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The Personal Toll of Whistle-Blowing
21–30 of 121 posts
Re: The Personal Toll of Whistle-Blowing
#22So Freedom only got a slap on the wrist, basically
pretty typical. look at Snowden. The guy ruined his own life and nobody still gives a damn. Was it worth it? i dont think so. He definitely should have kept quiet even if it was against his own personal beliefs. It sucks but it is what it is. HSBC got slapped on the wrist for laundering cartel money. "If you’re suspected of drug involvement, America takes your house; HSBC admits to laundering cartel billions, loses f…
>He definitely should have kept quiet even if it was against his own personal beliefs.
That argument for moral complacency is largely self-fulfilling, because if nobody thinks that one person defecting will change anything, you'll never get more than one defector at once, and nothing will ever change. In that way everyone will march in lockstep to hell and deserve every bit of the torture that's waiting for them.
The foremost thing that Snowden achieved was that he quit doing the bad thing. There is some value in not being an active contributor to the suffering in the world. Sure, if you quit littering that won't clean up the parks, but at least you won't be a litterer anymore. The first thing Snowden did to improve the state of the world was reducing the number of NSA employees by one; and he improved himself by switching from NSA employee to unemployed. Too many people overlook this, thinking that all that matters is whether or not the world is good on average, while ignoring whether or not they themselves are good.
Secondly, Snowden hasn't been forgotten. It might take a few more to follow in his footsteps before the lesson sinks in to the public, but the things he revealed are still out there.
Finally, there actually have been some changes because of his actions (I saved the most concrete point for last). Nobody on HN discounts the reality of malicious state attackers anymore - it used to be that nobody expected to be on the receiving end of a state level attack (and we never secured appropriately), but now it's common knowledge that Public Enemy Number One is actually the public itself. Snowden definitely helped push forward HTTPS rollouts, for example.
Re: The Personal Toll of Whistle-Blowing
#23For me, Mark Felt sets the right template - get other people to do the publicising, leak anonymously and keep heavily in the shadows. Sometimes literally.
Just do not put your head above the parapet.
Re: The Personal Toll of Whistle-Blowing
#24So Freedom only got a slap on the wrist, basically
pretty typical. look at Snowden. The guy ruined his own life and nobody still gives a damn. Was it worth it? i dont think so. He definitely should have kept quiet even if it was against his own personal beliefs. It sucks but it is what it is. HSBC got slapped on the wrist for laundering cartel money. "If you’re suspected of drug involvement, America takes your house; HSBC admits to laundering cartel billions, loses f…
>look at Snowden. The guy ruined his own life and nobody still gives a damn. Was it worth it? i dont think so.
If it wasn't worth it, you wouldn't know his name, and you wouldn't be talking about it today. Does that count for nothing to you?
Re: The Personal Toll of Whistle-Blowing
#25This guy did OK out of being a whistleblower (barring the prison sentence): https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-tax-birkenfeld/whistl...
you cant put a price on time behind prison bars and away from your family. what if during that time his father died? was 100million "worth it"?
I'd easily spend 30 years in prison for 100M. Spending 60 years in a career isn't likely to pay off nearly that well.
Re: The Personal Toll of Whistle-Blowing
#26This reads like an advertisement for the FBI. A bigger story is how Obama removed protections and actively attacked whistle blowers after promising the most transparent government ever. That had true toll.
Re: The Personal Toll of Whistle-Blowing
#27>One interviewee, in response to a question about what advice he would give a potential whistle-blower, wrote, “[Can they] afford 5 years of their life in turmoil?” Another said, “Part of your ability to do anything about this is keeping yourself together,” and suggested that whistle-blowers find someone “like a minister or a shrink who’s confidentiality-protected,” because “this could go on for a while.” A high prop…
But I wonder: if there was a way to reduce the duration of the cases, would that reduce the impact on whistleblowers? I remember reading somewhere recently about the standard M.O for federal cases. They take a long time in order to build an extremely solid case. That's why federal conviction rates are so high. Intuitively it makes sense. If you're gonna go after some naughty people for doing naughty things, you reall…
This is totally incorrect. The high conviction rate is a result of extremely high maximum sentences. People who are 100% innocent often plead guilty after being threatened with a 30-year prison sentence that would be only 1 or 2 years under local law.
Many federal crimes are unconstitutional and deliberately vague, like "lying (not volunteering incriminating evidence) to an investigator" and "mail fraud" which is just a way to charge you in federal court where the odds are stacked against you.
The US federal judicialry is a kangaroo court. 99% of federal crimes should be repealed and maximum sentences reduced to be in line with state laws.
Federal jury selection is also suspect, especially in cases involving "national security".
Re: The Personal Toll of Whistle-Blowing
#28An interesting story of turning whistleblowing into a business is Ven-a-care pharmacy in the Florida Keys.[1] They started out as a small pharmacy, but now have a team of lawyers. They’ve gotten over $600M in whistleblower rewards as of the early 2010’s. Not sure what the total is now. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/id/41491563
Did they have lawyers to begin with? How did they get awarded these funds if it was not their case to begin with?
The legal doctrine arose from the common law Qui Tam writ, modified by statute for use stateside. The wiki page is pretty good.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qui_tam
Re: The Personal Toll of Whistle-Blowing
#29I keep thinking that in cases of any real size that these people should be put into witness relocation programs. Additionally, continue to pay them their current salary but not require them to work. We need people who know to speak out and therefore need to protect them.
Re: The Personal Toll of Whistle-Blowing
#30So Freedom only got a slap on the wrist, basically
When asked about the Freedom fine, [Patel] responded, "I decided to take it as a cost of doing business." This is the problem, why should you not take dubiously legal or moral action, if there isn't a significant deterrent?
Because you shouldn't be an asshole. People aren't animals unless they have some sword of Damocles hanging over them keeping them in line, it is a conscious choice to do the wrong thing.