of WikiLeaks, the online organization that helped whistle-blowers post documents while remaining anonymous.
The film promises to break ground, particularly with its deep exploration of the sex case in Sweden. Mr. Gibney has asked to avoid spoilers on this point, but his narrative and supporting research are not friendly toward those who would see Sweden’s pursuit of Mr. Assange as cover for a supposed American agenda to prosecute or smear him.
Mr. Gibney tells on-screen of rejecting Mr. Assange’s demands for money in exchange for an interview and says that the market rate for an interview was $1 million. Instead, that became an example of what one figure in the film calls “noble cause corruption” — a tendency to excuse transgressions supposedly done in the service of good. (A query was sent this week to an Assange representative for comment on this article, but Mr. Assange did not respond.)
But the film also takes issue with what Mr. Gibney considers shabby treatment of Mr. Assange by The Times, which cooperated with him in publishing many WikiLeaks revelations, but later described him with what Mr. Gibney called “derision.”
Mr. Keller, in his e-mail, said “being a source doesn’t buy you reverent treatment as a subject.” Mr. Assange’s release of secret documents, Mr. Keller added, is “entitled to the same First Amendment protection as the stories we wrote.”
Still, it is Private Manning who steals the spotlight in “We Steal Secrets.” Relying in part on information from the legal proceeding against him, the film traces his loneliness and confusion over sexual identity, and his unease with conduct and incidents he saw described in secret documents. The film also deals with communications he had with a cyberfriend who ultimately betrayed him to authorities.
Though widely condemned for perhaps exposing both civilians and government operatives around the world to mortal danger, Private Manning, in Mr. Gibney’s view, deserves empathy.
“We explore him as a human being far more fully than anyone else has,” he said this week.
In fact, Mr. Shmuger and Mr. Gibney have acquired rights to the book “Private: Bradley Manning, WikiLeaks, and the Biggest Exposure of Official Secrets in American History,” by Denver Nicks, and are hoping to give Mr. Manning a full-blown dramatic film of his own.
“We’re looking for a screenwriter,” said Mr. Shmuger.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 21, 2012
An article on Thursday about the coming documentary “We Steal Secrets” and other films about WikiLeaks and Julian Assange referred imprecisely to a comment that Alex Gibney, the maker of “We Steal Secrets,” says in the film about Mr. Assange’s demands for money in exchange for collaborating on it. While he says that he rejected the demands, and that the market rate for an interview was $1 million, he does not specifically say that he rejected a demand from Mr. Assange for a $1 million fee for an interview. And a picture with the article, using information from a publicist, carried an erroneous credit. The picture, showing Mr. Assange seated, is by Focus World, not Focus Features.

The We Steal Secrets documentary on WikiLeaks is incredibly biased

I was appalled to see the We Steal Secrets documentary portray whistleblowing as something that is deviant
Jesselyn Radack

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 30 May 2013 14.15 BST / http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/30/wikileaks-documentary-we-steal-secrets

Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney's We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks is slick and dangerous in the same way Zero Dark Thirty is. People walk away finding it "balanced", and thinking that certain conduct (whistleblowing and torture, respectively) is "bad" or "good". We live in such a perverse moment in society that a film is portrayed as "balanced" when it paints whistleblowing as deviant behavior.
The film takes all the caricatures of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and admitted source Pfc Bradley Manning, exaggerates them, and adds some new ones. The attacks range from the petty (Manning is effeminate and Assange is a hacker-hero enamored with his newfound rock star status), to the simply bizarre (Assange is out to impregnate unwitting women and spread his seed all over the planet) and impossible (during the era of "Don't ask, don't tell," while serving in the military, Manning was taking hormone therapy.)
Gibney spins a narrative about the "transformations" of both Manning and Assange: "[i]n online chats with WikiLeaks, Manning's thoughts changed," and this is inextricably intertwined with his gender-identity crisis. Meanwhile, Assange has an almost-religious devotion to transparency, but turns into a law-dodging criminal who wants to keep secret his many salacious deeds.
Ironically, it is Gibney's transformation in how he views his subjects – a transformation that occurs over the course of making this film – that follows the quintessential whistleblower nightmare, with Gibney playing the role of retaliator. In the typical whistleblower ordeal, a person trying to expose disturbing and often illegal acts by the government runs afoul of the power structure, which then reprises with fantastical smears and attempts to ruin that individual personally and professionally by focusing on character assassination rather than conscience.
In Manning's own words, he "saw incredible things, awful things . . . things that belonged in the public domain". He then made the most massive whistleblower disclosures in the history of the world, exposing war crimes and the dark underbelly of our misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. He hoped his disclosures would spur "discussion, debates, and reforms" and "want[ed] people to know the truth, no matter who they are, because without information you cannot make informed decisions as a public".
The government swiftly retaliated, arresting Manning, whom President Obama said "broke the law", and launching a worldwide manhunt for Julian Assange, whom vice president Joe Biden labeled a "hi-tech terrorist".
By spending an inordinate amount of the film on Assange's alleged personal misdeeds and Manning's gender dysmorphia, Gibney, who should know better, given that his other stellar socio-political documentaries (Taxi to the Dark Side and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room) have relied on and benefitted from whistleblowers, perpetuates the usual smears that the government levels against whistleblowers and their allies: that they are vengeful, unstable, or out for fame and profit.
Taking a page out of the government playbook, the film focuses on the person rather than the substance of his complaints. It attacks their credibility rather than answering their criticism. The film expends tremendous resources tarnishing those who broke the code of silence, which both Manning and Assange did in their own ways, on a massive and unprecedented scale with a massive megaphone called WikiLeaks.
In publicity for the film, Gibney minces no words in describing his true feelings about whistleblowers:
"I think [Bradley Manning] raises big issues about who whistleblowers are, because they are alienated people who don't get along with people around them, which motivates them to do what they do."
Legally speaking, a whistleblower's motive is irrelevant. As long as a government employee discloses what he or she reasonably believes evidences fraud, waste, abuse, illegality, or a danger to public health or safety, it matters not a whit if the revelation is beneficent, self-aggrandizing, naïve, or for financial gain (there are actually a number of whistleblower reward laws that pay out money as an incentive for coming forward.)
In the legal calculus, motive is irrelevant because whistleblowers are human beings who often have flawed and complicated motives, especially when most all of them have been suffering the death-by-a-thousand-paper-cuts treatment (ostracization, demotion, etc) that almost universally precedes their disclosures. This could also explain why people like National Security Agency whistleblower Thomas Drake, who was filmed for the movie, ended up on the cutting-room floor. He is far too vanilla, upright, well-regarded – and perhaps the biggest strike of all, told producer Alexis Bloom that he considered Manning a whistleblower – to fit Gibney's "troubled whistleblower" mold.
While Gibney presents the documentary as a search for the truth about Manning's motivations and Assange's duplicity, the truth it actually reveals is that even an enlightened Academy award-winning documentarian of Gibney's caliber can be tarnished by the power of the government's self-serving stereotype of whistleblowers and the people who support them.