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Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

• cs137 3y ago
  [dead]
• jruohonen 3y ago
  In the EU we already have a law for protecting whistleblowers: https://commission.europa.eu/aid-development-cooperation-fundamental-rights/your-rights-eu/protection-whistleblowers_en https://commission.europa.eu/aid-development-cooperation-fun... Also companies have emerged for providing secure platforms for whistleblowers. Though, as national security and related things are in the hands of the member states, I am not sure how well this EU law and its national adaptations apply to the cases discussed in this article (probably wholesale exemptions have been adopted by the member states at this front). EDIT #1: At some point they also tried to draft a law for protecting people involved in vulnerability disclosure, which would have been great, but I think this lawmaking proposal failed. EDIT #2: I should have read the article better; it seems similar laws exist also in the US.
  • scrum-treats 3y ago
    [flagged]
  • hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
    The US also has laws protecting whistleblowers, which to me just highlighted the complete moral bankruptcy of some Republican members of the US Congress when they tried to out the whistleblower who brought Trump's phone call with the Ukrainian president to light, but more importantly, when they tried to impugn his motives. The thing that made me so angry about this is that a huge point of whistleblower laws is that it doesn't matter what the motives of the whistleblower are. Of course many whistleblowers are disgruntled for various reasons, but who cares? Whistleblowing laws aren't about taking the whistleblower's accusations at face value, it's just about protecting whistleblowers' ability to bring inside information and evidence to light, and then that information can be investigated independently. The push by folks like Rand Paul to expose and condemn the whistleblower was one of the most disgusting political acts I've ever seen.
    • h2odragon 3y ago
      I found the treatment of Julian Assange to be the disgusting poltics; after that its just more of the same, innit?
      • gghhzzgghhzz 3y ago
        The treatment of Assange defies belief, and the hypocrisy is off the scale. The defense from many people who would nominally be appalled by this, seems to rest on the poor character of Assange, so he gets written off. The poor character point may or may not be correct, but is completely irrelevant, and if it relates to civil or criminal offences then it has never been allowed to be tested.
        • kelipso 3y ago
          Also it's just insanely easy to malign the character of someone with a few well placed news articles and tweets.
      • alphanullmeric 3y ago
        No, it’s not the same because it doesn’t benefit him this time. Leftists are like libertarians, if libertarians only applied their principles to themselves. Bodily autonomy, firearm rights, private property, taxation, misinformation censorship, death penalty, etc. Whether or not they support it depends not on what it does but who it benefits, and so a left winger can never truly take a concrete position like “I support gun control” when they need to make exceptions for SRA, Natives, Palestinians, etc.
        • gghhzzgghhzz 3y ago
          Putting aside your implied definition of Leftists here. The Palestinian point is broadly enlightening, but maybe not in the way you intended. Armed struggle for the purpose of self determination should be materially supported in Ukraine, but not in Palestine. This is the glowing contradiction, and I'm not sure real leftists are the most guilty party here.
  • mnaxv 3y ago
    The cartoon at the top of the article highlights the fact that the laws aren't working (the UK was in the EU when some of these people were imprisoned).
  • wsc981 3y ago
    Yet the EU continues to make life very difficult for EU whistleblower Roelie Post [0]. Perhaps because she fought against child trafficking and US-based adoption firms are lobbying in the EU for adopting vulnerable children from countries like Romania. --- [0]: http://www.roeliepost.com/about/ http://www.roeliepost.com/about/
    • jruohonen 3y ago
      I didn't know that. Nor am I claiming that the law is working properly or have any evidence to any direction. The recent issues at UN are also "interesting": https://www.transparency.org/en/press/un-whistleblower-expos%C3%A9-independent-inquiry-urgent-reforms https://www.transparency.org/en/press/un-whistleblower-expos...
  • lost_tourist 3y ago
    Laws are pointless if they aren't used. The US has laws to allow whistleblowing. However they are so vague US prosecutors can easily get around them to prosecute and imprison whistleblowers, and the system itself is so corrupt that the "channels" you would use to actually do it would shut down the process almost immediately to save embarrassment to the government. The laws are just feel good laws and don't work, that's why people go straight to the press.
• ITB 3y ago
  On the other hand, there are people that look at whistleblowing as a way to propel into fame. They call themselves and whistleblowers when in reality they are just publicly critiquing their company over known facts. They give whistleblowing a bad reputation.
  • cjbgkagh 3y ago
    I often wonder if such people are being encourage by those who seek to undermine the concept of whistleblowing as a whole. Like encouraging the appending of 'gate' to every scandal name, even trivial ones, to minimize the seriousness of Watergate. EDIT: I should point out that an effective strategy to undermine opposition is to encourage the worst in them by secretly supporting those who embody the worst. When doing this it helps to have contacts in the media on your payroll.
    • whitemary 3y ago
      Whistleblowers don't do that. The media does. Do you know what whistleblowing is?
      • deleted 3y ago
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      • throwaway27391 3y ago
        [flagged]
    • throwaway426079 3y ago
      Is the motivation to minimize the seriousness of Watergate? I just take it as a lazy way of tagging a story and I suspect many headline writers couldn't even summarise what the original Watergate scandal involved.
  • whitemary 3y ago
    That's not whistleblowing, so no, it does not give whistleblowing a bad name. This is actually very simple.
• eunos 3y ago
  Because there's asymmetric of impact and incentive. If I leak some politicians' corrupt dealing, practically no much impact to general folks (because direct impact is divided to millions of people), but for those politicians directly impacted, absolute negative and they have all the incentive including power to do so to silence the whistle-blower.
• deleted 3y ago
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• photochemsyn 3y ago
  > Despite the importance of their actions, named whistleblowers are often subjected to oppressive and stigmatized labels—like "snitch" or "leaker." Modern societies are predicated on the notion that laws apply equally to all members of the society and transgressions are identified by authorities (the executive) and punished in a transparent manner by courts (the judicial), acting under the rule of laws set in place by government bodies (the legislative) that are responsive to the general population's interests. There are those who are scoffing to themselves at this description, and their viewpoint has some historical merit. The "stationary bandit" theory of government is a common alternative view: criminal elements with no respect for the above concept of equal treatment under the law infiltrate and take over governments so that they can engage in criminal activity while being protected by the very powers of state authority that were intended to keep their activities in check. These organized crime cartels then have the legislators rewrite the laws so that their criminal behavior is protected and not prosecuted (witness the failure of the US government to prosecute any of the major fraudsters involved in the 2008 economic collapse, or to prosecute the members of government who lied about WMDs in Iraq in 2002-2003, or to prosecute those involved in the illegal domestic mass surveillance operation, or to prosecute those pushing opiates on the population, etc.). The more blatant organized crime cartels (mafia, drug cartels, etc.) are well-known for calling members of their organizations who testify against them in court names like 'rats', 'snitches', and so on. If this becomes widespread behavior (major US media figures calling Snowden a 'weasel' come to mind), then it becomes rather clear that the government and its major corporate affiliates have become a kleptocracy run by a group of stationary bandits. We could call this a 'public-private partnership', I suppose. For more: https://broadstreet.blog/2021/04/05/the-rise-of-the-stationary-bandit/ https://broadstreet.blog/2021/04/05/the-rise-of-the-stationa...
  • deleted 3y ago
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• freetime2 3y ago
  It’s a travesty that Edward Snowden is still a fugitive in the United States. James Clapper went in front of congress and lied about the scope of surveillance on US citizens. Snowden saw it as his moral obligation to expose those lies, and he did it in the least destructive way possible by leaking the evidence to qualified journalists.
  • runnerup 3y ago
    He probably could have attempted to only leak the domestic surveillance, or at least screen out as much of the foreign intelligence methods as much as possible. Half of it was whistleblowing (domestic surveillance) but half of it was pseudo-treasonous (foreign surveillance).
    • morkalork 3y ago
      It gets a bit complicated with the whole 5-eyes mutual back scratching thing though.
      • newZWhoDis 3y ago
        Exactly. The existence of, and participation in, FVEY is treason against the people of the United States. There is no such thing as an “allied intelligence agency”, by their very nature all non-US intelligence agencies are hostile to American citizens. Thus, our domestic agencies conspiring with hostile foreign entities to defraud and undermine the citizens of the United States is treason.
        • George83728 3y ago
          You're wrong, it's not treason. This is meant to be a legalistic society where crimes are defined by laws, not by how the word for the crime is popularly perceived by laypeople. The US Constitution defines treason. In America, treason is when an American levies war against the United States, or adhering to the Enemies of the US, giving them aid and comfort. To characterize the UK as an enemy of the US simply isn't true, the US and the UK are not at war; the UK government is not openly hostile to America. If an American gives classified information to the UK they could be convicted of espionage, but treason specifically would not stick. Not even close. Even attempting it would be a complete farce. Treason charges couldn't even stick during the Cold War, when America and the Soviet Union were engaged in numerous proxy wars but weren't officially at war with each other. Many Americans sold secrets to the Soviet Union, got caught, and were convicted of espionage. But not treason. The Rosenbergs, who gave American nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union? Convicted and executed for conspiracy to commit espionage, not treason. John Walker and his son, US Navy officers who helped the Soviets decrypt millions of messages? Convicted of espionage, but not treason. Jerry Whitworth, Aldrich Ames, Robert Hanssen.. the list goes on. Convicted of espionage but not treason. The last treason convictions to ever happen in America were for acts committed during WW2.
• AndrewKemendo 3y ago
  Just look at this thread of “hackers” saying “well the law is the law.” It’s an embarrassment the degree to which smart educated leading edge communities have totally and utterly forfeited their own power for the security blanket of these domination based systems. Actually it’s worse, the official ethos of success in America is now some cynical mix of “If you’re not scamming someone you’re not trying” and “Altruism is for suckers” It’s like we’ve gotten to the point where even the people who disagree with Ayn Rand Objectvism have given up and just decided to play the same game just with different set of moral criteria Or maybe this is a venture capitalist forum and of course it’s going to be overrun by people who believe in some version of domination as the right moral philosophy.
  • colordrops 3y ago
    I was prepping to reply and you hit my point in your last paragraph. Through my youth I always assumed that people either saw through the corruption or had the wool pulled over their eyes, but the after working at a couple companies with several ex military contractor types and some some new inlaws, I've realized that for some people, tribe is above all. They are patriotic and loyal to the US system, which can do no wrong, and any perceived security or survival needs will always trump law and morals. These are the same thought processes that fuel the rise of fascism.
    • Aerbil313 3y ago
      They are biological instincts, it's normal. What you can do is choosing your tribe as something other than the default one.
  • Convolutional 3y ago
    Slashdot was a hacker forum, initially (prior to 1999). This has been a forum seen as an adjacency to a seed/VC incubator from the get-go. People keeping to their roots and not going for the money like Richard Stallman are mocked. Steven Levy glorifies him in Hackers, then takes a break from books glorifying the Google corporation, and when Stallman is down delivers a coup de grace to Stallman in Wired, for soi disant very progressive reasons. Of course Wired was founded by Rossetto as a continuation of the "New Right" project he was talking about in the New York Times in 1971. I myself am not surprised that people wander out of their prep schools and universities into these corporations and hold these views. People's hegemonic ideas are borne from the material conditions and class relations they are in.
• anonym29 3y ago
  "Truth is treason in the empire of lies." - George Orwell
  • copper-float 3y ago
    Perfectly said, it encapsulates America to a tee.
    • lost_tourist 3y ago
      and every other country, let's let them have credit too. Politicians everywhere are usually pieces of shit, as are their henchmen
      • anonym29 3y ago
        You're not wrong, but doesn't whataboutism detract from the legitimate criticisms being made of the US government here?
• AlbertCory 3y ago
  How about the guy right now who's blowing the whistle on favored IRS treatment of Hunter Biden? Does he count, too? https://abcnews.go.com/US/irs-whistleblower-told-congress-hunter-biden-probe-mishandled/story?id=98710844 https://abcnews.go.com/US/irs-whistleblower-told-congress-hu...
  • dmbche 3y ago
    Who gives a shit about the IRS taking not enough cash from one guy? That's a shit hill to die on don't you think?
    • AlbertCory 3y ago
      Thanks for role-playing the whistleblower's experience for us.
      • dmbche 3y ago
        Anytime
  • fn-mote 3y ago
    He is a potential whistleblower. Your linked article says: "[My client] would like to make protected whistleblower disclosures to Congress." "[T]here are no specific examples provided to support the accusations." I don't understand the tone of this post. I guess the implication is that whistleblower support relies on the political leanings of the people involved? Is it my politics talking if I say that the scale of this argument is completely underwhelming to me given the level of true atrocities being committed in the world? The article details 'incredible' examples of retaliation. That's the biggest concern here, not the whistleblowing.
    • AlbertCory 3y ago
      I think what you & the other downvoters are illustrating is: You can only be a 'whistleblower' if you're on MY side.
  • 3y ago
• 29athrowaway 3y ago
  Julian Assange (not a whistleblower, I know) said wars are a way to transfer public money into private hands. Everything in the US is about the same. Like quantitative easing.
  • mint2 3y ago
    Julian assange is a hypocritical scam artist - says a bunch of nice sounding words about democracy, abuse of power and war and yet his actions, speaking louder than words, increased all of those.
    • kome 3y ago
      his actions, indeed speaking louder than words. he showed how the American government is corrupted to the core and lawless and he is facing the consequences.
      • mint2 3y ago
        2016 decisively showed assange had a vendetta against the US and the Clintons in particular and didn’t actually care about democracy or human rights, or at best let his personal grievances completely override his supposed beliefs in those things.
    • throwaway27391 3y ago
      I hate that he is pulled into these conversations, especially aligned with Snowden
• bowsamic 3y ago
  I know a lot of people who take a seriously negative view against whistleblowers, which I find very strange. Do you not want to know the messed up shit that the companies and government are doing? I think people just see it as being a traitor.
  • bourbonorgin 3y ago
    isn't that the premise of this blog post
    • bowsamic 3y ago
      I didn't read it
  • GuB-42 3y ago
    Because there is a thin line between a whistleblower and a traitor. A whistleblower releases information about "messed up shit", a traitor releases legitimate secret information, how do you call someone who releases both?
  • MattGaiser 3y ago
    Depends. Many people also have things they wish to hide, from affairs to drug use to embezzlement to their politics to just their sexual orientation. So they have to balance preferring to know about the wrongdoing of others (in the opinion of the whistleblower) vs having their own secrets revealed by someone close to them with a similar mindset, who may view their activities as wrong.
• bryanrasmussen 3y ago
  but - it should be noted that a suffering conscience is a well-known cliche.
• evolve2k 3y ago
  Anyone have a good example of a good “whistle blowers policy” from a private organisation or non-profit? Im interested to roll out a local policy in some of the non-profits I’m connected with.
  • dmbche 3y ago
    I think a good first step would be reaching out to Snowden to have a quick zoom call on what he has to say - I've seen him do quite a few zoom conferences, I can't imagine he would'nt be interested in chatting with you if you are serious.
• kingcharles 3y ago
  If you discover law enforcement or prosecutors committing crimes, who do you report it to? This is a serious question. You can only report it to their peers, and I promise you, from personal experience, that you will get absolutely nowhere except, like Snowden, have an entire world of hurt come down on you instead. I can not recommend whistleblowing to anyone. If you see the government going wrong, ignore it. Walk away. You only have one life. How many years of it do you want to write off? What we actually need is better and better procedures for anonymously reporting misconduct to a body that will actually hold people accountable. Many investigative bodies end up being staffed by those somewhat related or associated with the persons under investigation and therefore guaranteed to produce no meaningful results. I don't know how to construct a body that actually works effectively, but I would love links to any good studies or articles on this.
  • dmbche 3y ago
    I've been thinking about some kind of "regular human inspector" where companies have to pay a government inspector to just ask common sense questions and be a place to bring issues that can't be dealt with internally. Since they change regularily, bribing becomes unrealistic, we don't need high salaries or expertise. It's a very coarse idea still. I'm just rambling here!
  • lost_tourist 3y ago
    If it's local, report it to the state, if it's the state report it to the feds, if it's the feds your only real option is to do it and run to another country, or keep your mouth shut and just find a new job. This process has repeated itself many times in the news if you research it.
    • kingcharles 3y ago
      In theory that is how it should work. I promise in practice that you will get absolutely nowhere. Most prosecutors seem local, either municipal or county, but in actuality are State workers, and the State is generally completely disinterested in investigating its own staff. The feds are even less interested in investigating matters that should be handled by the State. I say this from practical experience of trying to move the State Attorney General's office and the FBI to investigate and getting absolutely nowhere at all. My next plan is to simply take a local friendly reporter with a video camera and perform a sit-in at the prosecutors office until they promise to do something or they have me arrested for trespass.
• HSNomad 3y ago
  There is a saying goes like this, "85% of people on earth are followers, 10% are leaders or creators, or manipulators and 5% are observers. The followers need something to follow or believe so the creators capitalize on that and take advantage of their desire to be lead. The observers see everything that's going on and can ruin everything for the 10% but, the 85% label the 5% crazy or plan to get rid of them because the 10% have control."
  • jutrewag 3y ago
    [dead]
  • lionkor 3y ago
    800 million leaders in the world, and 400 million whisleblowers?
    • kwere 3y ago
      "team leaders", self-employed and small informal business owner could easily fill that number. One just need to be a self-starter, sociable and have an organization to manage
    • whatshisface 3y ago
      It sounds plausible that one in ten people are leaders, although I don't know how you could measure how many people would report a crime if they saw it occur.
    • kelnos 3y ago
      400M observers, of which a large portion might desire to be whistleblowers, but either see it as futile, or as incredibly dangerous to themselves, and therefore stay silent. Regardless, the absolute numbers or exact percent values aren't important. If we believe the concept is plausible, it's enough to think of the vast majority being followers, with a small number of leaders/creators/manipulators and an even smaller number of observers/whistleblowers. Maybe 85/10/5 is right, maybe it's 95/4/1, maybe 99/0.8/0.2, whatever. As with many things, it's an intentional oversimplification, intended to illustrate a general idea.
• paulmd 3y ago
  Whistleblowers act against power structures and that's the ultimate transgression as far as the power structure is concerned. Transgressions in favor of the state are one thing, you'll get a slap on the wrist at most, even personal benefit and promotion in some cases, but transgressions against the state are what will provoke a real response. See, for example, the incredible vigor pursued against the people who released the collateral murder videos, and not the people in the video who violated the geneva conventions by murdering surrendering combatants. One transgressed in favor of the state, and one against. That's all that matters. And of course the power structure has investigated itself and found no wrong-doing, something something "you can't surrender to a helicopter therefore we were fine to shoot them", or whatever. You can't get a hmmwv out to a site during a decade-long occupation to take them in, better shoot them I guess. It is the same thing in corporations too: you can be incompetent or your project can fail, and that's fine as long as you don't rock the boat. It's actually probably worse to rock the boat and try to save a failing project, not only do you take it on yourself if it fails (which it likely will anyway, because they won't listen/the project is too far gone) but even if it succeeds you've stuck your head up and shown yourself to not be a yes-man. We want team players here, not someone who's going to kick up a fuss and argue with the boss or jump them on the ladder. Doesn’t matter if what you said was true or not, you don’t transgress the power structures.
  • HeckFeck 3y ago
    That's exactly the problem. You know they are speaking an essential truth when you look at the feathers ruffled by Snowden, Assange and those who follow in their path. They will get their due acclaim if we're lucky to have a more moral and free society in the future.
    • killjoywashere 3y ago
      [flagged]
      • confoundcofound 3y ago
        This is a false dichotomy. The very concept of freedom is based on a moral philosophy.
• swayvil 3y ago
  I'm sure we could come up with a dozen more tragic ironies about our society, if we tried.
• pyuser583 3y ago
  “Conscience does make cowards of us all” - Shakespeare
• NHQ 3y ago
  Conscience is rarely a good thing.
  • DangitBobby 3y ago
    Explain.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  • Aerbil313 3y ago
    Depends on what you consider good.
    • NHQ 3y ago
      What "you consider good" can be bad, especially if you are going by conscience and your source is faulty. Otherwise we would never learn from our mistakes or feel sorry for wrongdoings. A faulty conscience leads one to feel good for their wrongdoings, and to live by their mistakes. If you do not go by conscience, but use your own observation and feeling, you must will thyself not to fall for the wrong moral nor to value the wrong ethic. One learns and grows more without conscience. Conscience depends on the source of which you trust and believe. If you are the source, that is not conscience but regular sciens, also called sentience. If your sentience is true to nature you have no need of conscience, also called sapiens.
• yarg 3y ago
  I continue to maintain that Snowden was one of the greatest American patriots in decades. There are many leakers that deliberately act with the intention to harm the state; That wasn't Snowden - he threw away his life to stage an intervention. Why has he been left to rot in a dictatorship? I'd say sign a pardon for the man, but unless he can get out of Russia there's a damned good chance that things would only get worse for him.
  • ITB 3y ago
    They would need a secret pardon agreement so he leaves at the same time he’s pardoned
  • 0xDEF 3y ago
    I am 99% sure Snowden is cringing at the term "American patriots". Snowden's primary motivation was most likely opposition to US foreign policy and control of the world. There is no other reason to contact Glenn Greenwald in late 2012. In 2008-2012 Glenn Greenwald was primarily known as one of the harshest opponents of US foreign policy and someone who didn't shy away from defending Russia, Iran and other geopolitical adversaries of the US. If it was about anti-surveillance/pro-privacy activism there are so many other ways Snowden could have leaked it and so many other people and organizations he could have leaked to. Snowden would probably be living in Vienna by now and not in Moscow if he was just an anti-surveillance activist. However his primary motivation for the leaks was to lower US influence and control of the rest of the world. Snowden is a world citizen who opposed what "American patriots" were doing to the rest of the world.
    • lost_tourist 3y ago
      He has stated his primary reason was that he was pro-privacy and anti-surveillance. There is no reason to doubt this. He had a huge trove of info he could have sold to China or Russia and he didn't. He has given us no reason to not believe him, and if you're paying attention to Washington you'll see why he didn't go through those channels, especially in the era of shipping off people to be tortured in other countries and "water boarding" is just "coercive means".
    • 3y ago
• bourbonorgin 3y ago
  Parts of this blog post read like they are nearly plagiarized right out of Whistleblowers: Broken Lives and Organizational Power by C. Fred Alford good post otherwise
  • crvdgc 3y ago
    It's in the reference list.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • hotpotato98478 3y ago
      I haven’t read the book so not validating the plagiarism claim, but citing a book in a biblio isn’t a license to steal content
    • bourbonorgin 3y ago
      It looks like the author copied and pasted from the book and used a thesaurus to change a few words here and there. A reference list is not attribution.
• kodah 3y ago
  The article only mentions her as a picture (on purpose, I'm sure), but I'd like to take a second to address this: Chelsea Manning is a very bad example of a whistleblower. First, she didn't reveal anything new. All the information that was produced was previously known. Second, she was releasing documents because she was angry that she was deployed. Third, she didn't even attempt to use the whistle blowing process in the military that is quite in tact (it was called request mast when I was in but goes by different names depending on the branch). How she was treated afterward was terrible, but to continue validating her story by labeling her a whistleblower is harmful imo. It's okay to say not all whistleblowers are cut from the same cloth while simultaneously promoting the system of request mast/whistleblowing in the government.
  • boomboomsubban 3y ago
    >First, she didn't reveal anything new. All the information that was produced was previously known Just as a start, the Iraq War logs detailed fifteen thousand previously unknown civilian deaths. While you can argue we knew our military was doing terrible stuff, without her leaks it wouldn't have been clear what terrible stuff they were doing. >Second, she was releasing documents because she was angry that she was deployed Source? While I'm not 100% clear what her motivations were, I've never heard that claim. As for the third, it was clear what she released was being hidden. I can't imagine what the proper channel would be for something like the "collateral murder" video. "Hey you know that time you killed journalists and lied about it? Well there's evidence you lied about it."
    • kodah 3y ago
      > While you can argue we knew our military was doing terrible stuff, without her leaks it wouldn't have been clear what terrible stuff they were doing. The Iraq war logs weren't even mostly about us. They were mostly about our partners. Her testimony aligns to what those databases were for. [1] > Source? While I'm not 100% clear what her motivations were, I've never heard that claim. I was trying to find the chat logs from IRC that make that situation a lot more emblematic. She was having relationship issues at the time and was demurred by long deployment times/work. (To her credit, I did a similar deployment for roughly a year and they are exhausting) In her testimony she glosses over much of what was in the chat logs, instead trying to explain her actions from a place of promoting "national discourse". The helicopter gunship situation is accurate. If there's anything she released that was useful it was that. 1: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/01/bradley-manning-wikileaks-statement-full-text https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/01/bradley-mannin...
• penguin_booze 3y ago
  Whistle blowing policies are not worth the paper on which it's written. Equally worth are HR grievance policies (of all kinds). The sure outcome of invoking either is that (1) you'll lose your job (2) you'll never find a job again. One difference with blowing the whistle, though, is that it'll lead to your death: you'll be killed if you're lucky. If not, you'll lead a painful life of professional and social ostracization, which will eventually lead to suicide. So, choose your poison.
  • neilv 3y ago
    I think there's some degree of truth to this, but that you're overstating it. A realistic takehome message is that sometimes it's best to just walk away. Sometimes you can even ask for help with the walking away gracefully. (When asking for help leaving, from within the organization... I suspect you'll need either trustworthy institutional mechanisms for that, or to find one or more individuals who are smart, of good character, and who have the ability to help. Don't ask the wrong person for help.)
• WeylandYutani 3y ago
  At least one day people will appreciate you see Emily Brontë.
• throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
  I've thought about blowing the whistle but I'm honestly too afraid. Even if I do, nothing changes. Companies get tiny fines and executives keep their bonuses, yet the whistle-blower's life is ruined.
• umvi 3y ago
  Some whistleblowers are just disgruntled and are not acting out of a sense of moral obligation but are rather whistleblowing as a form of vengeance
  • tmp20230324 3y ago
    I'm sure there is some truth to your statement. I don't think it negates the need for society to protect whistleblowers who do so under a sense of moral obligation though (which is what the article is about).
  • tootie 3y ago
    John Kiriakou springs to mind a guy who leaked classified info mixed with a bit of incorrect hearsay to push an agenda. Julian Assange leaked the DNC emails on behalf of Russian intelligence. And even the guy who turned out to be Deep Throat admitted he did what he did out of pure spite over failure to earn recognition for his role in the crime.
    • nopcode 3y ago
      > Julian Assange leaked the DNC emails on behalf of Russian intelligence. Journalists report on leaks from intelligence all the time, to the point that the "Intelligence sources say"-phrase is becoming a meme of US "news". You can't open CNN or MSNBC without seeing some FBI or CIA head telling you what they want you to think. Why something is being leaked is relevant, but it shouldn't be a reason to ignore the truth or attack the journalist.
      • tootie 3y ago
        That's a pretty sanguine point of view. Russia stole emails from a private organization for the explicit intent of disrupting the election and then fed them to WikiLeaks and then Assange had audacity to try to blame Seth Rich. Julian Assange provably lies to further his personal agenda. Any good he has done for the world has been purely coincidental. Cable news hire experts to give expert opinions. Not to divulge state secrets for personal gain. Well, except Fox. Fox has Oliver North.
• tycho-newman 3y ago
  Karl Jung wrote about the social purpose of scapegoats years ago. Feels apropos.
• euroderf 3y ago
  Aren't weaknesses in current whistleblower laws pretty well understood ? By the bureaucrats that exploit them, and by the journos that report on them ? So have rewrites been proposed in Congress ? Or by any of Biden's people ? Or are they ALL in on the whistleblower "protection" scam ?
• etiam 3y ago
  With regard to the whistle, Ed Snowden described in his memoirs an old naval system of communication with whistles, and in particular how they could be used to signal that there were things wrong with the ship which put it in danger and warranted it promptly being taken to port for rectification. I don't really have any independent information as to whether that or this present post's reference to Victorian policemen giving chase is more true for the origins of the whistleblower expression, but Snowden's certainly seems more apt for the act.
• nwp882 3y ago
  [flagged]
• gerikson 3y ago
  This outlet seems pretty Putin-friendly: https://covertactionmagazine.com/category/ukraine/ https://covertactionmagazine.com/category/ukraine/
  • 0xDEF 3y ago
    Why is it a problem to be Putin-friendly? I don't understand how you can praise Snowden and completely ignore what he has been telling us about the Ukraine and Russia and why we can't trust what US media and politicians are telling us.
• vinay_ys 3y ago
  Why isn't whistleblowing fully anonymous? Is it because of spam and investigative bandwidth challenges? Given the progress with LLMs recently, I suspect in the very near future we would have AI filters that receive anonymous whistleblower reports, process it for validity and route it to a large number of reporters and other public members for further handling without putting the original whistleblower at risk. For most sensitive things, if record-keeping was tamper-proof through publicly verifiable cryptographic mechanisms (decentralised crypto blockchains for information would become the biggest utility use case of crypto tech – that's my bet), then it would make such automated investigations of records much much easier.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• efitz 3y ago
  Aside from power dynamics, one of the challenges with being a whistleblower is that you are making a moral transgression with respect to your organization. One of the commonly accepted foundations of most peoples’ morality is loyalty [1]. So you are not only exposing people to legal risk and to risk of losing power and/or standing, but you are quite literally a traitor from the point of view of the organization you blew the whistle in. Like much of the rest of the culture war US people find ourselves in, I am fearful of the disparate treatment given whistleblowers nowadays. The whistleblower divulging Trump’s call with Zelenskyy was protected by the media so much that media organizations and social media wouldn’t even allow disclosure of the name of the whistleblower (which is odd because the act itself is about transparency). The media has been in favor of leaks forever because it allows holding the powerful accountable. But the leaks by the young man on Discord are not even being examined for content (such as the revelation that US troops are on the ground in Ukraine); the US press is decrying the leaker and demanding harsh punishment for revealing secrets. I literally have never seen the media act like that before in my life. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_foundations_theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_foundations_theory
• mvdl 3y ago
  Most whistleblowers have a high moral and ethical standard. In current societies where people make it to the top lying, cheating and misusing or even suppressing others, we watch movies about Jedi and turn a blind eye to the dark side the minute the TV is turned off. Humans are an odd species.
  • pnt12 3y ago
    I think I read this about the original Simpsons: they were very critical of certain things, such as environmental dangers. But most people tuning in fantasize their role in protecting the environment, then go in with their lives without doing much about it. I think this is deep in all sorts of media with a positive message - scratch the moral itch so you don't have to do it in reality.
• nahnahg 3y ago
  [dead]
• pnt12 3y ago
  In general, people with a conscience and acting accordingly suffer more or less gravely. Perhaps this is to be expected, unfortunately. We should support whistle-blowers much more, but this feels like a problem very hard to solve. How can we trust the state to protect those denouncing the state? Or corporations protecting those denouncing the corporation? Seems like it's inevitable that the person will be at odds against the organization.
• 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
  > Snowden was not a whistleblower > Despite Snowden's later public claim that he would have faced retribution for voicing concerns about intelligence activies, the Committee found that laws and regulations in effect at the time of Snowden's actions afforded him protection. > Snowden was a disgruntled employee who became engaged in numerous spats with his supervisors. > Most of the documents Snowden stole have no connection to programs that could impact privacy or civil liberties > Snowden was, and remains, a serial exaggerator and fabricator Review of the Unauthorized Disclosures of Former National Security Agency Contractor Edward Snowden (pdf warning): https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/hpsci_snowden_review_declassified.pdf https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/hpsci_snowden_r... Highlights (pdf warning): https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/snowden_report_highlights.pdf https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/snowden_report_...
• opportune 3y ago
  The only difference between a leaker and whistleblower is whether you agree with their motives and reasoning. It’s basically the same difference as between a revolutionary and insurgent or terrorist, or a partisan and rebel. The parallel goes even further because it’s essentially a sacrificial asymmetric resistance from within that is impossible to fully prevent. We definitely need to remember that character assassinations will be used against anybody that threatens those in power, whether they do so rightly or wrongly (and that the truth often lies in between, though of course it could be much more towards one side than the other). There’s also a really difficult balance to strike because being too quick/willing to blow the whistle, or exposing irrelevant information in a massive dump, could end up doing more harm than good. At risk of going against the HN grain: in a way, you need whistleblowing to be persecuted to provide a check against it being overused. If it weren’t persecuted then people could casually air way too much dirty laundry or weaponize it for personal reasons (like getting passed up for a promotion, or deciding on something an individual doesn’t like but which isn’t objectively bad). By making it have real and severe consequences, you need to have a very strong personal conviction that the truth outweighs the negative personal impact, which biases whistleblowers towards being moralistic (or mentally unwell). That isn’t to excuse the US government’s behavior though, I think the right thing to do would be to excuse the individual cases where it turns out the whistleblowing was necessary post-hoc, which had not often been done. To give an example of what I’m talking about, consider what happened to Google in the past 10 years. Google for a long time marketed itself as a strongly moralistic company that wanted its employees to be the same. But it grew a lot in terms of headcount and media interest. Many Google projects faced a lot of internal resistance due to the moral implications (eg Dragonfly) but employees took it upon themselves to air the dirty laundry in public earlier than was justified (before it was fully committed and launched) - it’s hard to know if these would have launched without those leaks, but given the strong possibility they may not have, it did a lot of reputational damage just for something that was being considered. And today, you can read many headlines in eg Business Insider like “Google employees shit on Project Y” from people leaking internal e-mail threads and casual discussion groups to media. In that case whistleblowing/leaks are far more damaging and liberally used than they justify, and if people did the same thing to the Us military/intelligence community, it would be completely unable to operate at all.
  • 3y ago
• korginator 3y ago
  When I worked in a large-ish organization in the late 1990's, there were some "interesting" hiring practices and office dynamics, to say the least. Our organization had a phone hotline and an email address to raise concerns. I decided to send a short, objective message after observing the negative effects of these practices on the workplace morale. My message was then promptly sent to the very same hiring manager running the show, and the local director who was equally involved. Obviously, nothing positive came out of it, and there was a fair amount of unpleasantness afterwards. Back then I was younger and somewhat naïve, but fortunately that mindset changed quickly. None of these hotlines or whistleblower mailboxes work as intended. More often than not, you just end up creating trouble for yourself and for others with a net negative outcome while the original problem remains unaddressed. The people in the positions of power have everything going for them, it's in their interests to maintain status-quo and expand their spheres of influence. The last thing they want is for an upstart whistleblower to try and make a change.
• FridLV 3y ago
  if anyone would WhistleBlow current War Crimes for the wrong side, he would get immediately dismissed. No one would follow it, because it would affect their money. Current Situation: Any trend big money works with, it cannnot be whistleblowed.
• golemotron 3y ago
  We can do things to protect whistleblowers, but it's important to realize that whatever we do to encourage them could lead to more false claims. There's a balance. There should be a price for whistleblowing but maybe not as high as it is.