Yeah, though not so much that some kind of legislation should be found that creates a balanced outcome, but that just even broad strokes of some vanilla whistleblower protection legislations are themselves reasonable and balanced, and hence should apply in the security setting too.
> There was also a massive national security compromise in the US ability to conduct surveillance.
but, but that's the whole point of the exercise, isn't it; the curtailment of mass surveillance? I mean, we're talking about a public agency; it needs to act within a clear public mandate when striving to reach its goals. It is not an end in itself, so when it oversteps its mandate, its not in fact providing any public good, but diminishing it, and so hindering it in further action on this course is in the public interest.
So sure, having the public aware that it engages in mass surveilence and bulk collection on both its citizens and non-targeted citizens of the world more generally -- is inconvenient to the agency, but is a win for the public. And consequently so are any actions third parties then take to make its life more difficult -- because really it is the rouge party here!
Something seems upside down to me in this logic where obscuring the price you pay for a public service can be permissable simply because people expect some reasonable level of that service. And hence the scandal of realizing the true cost of that service, and the public finding it too expensive can be seen as a story that has two sides, merely because any limits that public may decide to put on the price naturally cause the quality of the service to degrade. But,but if the public isn't the one that decides on the quid pro quo here, who the hell is being served here anyhow??
Surely if its the public that's served by a public agency, then a person who uncovers that the agency is costing us way way more than is known and than it claims - even under oath to the congress for christ's sake - is a desirable correction, for no decision could even be made under false information.