There's a lot to parse in that statement, but the call for whistleblower protections seems to be the single most important (and achievable) item. Most people are aware of Snowden and Manning, but it really surprises me that these haven't been reported more: "Bradley Birkenfeld was awarded millions for his information concerning Swiss bank UBS—and was still given a prison sentence by the Justice Department. Antoine De…
That said, whilst I agree with that part, the rest of John Doe's essay left me cold. Other than its defence of whistleblowers it reads like more or less any standard left-ish Guardian article. The cause of increasing global inequality being a handful of law firms, really? They "write the laws" themselves, really? Which laws does he have in mind? All lawyers are corrupt and unethical? The British island territories are the "cornerstone of institutional corruption worldwide" and not, say, African states where the corruption actually occurs? Billionaires own the press and serious investigative journalism is dead, except, presumably, the press and the journalists who he worked with?
I was and still am a huge supporter of Snowden because he revealed behaviour that was unquestionably bad. Literally nobody tried to defend what he showed was happening, and in fact the people doing it had lied in Congress to try and cover it up. It was a classic case where whistleblowing is justified. Additionally, Snowden had a very clear and straightforward thought process justifying his actions: what was happening was unconstitutional, and his attempts to use the formal complaint paths had failed.
John Doe comparing himself to Snowden rubs me up the wrong way, because although he claims the MF files are bursting with criminal evidence, so far all the stories I read about the Panama Papers were about things that are not illegal, and in fact apparently some of the papers show MF dropping clients when they started to suspect illegal activity, which implies MF was not quite the sinister conspiracy Doe makes it sound like. They clearly had legal compliance efforts and they clearly did things. And his justification is a long, rambling and rather incoherent screed that tries to claim the fault of every problem in the world lies with a kind of global conspiracy of evil and spineless people.
I think Doe is walking a very thin line between whistleblowing for a cause and generic vigilante-ism with his actions.