We are talking about Manning’s history. It is proper to use the name of the time of the events. People don’t create new identities for the hell of it. New identities are generally created for a new life going forward, to be disconnected from a past life.

Europe recognises the right to be forgotten which is enshrined in GDPR art.17. Guatamala respects people’s wishes to establish a new identity to the extent of allowing name changes with no public record in a closed-door session with a judge.

Tying someone’s new name to their prior history is disrespectful. Some may want their legacy to follow them despite a name change and we might guess Manning is proud of their accomplishment, but it’s not for you to decide what people with new identities carry forward from their past.

Please respect people’s privacy. I know Manning’s privacy is toast anyway, but it’s still off to be part of the intrusion and then to ask others to also drag new identities through their prior history.

You also advocate historic inaccuracy. Exxon (a dead name) discovered climate change. Not ExxonMobil. You cause confusion by insisting on refencing new identities in past events. If you say ExxonMobil discovered climate change in the 1960s, you falsely imply that ExxonMobil existed at that time. But in fact the merger (and thus new identity) came after that.

What are you trying to imply? That because Bradly Manning used wget, that makes wget a threat? Manning probably also used Firefox. So let’s flag Firefox as a hacker tool too.

The only Google anything I use is my email for ‘official’

Why is that? Most public services use Microsoft for email, I find.

FWIW, I boycott both; which means I am mostly using postal mail.

Indeed. And as well, even if growth were needed, Google is advocating for US growth at Europe’s expense.

They have a fee for just about anything I could request that can be done on the web. But I suppose I could come up with something trivial like asking what my balance is. I like the idea of costing them by using the time of their call center as a penalty for trying to push me onto their website.