8 ms·
“Fake” whistleblower? This is a hop and a skip away from Q-anon territory, and shouldn’t be on hn.
by patentatt 7y ago
“Fake” whistleblower? This is a hop and a skip away from Q-anon territory, and shouldn’t be on hn.
- jessaustin 7y agoReal whistleblowers: Snowden, Kiriakou, Binney, Drake, Manning, Winner. Notice a theme of career loss, prison, total life upheaval, and a press that DGAF. Fake whistleblower: still works for CIA, whistleblowing has purely political rather than administrative effects, and ongoing adulation in the press. If you don't want to see this on HN, then downvote and move on.
- streb-lo 7y agoWell we could strive for a base level of critical thinking, something clearly missing from your statement. A whistleblower that is heavily covered in the media because he or she aligns with the orginization's goals (sell headlines) is not 'fake'. A whistleblower blowing the whistle on a hierarchy unable to directly fire him will also, not surprisingly, not lose his job.
- jessaustin 7y ago...heavily covered in the media because he or she aligns with the orginization's goals (sell headlines) is not 'fake'. "Heavily covered in the media", that's an interesting criterion for "whistleblower", and I'm sure it would serve someone's interests if it got any traction. Also "critical thinking" is now defined as "believing what the war media tell us"? This would be Orwellian, if it weren't so silly.
- sjwright 7y agoYou are misrepresenting what was said. "Heavily covered in the media" wasn’t cited as a criterion for a whistleblower. Actually to be more precise, it was cited as a criterion—by you—when you claimed that as a hallmark of “fake” whistleblowers.
- jessaustin 7y agoParent claimed that media coverage was a sufficient criterion; I disagree. You've interpreted the discussion as concerned with a necessary criterion. That abuse of the idiom will come later, after the war media has moved the Overton window a bit further.
- streb-lo 7y agoYou need to re-read what I wrote. My claim is that media coverage cannot say anything meaningful about the authenticity of a whistleblower. To say otherwise is a terrible argument -- Snowden himself had widespread media coverage, both positive and negative.
- jessaustin 7y agoSnowden's revelations are massive. They should be cited anytime every time an intelligence reptile anonymously leaks something to the press, which is every day. Instead, the only time Snowden makes the news is when they want to announce some new persecution like this recent lawsuit over his memoir. Here is on Joe f@#$ing Rogan for goodness sakes! That is not widespread coverage.
- streb-lo 7y agoAgain, that is not what we're talking about. Media coverage tells you nothing about the authenticity of a whistleblower. You have not demonstrated any useful criterion for identifying 'fake' whistleblowers other than "I do not agree with his/her goals."
- jessaustin 7y agoYou're right, media coverage tells us far more about the media than about the people they cover. That was actually the point I made at the top of this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21334185 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21334185
- 7y ago
- meheleventyone 7y agoSo rather than fake it’s more legally protected versus not legally protected?
- tfandango 7y agoI have a whistleblower hotline available to me at work... If I see something and call that number, my identity will be protected. That is the way my company would prefer I handle ethical issues and I will keep my job. If I gather up evidence and release it to the press, I will lose my job. That is the difference between, say Snowden and this whistleblower. But that does not negate the validity of the complaint.
- jessaustin 7y agoThat's great. Very few people in the unsupervised services imagine that they are so well protected. Thomas Drake and John Crane might have thought using the established procedure would protect them... and we've heard of them.
- kiterunner2346 7y agotfandango says> "If I see something and call that number, my identity will be protected. That is the way my company would prefer I handle ethical issues and I will keep my job. If I gather up evidence and release it to the press, I will lose my job." Do NOT believe that! The reality is probably quite different. Many organizations (both private and civil) make such promises but, in truth, the complaint phone line/box/e-mail is a direct line to either higher-ups in the company or to someone in another agency who will, very quickly, pass identifying information to higher-ups. The whistleblower will be tracked down mercilessly and driven out always. Those for whom the whistle blows will, not infrequently, be rewarded. Sorry to burst your bubble, but I've been in many public and private endeavors and, in every case, so-called whistleblower phone lines, complaint boards or monitoring companies have proven to be ineffectual and/or downright deadly to the career of anyone who contacts them. They are usually honeytraps for those poor individuals who believe their complaints will be fairly judged. With reasonable care the press can be relied upon to vent complaints to the public w/o identifying the complainant.
- tfandango 7y agoI will remember your comments should I ever feel the need to call it.
- emiliobumachar 7y agoCare to name a couple examples? As it is, it sounds like a classic No True Scotsman to me. No True Whistleblower gets "glowing plaudits" and "ongoing adulation".
- tssva 7y agoWhat you refer to as "fake whistleblower" still has their job because they followed the legal procedure for reporting abuse and therefore enjoy whistleblower protection. The others sited didn't follow the legal procedure which would have allowed them to also enjoy whistleblower protection.
- jessaustin 7y agoThomas Drake followed procedure, and he got burned. John Crane was one of the bureaucrats involved with that procedure, and he didn't think the burning was proper. So he followed procedure in order to blow the whistle on the burning, so then he got burned. Unsurprisingly, no one stepped forward for Crane.
- tssva 7y agoDrake got burned because in addition to following the procedure he leaked information to the press which is not part of the procedure.
- jessaustin 7y agoAfter he got burned, the press found out. Why does your story keep changing?
- shadowgovt 7y agoThat doesn't match the Wikipedia summary. Press leak, then the Bush administration hunted for the source of the leak. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trailblazer_Project#Whistleblowing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trailblazer_Project#Whistleblo...
- seppin 7y agoIgnore this guy, he's leaking from /r/politics
- jessaustin 7y agoI've been to Reddit a couple of times, and never to that section. Unlike you I post under my own name. Anyway, the time for that valuable advice would have been before that comment spawned a big subthread and got upvoted into double digits...
- IanDrake 7y agoOK, he/she is not fake. So: What is their name? IDK. What exactly did they hear? IDK. From who did they hear it from? IDK. People here seem awfully sure about something they know nothing about.
- davidwitt415 7y agoBollocks. As Matt Taibbi correctly noted, a CIA whistleblower would only be a whistleblower if he were to expose malfeasance within CIA activities.