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> Ellard declared, arguing that the leaker, now a fugitive in Russia, would have received the same protections as other NSA employees, who file some one thousan

> Ellard declared, arguing that the leaker, now a fugitive in Russia, would have received the same protections as other NSA employees, who file some one thousand reports annually to the agency’s hotline. Am I misunderstanding this line? It sounds like the NSA is constantly doing some stuff that many of its own employees find horribly abusive, and then sweeping the reports under the rug as "resolved". How the hell was this information meant to engender confidence?

zeveb 10y ago
That a thousand reports are filed doesn't mean that a thousand issues are found, and even where actual issues are found that doesn't mean that they are all 'horribly abusive.' The mere fact that someone reports behaviour doesn't mean that a) the behaviour is criminal or b) the behaviour exists. No doubt people file false reports, and true reports of legal actions, all the time. Individuals can be incorrect: that's why there are processes in place to take a clear look at allegations and determine their veracity.
- kabdib 10y ago
  How many organizations do you know that have a thousand whistleblower issues a year? It's a pretty interesting number, and worthwhile comparing to organizations of similar size.
  - sverige 10y ago
    I'm no fan of the NSA, but the number of reports means nothing if a large percentage of them don't actually involve them doing anything "wrong." A friend is a regional HR director at a large corporation I used to work for (120k employees). There was an ethics hotline to report bad behavior, and he saw most of the complaints that came through for his region. Most were groundless. In fact, one was a report on me because I wouldn't exclude a poor customer survey score for one of my indirect reports. That score affected her ranking for raises, etc. When that went nowhere, she reported me to the FBI. Not even kidding. Some people are nuts, and some nuts file lots of reports.
    - kabdib 10y ago
      On the other hand, a large number of whistleblower reports is an interesting signal. You can probably do a rough comparison with other organizations (even spook orgs) and use that to get a sense if things are going sour; order of magnitude matters.
- dTal 10y ago
  Yes, but what does the number mean? Indeed my reaction would not have been much different if the number of reports had been 100, or 10,000 - adding and/or dropping a zero and seeing if your reaction changes is a good test to see if you've really learned anything from a number - a Feynman trick, I think? So to ground my sense of scale I looked at Wiki. Wiki tells me the NSA has 30-40,000 employees (accurate? who knows). So apparently about 2-3% annually use this "hotline", whatever it is. Is that a big amount or a little amount? Hard to tell without knowing the culture around using it. Are there forms to fill in, do you speak to an operator, what? What range of things does it cover - everything from "I think PRISM is unconstitutional" to "I caught coworker Bob stalking his ex on XKeyscore"? If not everything, then where do you complain about the other things? What, exactly, are the "official channels"? <meta> Pardon me for going meta for a minute here. The parent comment was downvoted. Yet it is entirely correct, civilly worded, and contributes to the discussion. I hypothesize that this is because it is not a productive place to end the thought. I don't think a comment deserves to be downvoted for that. The right response isn't "no", it's "yes, but...". That "yes" should mean an upvote, if we are trying to form a collaborative thought process here rather than each individual simply leaving their mark. </meta>

zeveb 10y ago

That a thousand reports are filed doesn't mean that a thousand issues are found, and even where actual issues are found that doesn't mean that they are all 'horribly abusive.' The mere fact that someone reports behaviour doesn't mean that a) the behaviour is criminal or b) the behaviour exists. No doubt people file false reports, and true reports of legal actions, all the time. Individuals can be incorrect: that's why there are processes in place to take a clear look at allegations and determine their veracity.

kabdib 10y ago
How many organizations do you know that have a thousand whistleblower issues a year? It's a pretty interesting number, and worthwhile comparing to organizations of similar size.
- sverige 10y ago
  I'm no fan of the NSA, but the number of reports means nothing if a large percentage of them don't actually involve them doing anything "wrong." A friend is a regional HR director at a large corporation I used to work for (120k employees). There was an ethics hotline to report bad behavior, and he saw most of the complaints that came through for his region. Most were groundless. In fact, one was a report on me because I wouldn't exclude a poor customer survey score for one of my indirect reports. That score affected her ranking for raises, etc. When that went nowhere, she reported me to the FBI. Not even kidding. Some people are nuts, and some nuts file lots of reports.
  - kabdib 10y ago
    On the other hand, a large number of whistleblower reports is an interesting signal. You can probably do a rough comparison with other organizations (even spook orgs) and use that to get a sense if things are going sour; order of magnitude matters.
dTal 10y ago
Yes, but what does the number mean? Indeed my reaction would not have been much different if the number of reports had been 100, or 10,000 - adding and/or dropping a zero and seeing if your reaction changes is a good test to see if you've really learned anything from a number - a Feynman trick, I think? So to ground my sense of scale I looked at Wiki. Wiki tells me the NSA has 30-40,000 employees (accurate? who knows). So apparently about 2-3% annually use this "hotline", whatever it is. Is that a big amount or a little amount? Hard to tell without knowing the culture around using it. Are there forms to fill in, do you speak to an operator, what? What range of things does it cover - everything from "I think PRISM is unconstitutional" to "I caught coworker Bob stalking his ex on XKeyscore"? If not everything, then where do you complain about the other things? What, exactly, are the "official channels"? <meta> Pardon me for going meta for a minute here. The parent comment was downvoted. Yet it is entirely correct, civilly worded, and contributes to the discussion. I hypothesize that this is because it is not a productive place to end the thought. I don't think a comment deserves to be downvoted for that. The right response isn't "no", it's "yes, but...". That "yes" should mean an upvote, if we are trying to form a collaborative thought process here rather than each individual simply leaving their mark. </meta>