Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely • Hacker News Board

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

#291

Post by kodah » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 9:28 PM UTC

boomboomsubban wrote: post #237

kodah wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 lo…

On 1, she says >The CIDNE-I and CIDNE-A databases contain reporting and analysis fields for multiple disciplines including Human Intelligence or HUMINT reports, Psychological Operations or PSYOP reports, Engagement reports, Counter Improvised Explosive Device or CIED reports, SigAct reports, Targeting reports, Social and Cultural reports, Civil Affairs reports, and Human Terrain reporting. They're the reports we made…

She says elsewhere in that testimony that the reports in which civilians were killed, raped, and sexual assaults mostly had to do with the police and military of the host countries (Iraq and Afghanistan). This lines up with my experience as well; we were repeatedly advised to stay out of the locals business, or how they run their judicial system is up to them. This same judicial system is how you have multi-time trigger men and bomb makers that somehow left Kabul unphased after leaving their courts.

> "I'm unhappy so let's make a grand move" than "let's get revenge on the military for my unhappiness."

I don't really see a difference between the two besides intent. Intent isn't really something that matters in today's world.

What I would've liked to have seen is if she joined the service members trying to whistleblow on ineffective and dangerous ROEs, the lies told by the Obama administration about the success of the Iraqi and Afghani police and military, etc... Instead, she released just enough vague and sensational stuff to spur conspiracy theories.

To be clear, I understand the frustration that inspired Chelsea to do what she did, but I think how you do these things both affords (or removes) protections, and matters a great deal more if you're actually trying to make a difference. That along side the content of what's released; in the case of Snowden there absolutely wasn't anyone to appeal to. In Chelsea's case there certainly was.

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

#292

Post by cscurmudgeon » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 9:28 PM UTC

penneallagricia wrote: post #247

nullityrofl wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What I don't understand is the complete lack of response from countries like Italy and Germany once they found out being spied by an ally. Because they're all doing it too. Any attempts at retaliation what have been hypocritical and met with callouts. EDIT: Since this is news to some people who seem to think that the entirety of Europe is on a moral high horse, here's some references. There's little morality in int…

You keep providing more and more evidence that the US is involved in spying most of its allies. Notice how almost all of these cases are about some 3rd country assisting the US in spying someone else? You are just proving that the US is not behaving like a positive force for the world, which was entirely my point. I never said that European countries are saints. I just fear with good reason a US hegemony given their…

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

#293

Post by Spooky23 » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 9:32 PM UTC

shrubble wrote: post #118

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.

It's even worse than it appears... https://www.zerohedge.com/political/over-10000-fbi-agents-ca... Over 25 per cent (at the least) of FBI employees can access secret databases on people. 'In his investigation, Horowitz found that none of the 29 randomly chosen queries had been carried out properly or legally. Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) said from an earlier conversation with Horowitz that in 25 of the cases, “there was…

Any query made by the FBI of this sort of data would at minimum be CJI exempt from most disclosure. For FISA stuff, even more controls would be in place

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

#294

Post by Spooky23 » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 9:33 PM UTC

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.

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

#295

Post by lern_too_spel » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 9:37 PM UTC

devmor wrote: post #50

lern_too_spel wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The program he was most interested in leaking (PRISM) wasn't illegal at all. He had plenty of time to figure that out, but he didn't. In order to leak this perfectly legal program, he tried to get asylum in Hong Kong by leaking Chinese systems the NSA had compromised.

Everything they're doing is "legal" because they get to decide what is and isn't legal. That doesn't mean it's ethical or should be hidden from the American public.

> Everything they're doing is "legal" because they get to decide what is and isn't legal

No, phone metadata collection was ruled illegal. Ingesting court ordered FBI wiretaps on foreigners living outside the US who are of interest to national security has never been illegal in the US or in any other country.

> That doesn't mean it's ethical or should be hidden from the American public.

It isn't hidden from the American public. The documents describing the data ingested into PRISM have been declassified.

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

#296

Post by lern_too_spel » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 9:39 PM UTC

cronix wrote: post #155

lern_too_spel wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PRISM doesn't involve data from US citizens' accounts. Please review what PRISM is before claiming it is illegal or unethical. It is neither. If you are incapable of reading the documents yourself: if the company receiving the wiretap order has any reason to believe that an account belongs to a US citizen or a non-US citizen living in the US, they challenge the order. No warrant is needed in the US legal system or th…

That's the problem. They were bulk collecting all data going in/out of data centers, not specific named accounts. No way for a company to say "Hey, that account is an American citizen" when they are collecting all data indiscriminately. > The leaked information came after the revelation that the FISA Court had been ordering a subsidiary of telecommunications company Verizon Communications to turn over logs tracking a…

> That's the problem. They were bulk collecting all data going in/out of data centers, not specific named accounts

That's not what PRISM was. As Snowden's slides clearly explain, PRISM was a data integration project to ingest wiretap data from the FBI. That wiretap data came from court orders for specific accounts belonging to non-US citizens living outside the US.

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

#297

Post by kome » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 9:40 PM UTC

mint2 wrote: post #272

29athrowaway wrote: post #41

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.

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.

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.

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

#298

Post by macintux » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 9:43 PM UTC

phailhaus wrote: post #277

macrolocal wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although, silencing whistleblowers is as weak a strategy as security through obscurity.

I disagree, it is an extremely strong strategy. You shut them up, they cannot inflict any more damage. The public can speculate what other secrets exist, but they can't know as they would if the whistleblower was kept around. The short-term negative publicity is tiny compared to the fallout if more information was leaked. This is why organizations basically always move to silence: It works.

It also dissuades other potential whistleblowers.

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

#299

Post by efitz » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 9:44 PM UTC

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

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

#300

Post by lern_too_spel » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 9:44 PM UTC

anonym29 wrote: post #67

lern_too_spel wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PRISM doesn't involve data from US citizens' accounts. Please review what PRISM is before claiming it is illegal or unethical. It is neither. If you are incapable of reading the documents yourself: if the company receiving the wiretap order has any reason to believe that an account belongs to a US citizen or a non-US citizen living in the US, they challenge the order. No warrant is needed in the US legal system or th…

How can you verify whether an account belongs to a US citizen without possessing a single bit of data about it? >if the company receiving the wiretap order has any reason to believe that an account belongs to a US citizen or a non-US citizen living in the US, they challenge the order Correction: the company can challenge the order. In case you've been living under a rock / off the grid and haven't seen the Twitter fi…

> In case you've been living under a rock / off the grid and haven't seen the Twitter files recently, private companies not only aren't fighting back against government spying, censorship, etc - they're openly cooperating, going so far as to set up task forces to facilitate open cooperation. Why do you think Microsoft was feeding PRISM 5 years earlier than Apple?

There is so much you got wrong here, that it's hard to figure out where to begin.

1. Apple did not have any data to wiretap until people started using iCloud mail. Microsoft ran Hotmail since time immemorial. That's why they prioritized the integration of wiretap data from Microsoft first.

2. There are plenty of examples of companies challenging government orders that came from the Snowden leaks themselves. The Twitter thing is just that the government reported TOU violations to Twitter, and Twitter decided if they were violations and took action if so. The government did not have unilateral control over Twitter.

> It is followed in the letter of the law, not the spirit of the law, by a court that rubber stamps 99.97% of requests

What percent of warrants do you think are approved? You clearly have no idea how the world works. The government wouldn't waste its time asking for a court order unless it thinks the court order will be granted. If it wastes the judge's time by filing lots of requests that are illegal, the judge will punish the government for doing so.