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> Whistleblowing protections that extend to what Snowden did would effectively convert the entire classification system to a set of recommendations as opposed t

by jbapple 11y ago

> Whistleblowing protections that extend to what Snowden did would effectively convert the entire classification system to a set of recommendations as opposed to laws (a wholly different demand which I think is patently childish as a demand). Can you elaborate a bit on this? For instance, if Snowden's leaks had been targeted so that they only showed illegal programs[0], do you believe that advocacy of a whistleblowing protection that would have covered the leaks would be "patently childish"? [0] It is possible that Snowden's leaks were that targeted. I don't know, because I did not follow them closely enough to know.

BWStearns 11y ago
Basically Whistleblowing laws are in a tough spot with regards to classified info (remember, such laws also protect people calling out corruption etc that have no classified info). IANAL nor am I an expert on whistleblowing law, however, it is my understanding that such laws as they relate to classified are generally meant to allow individuals to go talk to congress and let congress know that their agency has gone off the rails. Obviously this protects the government from a rogue piece of itself more than it protects the people from a rogue government. However, I am disinclined to take the fully cynical view of this since I have yet to concoct or hear a plan which was capable of a) maintaining a legally enforceable classification system, b) permitting ethically and patriotically motivated unilateral public disclosure of unconstitutional activities. Perhaps this is a failure of my imagination (I suspect that if there is an answer it relies in finding a way around needing the second requirement). I think that the current best solution to the problem is where we are currently (I said best, not good). That is to hope that in the event of sufficiently egregious abuses an individual will set aside personal risk and expose said programs. In the ideal Disney version we as a society recognize that they did this in service to the constitution and fulfillment of their oath and urge the president to pardon the risk taker. Maybe call it the Jefferson Strategy, after the quote about the tree of liberty needing to be watered with the blood of patriots. Maybe, in order for the republic to stay healthy, we need people brave/stupid enough to be executed or die in jail as the modern equivalent to the rebellion Jefferson was referencing. This plan has several failure modes. First is a false positive. This is the mode where someone for whatever reason believes that they're being a whistleblower and just dumps a bunch of documents that hurt US foreign policy but don't really expose any wrongdoing. You basically have to believe that all US foreign activity or all secrecy is inherently bad to say that that the Manning dump moved us forward as a democracy. Note, I'm not defending her treatment or sentencing or whatever, but the dump was pretty devoid of any gross U.S. wrongdoing (we can argue about the chopper video elsewhere). This failure mode is dangerous but probably won't end the republic. It is increasingly damaging per occurrence though because someone can take far more documents than they could ever read. This has a negative potential effect on the accountability of the leaker since they can take now and sift later. I wonder if this will lead to a cycle of more "example making" and leakers putting out more docs per dump since they know they'll be made examples of anyways. The other failure mode is that everyone stays silent, which is also not ideal, but large orgs have issues with secrecy even without relying on self-sacrificing affirmative decisions, so I'm not worried about this one over the very long run. Edit: There's no way to shape policy to recognize ahead of time that it's ok to leak illegal programs (such a policy would need to be ok with the existence of legal programs in the first place). It's similar logically to saying that it's OK to torture people who know about terrorist plans. You can't really know ahead of time for sure that they know what you want to know, so making a moral exemption on such a basis is inherently flawed and you should refer back to the general case of "don't torture people" (in this case, the general case is "don't leak classified"). I was primarily directing the "childish" comment towards the idea that we ought to get rid of the classification system entirely. It's a nice utopian ideal, and I can see and even maybe agree with the logical arguments that secrecy in any form in government is an inherently corrupting feature. What I can't see however is how to conduct the business of government (diplomacy, intelligence, and military specifically) in any fashion without it, and I'm left with the impression that a sober view of the situation has to accept secrecy in some instances and look to mitigate its corrosive effects rather than to complain about its existence.
- jbapple 11y ago
  > You basically have to believe that all US foreign activity or all secrecy is inherently bad to say that that the Manning dump moved us forward as a democracy. I think this hyperbole is no more helpful to the conversation than your original one ("patently childish").
  - BWStearns 11y ago
    Name an illegal US activity that was unmasked via the Manning dump.
    - nitrogen 11y ago
      There's more to right and wrong than strict deontology. What's legal or illegal is only a very fuzzy approximation of what's ethical or moral. So demands like "name an illegal activity" are missing the deeper moral/ethical point, regardless of whether there are illegal activities in the dumps (I'd also say it's bad form to make such a demand in the middle of an Internet thread where it's highly unlikely that your fellow commenters have the time to review thousands of diplomatic messages/documents/videos/whatever).
      - BWStearns 11y ago
        I was addressing a policy and legal question of whistleblower policies. A standard of "exposes an illegal program" seemed to have been the standard that was effectively being used (I would also suggest it seems a reasonable standard). Since I was dealing with that I limited myself to the legal and the policy, which I guess I hinted at and I hoped was obvious but I didn't explicitly state. Wrt the bad form, the Manning dumps have been out for longer and are much more public than the Snowden leaks; they've been combed pretty damn thoroughly. Suggesting that my comment requires original research of the documents is disingenuous.
        nitrogen 11y ago
        I was addressing a policy and legal question of whistleblower policies. Talking about legal policies without considering the greater moral framework in which they exist is disingenuous; it implies there is nothing important other than policies. Suggesting that my comment requires original research of the documents is disingenuous. At the least it requires research of the reporting on the Manning dumps. An any case, I maintain that a one-line demand for something with borderline relevance that may require extensive research is in bad form. And I don't know how I forgot, but the Manning data included the footage used for the Collateral Murder video, which "may depict a war crime" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007_Baghdad_airstrike#Legality_of_the_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007_Baghdad_airstrik...). So there's your illegal activity.
rhino369 11y ago
I'm not the person you are replying to but: While I probably wouldn't prosecute someone for whistle-blowing on a clearly illegal program, there is a good reason why it shouldn't be allowed in situations were top secret information is concerned. The average government worker has no qualifications or capability to determine what is or isn't legal. People think the Iraq war was illegal. Should someone have leaked military intelligence about the invasion? People think the atomic bombings were illegal. Should someone have leaked the Manhattan project. Conservatives and liberals tend to disagree strongly with the legality of all sorts of stuff. And then you have conspiracy theorists, idealists and extremists. And if you run into a situation where someone finds something truly nasty a pardon or prosecutory discretion will fix the it. Practically, Snowden leaked a lot of stuff that is completely legal. The only significant illegal thing he leaked was teh Verizon meta-data collection for everyone. But even then some courts and judges still think it's legal.
- toyg 11y ago
  > The average government worker has no qualifications or capability to determine what is or isn't legal. Sorry to godwinize, but that's the Nuremberg defense in a nutshell. > Should someone have leaked military intelligence about the invasion? Chelsea Manning did just that, and a lot of people are very grateful she did. > Should someone have leaked the Manhattan project Do you think the Manhattan project succeeded only because of its secrecy? The Germans had their own parallel program, they simply lacked the practical and intellectual resources to ever complete it. The Japanese were even further back and would have likely surrendered, had they known that their cities could be vaporized in an afternoon. The project secrecy cost millions of Japanese lives. > Practically, Snowden leaked a lot of stuff that is completely legal. Like breaking American companies' own encryption channels and practicing mass-surveillance on American citizens via legal loopholes across 5-Eyes (so Brits spy on US, US spy on Brits, and then they exchange notes)? Totally legit?
  - rhino369 11y ago
    Nuremberg defense didn't work because they were active participants. Someone like Snowden can merely quit their job or otherwise refuse to assist. Manning is rightfully serving 35 hard years in jail because she was butthurt about the military. She's a great a reason why it shouldn't be allowed.
Spooky23 11y ago
Yesterday there was this revelation about Snowden documents including materials about spying on Israeli military operations. That kind of undermines the "carefully targeted leaks" argument. It also is odd that this leak comes out a day later.

by jbapple 11y ago

BWStearns 11y ago

Basically Whistleblowing laws are in a tough spot with regards to classified info (remember, such laws also protect people calling out corruption etc that have no classified info). IANAL nor am I an expert on whistleblowing law, however, it is my understanding that such laws as they relate to classified are generally meant to allow individuals to go talk to congress and let congress know that their agency has gone off the rails. Obviously this protects the government from a rogue piece of itself more than it protects the people from a rogue government. However, I am disinclined to take the fully cynical view of this since I have yet to concoct or hear a plan which was capable of a) maintaining a legally enforceable classification system, b) permitting ethically and patriotically motivated unilateral public disclosure of unconstitutional activities. Perhaps this is a failure of my imagination (I suspect that if there is an answer it relies in finding a way around needing the second requirement). I think that the current best solution to the problem is where we are currently (I said best, not good). That is to hope that in the event of sufficiently egregious abuses an individual will set aside personal risk and expose said programs. In the ideal Disney version we as a society recognize that they did this in service to the constitution and fulfillment of their oath and urge the president to pardon the risk taker. Maybe call it the Jefferson Strategy, after the quote about the tree of liberty needing to be watered with the blood of patriots. Maybe, in order for the republic to stay healthy, we need people brave/stupid enough to be executed or die in jail as the modern equivalent to the rebellion Jefferson was referencing. This plan has several failure modes. First is a false positive. This is the mode where someone for whatever reason believes that they're being a whistleblower and just dumps a bunch of documents that hurt US foreign policy but don't really expose any wrongdoing. You basically have to believe that all US foreign activity or all secrecy is inherently bad to say that that the Manning dump moved us forward as a democracy. Note, I'm not defending her treatment or sentencing or whatever, but the dump was pretty devoid of any gross U.S. wrongdoing (we can argue about the chopper video elsewhere). This failure mode is dangerous but probably won't end the republic. It is increasingly damaging per occurrence though because someone can take far more documents than they could ever read. This has a negative potential effect on the accountability of the leaker since they can take now and sift later. I wonder if this will lead to a cycle of more "example making" and leakers putting out more docs per dump since they know they'll be made examples of anyways. The other failure mode is that everyone stays silent, which is also not ideal, but large orgs have issues with secrecy even without relying on self-sacrificing affirmative decisions, so I'm not worried about this one over the very long run. Edit: There's no way to shape policy to recognize ahead of time that it's ok to leak illegal programs (such a policy would need to be ok with the existence of legal programs in the first place). It's similar logically to saying that it's OK to torture people who know about terrorist plans. You can't really know ahead of time for sure that they know what you want to know, so making a moral exemption on such a basis is inherently flawed and you should refer back to the general case of "don't torture people" (in this case, the general case is "don't leak classified"). I was primarily directing the "childish" comment towards the idea that we ought to get rid of the classification system entirely. It's a nice utopian ideal, and I can see and even maybe agree with the logical arguments that secrecy in any form in government is an inherently corrupting feature. What I can't see however is how to conduct the business of government (diplomacy, intelligence, and military specifically) in any fashion without it, and I'm left with the impression that a sober view of the situation has to accept secrecy in some instances and look to mitigate its corrosive effects rather than to complain about its existence.

jbapple 11y ago
> You basically have to believe that all US foreign activity or all secrecy is inherently bad to say that that the Manning dump moved us forward as a democracy. I think this hyperbole is no more helpful to the conversation than your original one ("patently childish").
- BWStearns 11y ago
  Name an illegal US activity that was unmasked via the Manning dump.
  - nitrogen 11y ago
    There's more to right and wrong than strict deontology. What's legal or illegal is only a very fuzzy approximation of what's ethical or moral. So demands like "name an illegal activity" are missing the deeper moral/ethical point, regardless of whether there are illegal activities in the dumps (I'd also say it's bad form to make such a demand in the middle of an Internet thread where it's highly unlikely that your fellow commenters have the time to review thousands of diplomatic messages/documents/videos/whatever).
    - BWStearns 11y ago
      I was addressing a policy and legal question of whistleblower policies. A standard of "exposes an illegal program" seemed to have been the standard that was effectively being used (I would also suggest it seems a reasonable standard). Since I was dealing with that I limited myself to the legal and the policy, which I guess I hinted at and I hoped was obvious but I didn't explicitly state. Wrt the bad form, the Manning dumps have been out for longer and are much more public than the Snowden leaks; they've been combed pretty damn thoroughly. Suggesting that my comment requires original research of the documents is disingenuous.
      - nitrogen 11y ago
        I was addressing a policy and legal question of whistleblower policies. Talking about legal policies without considering the greater moral framework in which they exist is disingenuous; it implies there is nothing important other than policies. Suggesting that my comment requires original research of the documents is disingenuous. At the least it requires research of the reporting on the Manning dumps. An any case, I maintain that a one-line demand for something with borderline relevance that may require extensive research is in bad form. And I don't know how I forgot, but the Manning data included the footage used for the Collateral Murder video, which "may depict a war crime" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007_Baghdad_airstrike#Legality_of_the_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007_Baghdad_airstrik...). So there's your illegal activity.

rhino369 11y ago

I'm not the person you are replying to but: While I probably wouldn't prosecute someone for whistle-blowing on a clearly illegal program, there is a good reason why it shouldn't be allowed in situations were top secret information is concerned. The average government worker has no qualifications or capability to determine what is or isn't legal. People think the Iraq war was illegal. Should someone have leaked military intelligence about the invasion? People think the atomic bombings were illegal. Should someone have leaked the Manhattan project. Conservatives and liberals tend to disagree strongly with the legality of all sorts of stuff. And then you have conspiracy theorists, idealists and extremists. And if you run into a situation where someone finds something truly nasty a pardon or prosecutory discretion will fix the it. Practically, Snowden leaked a lot of stuff that is completely legal. The only significant illegal thing he leaked was teh Verizon meta-data collection for everyone. But even then some courts and judges still think it's legal.

toyg 11y ago
> The average government worker has no qualifications or capability to determine what is or isn't legal. Sorry to godwinize, but that's the Nuremberg defense in a nutshell. > Should someone have leaked military intelligence about the invasion? Chelsea Manning did just that, and a lot of people are very grateful she did. > Should someone have leaked the Manhattan project Do you think the Manhattan project succeeded only because of its secrecy? The Germans had their own parallel program, they simply lacked the practical and intellectual resources to ever complete it. The Japanese were even further back and would have likely surrendered, had they known that their cities could be vaporized in an afternoon. The project secrecy cost millions of Japanese lives. > Practically, Snowden leaked a lot of stuff that is completely legal. Like breaking American companies' own encryption channels and practicing mass-surveillance on American citizens via legal loopholes across 5-Eyes (so Brits spy on US, US spy on Brits, and then they exchange notes)? Totally legit?
- rhino369 11y ago
  Nuremberg defense didn't work because they were active participants. Someone like Snowden can merely quit their job or otherwise refuse to assist. Manning is rightfully serving 35 hard years in jail because she was butthurt about the military. She's a great a reason why it shouldn't be allowed.

Spooky23 11y ago

Yesterday there was this revelation about Snowden documents including materials about spying on Israeli military operations. That kind of undermines the "carefully targeted leaks" argument. It also is odd that this leak comes out a day later.