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Something that never made sense to me in the Snowden case is how any of this works in face of whistleblower protection laws in USA. According to Wikipedia, the

by Swizec 7y ago

Something that never made sense to me in the Snowden case is how any of this works in face of whistleblower protection laws in USA. According to Wikipedia, the US offers these legal protections: > Whistleblower protection laws and regulations guarantee freedom of speech for workers and contractors in certain situations. Whistleblowers are protected from retaliation for disclosure of information which the employee or applicant reasonably believes evidences a violation of any law, rule, or regulation, or gross mismanagement, a gross waste of funds, an abuse of authority, or a substantial and specific danger to public health or safety. But when Snowden blew the whistle on 3-letter agencies, all that goes out the window? Does the government not follow its own laws?

henryfjordan 7y ago
In Snowden's case, he was a contractor and the specific whistleblower law covering the NSA did not apply to him.
- crankylinuxuser 7y ago
  95% of what we think as "Federal workers" are in fact contractors. Look no further than Accenture and similar. So sure, there's whistleblower laws. But they're in name only, with no real power for those that work with fed stuff in day to day operations.
  - ezoe 7y ago
    That is so convenient, isn't it? The government don't need to follow the law which suppose to protect the whistleblowers.
    - crankylinuxuser 7y ago
      It's more complicated than that, sadly. A lot of contractors are small outfits that "won" contracts because the contract request was tailored for them. In the fed system, your max cap of what you can make wage-wise, is limited by Congress. The way around that is not to get paid wages, but becoming a contractor that takes contracts at MUCH higher than the wages would ever be. So it becomes a form of its own version of corruption of "I want to hire and pay these people appropriately but im unable to legally so I'll create a contract only they can fulfill." But the corruption itself is rooted with price controls in Congress. But one of the side effects is that they're "not working for the govt, but for the company" and the company is working for the govt. It also means no govt pension, or any of the perks for working directly for the govt. And well, contractors get none of the protections of reporting wrong-doing.
- justinmchase 7y ago
  Which is ridiculous of course.
- weare138 7y ago
  Plus there's policies and procedures that must be followed to be protected under the Whistleblower Protection Act. Skipping out of the country and accepting asylum with an adversarial foreign government while in possession of a crapton of stolen classified materials would definitely disqualify someone.
tedunangst 7y ago
In addition to other issues, it is not usually the exclusive decision of the whistleblower whether their disclosure qualifies.
GVIrish 7y ago
The problem with Snowden is that: A. He did not try to whistleblow through any officials channels in the NSA, intelligence community, or Congress B. He stole somewhere around 1.5 million documents, of which the vast majority had nothing to do with the programs he thought were illegal The house intelligence committee report on Snowden actually concedes that he could have enjoyed whistleblower protection under the law at the time. One could make the argument that one should not have trusted those protections and Snowden decided the same. But that still doesn't explain why he stole so much classified material that was unrelated to his civil liberties concerns.
- StanislavPetrov 7y ago
  The real problem is that the NSA not only routinely ignores issues raised by whistleblowers, but actively retaliates against them for trying to blow the whistle on illicit activities. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/22/how-pentagon-punished-nsa-whistleblowers https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/22/how-pentagon...
  - GVIrish 7y ago
    Yes, that was what I was referring to when I said that one probably shouldn't have relied on those protections. However, it doesn't change the fact that he stole a tremendous amount of classified material that had nothing to do with what he felt civil liberties issues. Also doesn't change the fact that the Russian government outright admitted that Snowden shared Intel with them (according to the house Intel committee report). So even if he has a solid defense regarding prism and some of the other stuff he exposed, he doesn't really have any justification for the defense and foreign intelligence classified info he stole.
    - soraminazuki 7y ago
      Do you have any credible evidence to back up your claims? It seems to me that you're spreading baseless accusations. > he stole a tremendous amount of classified material that had nothing to do with what he felt civil liberties issues. How could you possibly know this? The only people who had access to the full documents are just a handful of journalists. > Also doesn't change the fact that the Russian government outright admitted that Snowden shared Intel with them (according to the house Intel committee report). Again, any evidence besides some half-baked government PR? He didn't have any documents with him by the time he left HK.

by Swizec 7y ago

henryfjordan 7y ago

In Snowden's case, he was a contractor and the specific whistleblower law covering the NSA did not apply to him.

crankylinuxuser 7y ago
95% of what we think as "Federal workers" are in fact contractors. Look no further than Accenture and similar. So sure, there's whistleblower laws. But they're in name only, with no real power for those that work with fed stuff in day to day operations.
- ezoe 7y ago
  That is so convenient, isn't it? The government don't need to follow the law which suppose to protect the whistleblowers.
  - crankylinuxuser 7y ago
    It's more complicated than that, sadly. A lot of contractors are small outfits that "won" contracts because the contract request was tailored for them. In the fed system, your max cap of what you can make wage-wise, is limited by Congress. The way around that is not to get paid wages, but becoming a contractor that takes contracts at MUCH higher than the wages would ever be. So it becomes a form of its own version of corruption of "I want to hire and pay these people appropriately but im unable to legally so I'll create a contract only they can fulfill." But the corruption itself is rooted with price controls in Congress. But one of the side effects is that they're "not working for the govt, but for the company" and the company is working for the govt. It also means no govt pension, or any of the perks for working directly for the govt. And well, contractors get none of the protections of reporting wrong-doing.
justinmchase 7y ago
Which is ridiculous of course.
weare138 7y ago
Plus there's policies and procedures that must be followed to be protected under the Whistleblower Protection Act. Skipping out of the country and accepting asylum with an adversarial foreign government while in possession of a crapton of stolen classified materials would definitely disqualify someone.

tedunangst 7y ago

In addition to other issues, it is not usually the exclusive decision of the whistleblower whether their disclosure qualifies.

GVIrish 7y ago

The problem with Snowden is that: A. He did not try to whistleblow through any officials channels in the NSA, intelligence community, or Congress B. He stole somewhere around 1.5 million documents, of which the vast majority had nothing to do with the programs he thought were illegal The house intelligence committee report on Snowden actually concedes that he could have enjoyed whistleblower protection under the law at the time. One could make the argument that one should not have trusted those protections and Snowden decided the same. But that still doesn't explain why he stole so much classified material that was unrelated to his civil liberties concerns.

StanislavPetrov 7y ago
The real problem is that the NSA not only routinely ignores issues raised by whistleblowers, but actively retaliates against them for trying to blow the whistle on illicit activities. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/22/how-pentagon-punished-nsa-whistleblowers https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/22/how-pentagon...
- GVIrish 7y ago
  Yes, that was what I was referring to when I said that one probably shouldn't have relied on those protections. However, it doesn't change the fact that he stole a tremendous amount of classified material that had nothing to do with what he felt civil liberties issues. Also doesn't change the fact that the Russian government outright admitted that Snowden shared Intel with them (according to the house Intel committee report). So even if he has a solid defense regarding prism and some of the other stuff he exposed, he doesn't really have any justification for the defense and foreign intelligence classified info he stole.
  - soraminazuki 7y ago
    Do you have any credible evidence to back up your claims? It seems to me that you're spreading baseless accusations. > he stole a tremendous amount of classified material that had nothing to do with what he felt civil liberties issues. How could you possibly know this? The only people who had access to the full documents are just a handful of journalists. > Also doesn't change the fact that the Russian government outright admitted that Snowden shared Intel with them (according to the house Intel committee report). Again, any evidence besides some half-baked government PR? He didn't have any documents with him by the time he left HK.