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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

#11

Post by [deleted] »

whitemary wrote: post #10
cjbgkagh wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often wonder if such people are being encourage by those who seek to undermine the concept of whistleblowing as a whole. Like encouraging the appending of 'gate' to every scandal name, even trivial ones, to minimize the seriousness of Watergate. EDIT: I should point out that an effective strategy to undermine opposition is to encourage the worst in them by secretly supporting those who embody the worst. When doing…

Whistleblowers don't do that. The media does. Do you know what whistleblowing is?

[deleted]

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

#12

Post by jruohonen »

ITB wrote: post #4

On the other hand, there are people that look at whistleblowing as a way to propel into fame. They call themselves and whistleblowers when in reality they are just publicly critiquing their company over known facts. They give whistleblowing a bad reputation.

Sure; all kinds of motives may be involved. It would be interesting to read a study on how these laws and their practices have worked in practice and what kind of issues have been reported. From the article's references I found this:

https://www.alumni.hbs.edu/stories/Pages/story-bulletin.aspx...

I suppose much of the reports have been about financial mishandling, work safety, and such things, maybe things like environment protection violations thrown in.

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

#13

Post by h2odragon »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #8
jruohonen wrote: post #2

In the EU we already have a law for protecting whistleblowers: https://commission.europa.eu/aid-development-cooperation-fun... Also companies have emerged for providing secure platforms for whistleblowers. Though, as national security and related things are in the hands of the member states, I am not sure how well this EU law and its national adaptations apply to the cases discussed in this article (probably wholesal…

The US also has laws protecting whistleblowers, which to me just highlighted the complete moral bankruptcy of some Republican members of the US Congress when they tried to out the whistleblower who brought Trump's phone call with the Ukrainian president to light, but more importantly, when they tried to impugn his motives. The thing that made me so angry about this is that a huge point of whistleblower laws is that i…

I found the treatment of Julian Assange to be the disgusting poltics; after that its just more of the same, innit?

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

#14

Post by mnaxv »

jruohonen wrote: post #2

In the EU we already have a law for protecting whistleblowers: https://commission.europa.eu/aid-development-cooperation-fun... Also companies have emerged for providing secure platforms for whistleblowers. Though, as national security and related things are in the hands of the member states, I am not sure how well this EU law and its national adaptations apply to the cases discussed in this article (probably wholesal…

The cartoon at the top of the article highlights the fact that the laws aren't working (the UK was in the EU when some of these people were imprisoned).

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

#15

Post by throwaway426079 »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #5
ITB wrote: post #4

On the other hand, there are people that look at whistleblowing as a way to propel into fame. They call themselves and whistleblowers when in reality they are just publicly critiquing their company over known facts. They give whistleblowing a bad reputation.

I often wonder if such people are being encourage by those who seek to undermine the concept of whistleblowing as a whole. Like encouraging the appending of 'gate' to every scandal name, even trivial ones, to minimize the seriousness of Watergate. EDIT: I should point out that an effective strategy to undermine opposition is to encourage the worst in them by secretly supporting those who embody the worst. When doing…

Is the motivation to minimize the seriousness of Watergate? I just take it as a lazy way of tagging a story and I suspect many headline writers couldn't even summarise what the original Watergate scandal involved.

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

#16

Post by photochemsyn »

> 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 by government bodies (the legislative) that are responsive to the general population's interests.

There are those who are scoffing to themselves at this description, and their viewpoint has some historical merit. The "stationary bandit" theory of government is a common alternative view: criminal elements with no respect for the above concept of equal treatment under the law infiltrate and take over governments so that they can engage in criminal activity while being protected by the very powers of state authority that were intended to keep their activities in check.

These organized crime cartels then have the legislators rewrite the laws so that their criminal behavior is protected and not prosecuted (witness the failure of the US government to prosecute any of the major fraudsters involved in the 2008 economic collapse, or to prosecute the members of government who lied about WMDs in Iraq in 2002-2003, or to prosecute those involved in the illegal domestic mass surveillance operation, or to prosecute those pushing opiates on the population, etc.).

The more blatant organized crime cartels (mafia, drug cartels, etc.) are well-known for calling members of their organizations who testify against them in court names like 'rats', 'snitches', and so on. If this becomes widespread behavior (major US media figures calling Snowden a 'weasel' come to mind), then it becomes rather clear that the government and its major corporate affiliates have become a kleptocracy run by a group of stationary bandits. We could call this a 'public-private partnership', I suppose. For more:

https://broadstreet.blog/2021/04/05/the-rise-of-the-stationa...

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

#17

Post by freetime2 »

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.

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

#18

Post by RobotToaster »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #8
jruohonen wrote: post #2

In the EU we already have a law for protecting whistleblowers: https://commission.europa.eu/aid-development-cooperation-fun... Also companies have emerged for providing secure platforms for whistleblowers. Though, as national security and related things are in the hands of the member states, I am not sure how well this EU law and its national adaptations apply to the cases discussed in this article (probably wholesal…

The US also has laws protecting whistleblowers, which to me just highlighted the complete moral bankruptcy of some Republican members of the US Congress when they tried to out the whistleblower who brought Trump's phone call with the Ukrainian president to light, but more importantly, when they tried to impugn his motives. The thing that made me so angry about this is that a huge point of whistleblower laws is that i…

US law doesn't allow public interest as a defence defence, that was partly why Snowden refused to return to the US. https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/Justice-Dept-s...

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

#19

Post by runnerup »

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.

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).

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

#20

Post by b33j0r »

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.

Do we think accepting Russian citizenship changes his story? I can’t decide.
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