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Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

covertactionmagazine.com

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Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

#91

Post by gghhzzgghhzz »

alphanullmeric wrote: post #62
gghhzzgghhzz wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don’t want to materially support either country.

As someone who considers themselves on the left, i have broadly the same view.

I also don't have a hard view on gun control, because if the state authorities are militarised then it's hard to argue that civil society can't be. The solution for this of course is to demilitarise the police.

Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

#92

Post by dmbche »

AlbertCory wrote: post #39

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-hu...

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?

Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

#93

Post by lettergram »

andrewmutz wrote: post #22
freetime2 wrote: post #17

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.

I disagree that he did it in the least destructive way possible. He revealed far more secrets than were necessary to blow the whistle. Just take a look at the list of secrets he revealed. Most of them are not about domestic spying at all: https://www.lawfareblog.com/snowden-revelations If he wanted to blow the whistle on domestic spying, he could have shared documents with journalists about domestic spying.

In a democracy almost everything should be public. Our weapons for sure, perhaps not where they are located, but what we pay for yes.

Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

#94

Post by dmbche »

kingcharles wrote: post #65

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 aw…

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!

Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

#96

Post by [deleted] »

photochemsyn wrote: post #16

> 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 b…

[deleted]

Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

#97

Post by AlbertCory »

dmbche wrote: post #92
AlbertCory wrote: post #39

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-hu...

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?

Thanks for role-playing the whistleblower's experience for us.

Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

#98

Post by photochemsyn »

jruohonen wrote: post #51
freetime2 wrote: post #17

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.

Snowden is perhaps not the best of examples because of all the controversy. If we change the subject a little, what is your stance on, say, the Panama Papers?

1) Criminals infiltrate government. 2) Government makes it legal to avoid taxation by placing funds in offshore accounts. 3) Large sums of money are hidden in Panamanian accounts via Mossack Fonseca. 4) Someone leaks documentation of these accounts to journalists. 5) Criminals say it's not whistleblowing because no laws were broken, it's just snooping into private affairs.

Of course, ordinary citizens don't get such privileges. If they could, everyone could get out of student loan debt by setting up a Delaware shell corporation controlled by another family member or group of friends, transferring their loan debt to it, and then let the shell corporation go bankrupt. The only downside would be that nobody would be that likely to loan you more money, but you'd have no more debt to pay off.

Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

#99

Post by ztrfy »

wnevets wrote: post #87
saurik wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might be missing something, but it seems the only reason that Russia has much of any leverage on him now is specifically because we are persecuting him in the first place? https://www.businessinsider.com/ex-kgb-spy-the-russians-tric... Like, to the extent to which an early plan to target him was a success, it involved a critical later step where the United States goes on a hunt for Snowden, allowing Russia the abil…

He fled to the country with directions from russia before releasing the classified Intel.

Nonsense. He gave the material to Greenwald and a Guardian journalist in Hong Kong. He stayed in Hong Kong for a while, and when it became apparent that he could not go to other countries he went to Russia.

Whether the Guardian published the info after that is irrelevant. Also note that Greenwald asked him to publish anonymously, which Snowden declined.

Anyway, the U.S. could pardon him and he would go back.

All these armchair whistleblowers here are mindblowing.

Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

#100

Post by jstarfish »

nmqsxc wrote: post #37
andrewmutz wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree that he did it in the least destructive way possible. He revealed far more secrets than were necessary to blow the whistle. Just take a look at the list of secrets he revealed. Most of them are not about domestic spying at all: https://www.lawfareblog.com/snowden-revelations If he wanted to blow the whistle on domestic spying, he could have shared documents with journalists about domestic spying.

According to Greenwald there were millions of pages, largely because everything from parking spaces to nuclear weapons were frivolously marked "top secret" in order to increase the perceived importance of bureaucrats. Snowden gave the pile to the Guardian (Greenwald and another journalist), who decided what to publish, which was a major task because of all the unimportant stuff. How could Snowden have gone through th…

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