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Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

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

#241

Post by southernplaces7 »

jiggywiggy wrote: post #169
paulmd wrote: post #71

Whistleblowers 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…

>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.

You're making way too simplistic a generalization here. Some sociable people can be sociable and friendly with a group until that group changes and they decide that it no longer fits their morality. They can still be contrarians, and then make waves anyhow. You absolutely don't have to be an introverted, hard nosed loner to end up being a whistleblower or contrarian troublemaker. This sounds a bit more like wishful fantasy for people who are socially inept trying to paint it as more noble.

If anything, a sociable, open person is more likely to have the kind of self assured personality that makes them decide it's not a problem to disagree among their peer group whenever it becomes necessary. Read more history, it's full of troublemakers who were also sociable.

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

#242

Post by cde-v »

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 better sources than Zerohedge/Epoch Times?

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

#243

Post by MattGaiser »

bowsamic wrote: post #55

I know a lot of people who take a seriously negative view against whistleblowers, which I find very strange. Do you not want to know the messed up shit that the companies and government are doing? I think people just see it as being a traitor.

Depends. Many people also have things they wish to hide, from affairs to drug use to embezzlement to their politics to just their sexual orientation. So they have to balance preferring to know about the wrongdoing of others (in the opinion of the whistleblower) vs having their own secrets revealed by someone close to them with a similar mindset, who may view their activities as wrong.

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

#244

Post by 0xDEF »

yarg wrote: post #116

I continue to maintain that Snowden was one of the greatest American patriots in decades. There are many leakers that deliberately act with the intention to harm the state; That wasn't Snowden - he threw away his life to stage an intervention. Why has he been left to rot in a dictatorship? I'd say sign a pardon for the man, but unless he can get out of Russia there's a damned good chance that things would only get wo…

I am 99% sure Snowden is cringing at the term "American patriots".

Snowden's primary motivation was most likely opposition to US foreign policy and control of the world. There is no other reason to contact Glenn Greenwald in late 2012. In 2008-2012 Glenn Greenwald was primarily known as one of the harshest opponents of US foreign policy and someone who didn't shy away from defending Russia, Iran and other geopolitical adversaries of the US.

If it was about anti-surveillance/pro-privacy activism there are so many other ways Snowden could have leaked it and so many other people and organizations he could have leaked to. Snowden would probably be living in Vienna by now and not in Moscow if he was just an anti-surveillance activist. However his primary motivation for the leaks was to lower US influence and control of the rest of the world.

Snowden is a world citizen who opposed what "American patriots" were doing to the rest of the world.

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

#245

Post by nagkl »

0xDEF wrote: post #232
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.

As a European I actually think Snowden's primary motivation was opposition to US foreign policy and control of the world. There is no other reason to contact Glenn Greenwald in late 2012. In 2008-2012 Glenn Greenwald was primarily known as one of the harshest opponents of US foreign policy and someone who didn't shy away from defending Russia, Iran and other geopolitical adversaries of the US. If it was about anti-su…

Snowden contacted Laura Poitras first, with this famous mail:

https://www.wired.com/2014/10/snowdens-first-emails-to-poitr...

"You ask why I picked you. I didn't. You did. The surveillance you've experienced means you've been selected, a term which will mean more to you as you learn about how the modern sigint system works."

I wish everyone here would watch the movie Citizen Four to learn more about the backgrounds and the actual events. He was an anti-surveillance activist. Is it because of the Ukraine conflict that people are now trying to link him to anti-US foreign policy sentiments? Why wasn't this the topic in 2012?

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

#246

Post by watwut »

jiggywiggy wrote: post #169
paulmd wrote: post #71

Whistleblowers 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…

Are they really? And frankly, I have seen enough amoral contrarians, contrarians just for the sake of having fun to understand why they are dismissed.

And actual real world lite "whistle-blower" I have Deen was not like that.

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

#247

Post by penneallagricia »

nullityrofl wrote: post #180
penneallagricia wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 behavior.

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

#248

Post by loldk »

paulmd wrote: post #71

Whistleblowers 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…

[dead]

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

#249

Post by southernplaces7 »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #32

Just look at this thread of “hackers” saying “well the law is the law.” It’s an embarrassment the degree to which smart educated leading edge communities have totally and utterly forfeited their own power for the security blanket of these domination based systems. Actually it’s worse, the official ethos of success in America is now some cynical mix of “If you’re not scamming someone you’re not trying” and “Altruism i…

>Actually it’s worse, the official ethos of success in America is now some cynical mix of “If you’re not scamming someone you’re not trying” and “Altruism is for suckers”

And you're so certain that all of these people on this site saying "well the law is the law" are Americans? No perfectly obedient, money-loving Europeans among them? Absurd.

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

#250

Post by vinay_ys »

Why isn't whistleblowing fully anonymous? Is it because of spam and investigative bandwidth challenges? Given the progress with LLMs recently, I suspect in the very near future we would have AI filters that receive anonymous whistleblower reports, process it for validity and route it to a large number of reporters and other public members for further handling without putting the original whistleblower at risk. For most sensitive things, if record-keeping was tamper-proof through publicly verifiable cryptographic mechanisms (decentralised crypto blockchains for information would become the biggest utility use case of crypto tech – that's my bet), then it would make such automated investigations of records much much easier.
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