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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

#461

Post by lazide »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #366
jiggywiggy wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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... you have to be a pain in the ass. I am confused - people who are good and social have no principles and value? They have no backbone to stand up for them? This is like the worst definition of social - like amoral sociopaths desperate to fit in.

If Nazi Germany produced anything of value at all, one can hope it was clear evidence that a large portion of the population does indeed meet that definition. Certainly enough to run a state, prosecute a world war, and run a massive economy rivaling other world powers.

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

#462

Post by low_tech_love »

Aeolun wrote: post #375
low_tech_love wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a non-USAer, I strongly disagree. There are probably a handful of other countries watching you right now (in a broad, abstract sense) and the USA is the least of our concerns. There is a reason why nothing significant came out of it: every other country knows that this is happening (not exactly but roughly) and they know there are much worse problems to worry about, given other strong international players such as…

> stable democracy Stable? We had an honest-to-god raid on the capitol just a few years ago. At the very least I’d be a little bit nervous about the prospects of democracy if the organizer of that raid gets re-elected.

The raid was almost universally criticized and had 0 long term consequences. Yes it was stupid but a small amount of shaking does not bring down a solid structure. Take a look at what happened to some other countries around the world where similar raids happened: some of them have been stuck in violent meaningless dictatorships for decades.

Don't get me wrong; I'm center-left and democrat-aligned, but with all due respect, if you cannot see how your country has an incredible foundation, you are naive and has a shallow understanding of the world.

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

#463

Post by bombolo »

ineedasername wrote: post #438
bombolo wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LOL because they'd call a vote for this right? Except very extreme fringes, every big party will bend over to do whatever USA tells them to do, regardless of what their voting base thinks. See how they are changing the laws so that it's legal to send kurds in turkey to die.

Kick the big party out of office. If a someone can't hurt you except by getting a someone else to do it, and that person only has the power you give it, deal with that person. I'm not saying it's easy. I'm saying that the statement "my most immediate concern..." is incorrect. What's more likely: 1) demands from Swedish citizens to the USA actually stopping the USA from using Sweden in its geopolitics? Or 2) Demands f…

"most immediate concern" was in regard USA spying foreign citizens vs china doing so. I was saying that FOR ME, a citizen of "the west", USA is more dangerous.

You might write all the long comments you like, and suggest me to vote (lol, i see that's working very well in USA as well), but the fact remains.

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

#464

Post by LawTalkingGuy »

pastacacioepepe wrote: post #420
stevenhuang wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The question here is how can you call yourself an ally in good faith when you spy on your allies? Familiarize yourself with this concept https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realpolitik

Thanks for being pointlessly condescending. Realpolitik are the reason why I consider the USA and NATO a bunch of hypocrites, altho the USA surely championed the practice. They fill their mouth with good intents, justice, peace and all that is good in public but act like criminals behind the scenes. At the very least, countries like Russia and China seem to be much more open about their practicing Realpolitik.

Russia is literally claiming that the Ukraine is run by Nazis. Not that there are people there who see the Nazis as a lesser threat than the Reds, but run by Nazis today.

That's a lie so big it's visible from space.

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

#465

Post by kingcharles »

lost_tourist wrote: post #315
kingcharles wrote: post #65

If you discover law enforcement or prosecutors committing crimes, who do you report it to? This is a serious question. You can only report it to their peers, and I promise you, from personal experience, that you will get absolutely nowhere except, like Snowden, have an entire world of hurt come down on you instead. I can not recommend whistleblowing to anyone. If you see the government going wrong, ignore it. Walk aw…

If it's local, report it to the state, if it's the state report it to the feds, if it's the feds your only real option is to do it and run to another country, or keep your mouth shut and just find a new job. This process has repeated itself many times in the news if you research it.

In theory that is how it should work. I promise in practice that you will get absolutely nowhere. Most prosecutors seem local, either municipal or county, but in actuality are State workers, and the State is generally completely disinterested in investigating its own staff.

The feds are even less interested in investigating matters that should be handled by the State.

I say this from practical experience of trying to move the State Attorney General's office and the FBI to investigate and getting absolutely nowhere at all.

My next plan is to simply take a local friendly reporter with a video camera and perform a sit-in at the prosecutors office until they promise to do something or they have me arrested for trespass.

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

#466

Post by low_tech_love »

bombolo wrote: post #178
low_tech_love wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a non-USAer, I strongly disagree. There are probably a handful of other countries watching you right now (in a broad, abstract sense) and the USA is the least of our concerns. There is a reason why nothing significant came out of it: every other country knows that this is happening (not exactly but roughly) and they know there are much worse problems to worry about, given other strong international players such as…

As a person living in Sweden, it seems that my most immediate concern is USA. They are the ones that can ask the swedish government to make up some BS accusations to arrest me and eventually ship me to USA where I will be tortured.

As a person living in Sweden, I think your (and my) immediate concern should be the Swedish government. It's a weak, spineless, and outdated institution that only worked for a few decades because it relied on the homogeneity of the population's opinions (and the unwillingness of those opposed to voice their opinions) to make decisions based on a fake idea of common sense.

Assange is just one example, merely an outlier. Random immigrants, perfectly productive and integrated into the country, including children, are being deported everyday for no special reason. Families are being separated, careers are being destroyed, just because they want to look "strong".

On the other hand, not a single criminal or terrorist is deported; why? Because they will make a fuss. Because there is a bunch of spoiled Swedish people who never experienced hardship with nothing better to do than to defend outdated ridiculous socialist/communist ideas, and they will kick and scream if a criminal is deported. And the coward government is afraid of having to deal with that.

Deport a working, honest immigrant, and they will not say anything. They comply, go out, and try again. If you're one of them, that is what you should be concerned with.

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

#467

Post by LawTalkingGuy »

HeWhoLurksLate wrote: post #162
pastacacioepepe wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

> there is significant value at the world level, of keeping secrets.

There can be. But secrets can also be unimportant, or easily learnable through other public means. We need to analyze what we're keeping secret and optimize.

The democracy answer is omni-present. People can't really be said to support something they don't know about and if secrets encompass too much of their government it becomes, for practical purposes, illegitimate.

The cost of keeping the secret has to be weighed along with the cost of it leaking and the chance of that happening. It's not practical to keep everything a secret for reasons of censorship limiting other valid activity or just the increased bookkeeping in tracking secrets without revealing them.

And ultimately, not everything is all or nothing. You can have an undisclosed number of weapons for instance, but have a process where civilians can band together and form a special body, get some people vetted, and be granted access to otherwise secret information that they, because of their unique skills or interests, may have input on. This exists today in the form of aerospace companies, etc, who have access to many secrets to aid in the planning and construction of further tools.

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

#469

Post by phailhaus »

HeckFeck wrote: post #429
phailhaus wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a fan of the idea that "oh, the right people are mad, therefore it must have been a Good thing to do!" The same feathers would have been ruffled if Snowden had leaked our nuclear codes. The point is that he exposed wrongdoing, and the public agreed . There are plenty of people who are punished by the state that the majority does not believe are "speaking an essential truth". For example: domestic terrorists.

If you hit the right targets, you will get pushback. Not everyone who is shooting at the target has the same intentions. Exposing the state's nature to the populace and maiming the populace aren't the same intentions. A similarly blunt application of your position is that everyone punished by the state deserves it. Neither of us should rush to such extremes.

> A similarly blunt application of your position is that everyone punished by the state deserves it.

No, it doesn't. My position is that you have to address each on a case-by-case basis and there is no blanket way to say "ah X people are mad, therefore it was Good/Bad".

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

#470

Post by bourbonorgin »

crvdgc wrote: post #335
bourbonorgin wrote: post #127

Parts of this blog post read like they are nearly plagiarized right out of Whistleblowers: Broken Lives and Organizational Power by C. Fred Alford good post otherwise

It's in the reference list.

It looks like the author copied and pasted from the book and used a thesaurus to change a few words here and there. A reference list is not attribution.
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