At least one day people will appreciate you see Emily Brontë.
Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely
161–170 of 510 posts
Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
In a democracy almost everything should be public. Our weapons for sure, perhaps not where they are located, but what we pay for yes.
Exactly right, you can't have democracy without information being available to everyone. But we all know this is just an illusion, all democratic states hide a great deal from their citizens.
I want to add- there is significant value at the world level, of keeping secrets.
Eveybody wants warfare to be asymmetric and biased towards them- why would we want to give a potential adversary perfect information about what weaponry we have as well as its exact capabilities? Unfortunately, when you want to keep a secret, you can't tell all of your citizens and trust that they won't tell anybody...
Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely
#163How 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...
...of course? If he's correct? Who would ever argue he wouldn't count? But I don't know what your point is in picking one potential whistleblowing example out of thousands. Let's not inject partisan politics where there's no need for it. Whistleblowing has nothing to do with being right-wing or left-wing.
Who are the "Thousands" of others?
Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely
#164Earlier 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…
To play devil's advocate: things that sound minor like parking spaces are regularly the grist of intelligence operations. And the targets are rarely heads of state or other bigwigs — less-prominent people are easier to recruit, kill, harass, etc.
Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely
#165It’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.
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).
> half of it was pseudo-treasonous (foreign surveillance)
When Snowden was telling everyone we spy on our allies, that is absolutely not treason.
From the Constitution, Article III, Section 3:
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
Look at literally any poll on this issue. Here [1] is one from late 2019 from Pew. 66% of Americans think the risks of government data collection outweigh the benefits, fewer than 25% think they benefit from such behavior. And almost nobody knows what the government is doing with all of this information they're collecting. It's certainly not indifference, it's that our media and democracy aren't really functioning pr…
> these sort of issues where people overwhelmingly feel one way, and the political establishment feels another? Yeah, those are all strangely absent. I feel that Sanders' nomination campaigns epitomized this divide: He spoke for the people. Many more people donated for him than any other candidate, his supporters were diverse and enthusiastic. He was the number one most popular politician in the entire country. Yet m…
We need to shift the dynamic in America from relying on these media conglomerates, to individuals doing their own research on things. Everyone knows the news media is rigged beyond saving, we need to let them die out, it's what they all deserve for betraying the trust of the people.
Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely
#167Whistleblowers 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 relea…
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.
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Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
...of course? If he's correct? Who would ever argue he wouldn't count? But I don't know what your point is in picking one potential whistleblowing example out of thousands. Let's not inject partisan politics where there's no need for it. Whistleblowing has nothing to do with being right-wing or left-wing.
Who are the "Thousands" of others?
I'm assuming that if you counted every potential whistleblower in the US that was ever reported on in the national or local news over the past few decades, it would probably add up to something in the thousands?
Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely
#169Whistleblowers 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 relea…
What makes it worse is, whistleblowers are trouble makers often. They are difficult people, at best like Snowden, they lay low. It makes it easier to dismiss them. Why? Because people who are good and social with the group do not have a contrarian character. To whistleblow against a very powerful organisation, like the NSA, you have to be a pain in the ass. I don't mean that in a bad way. Normal sociable people just don't do that.
So when a whistleblower breaks out, and they get chastised there almost is never support from within the organization for them.
Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely
#170Earlier 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.
As a non-USAer I'm so glad he went beyond domestic spying. He showed the world how the USA spied on many of its supposed allies. The scope of the system of espionage they built is orwellian and just astonishing. If there is one evil force conspiring for global domination that is the NSA and whichever institution they take order from. Thanks again, Snowden. What I don't understand is the complete lack of response from…
Meh, countries know they spy on each other. Sometimes they even use those processes to move information, just a different version of Nixon’s “For god’s sake, would someone leak this already?”