Slashdot Mirror
Where Whistleblowers End Up Working
HughPickens.com writes Jana Kasperkevic writes at The Guardian that it's not every day that you get to buy an iPhone from an ex-NSA officer. Yet Thomas Drake, former senior executive at National Security Agency, is well known in the national security circles for leaking information about the NSA's Trailblazer project to Baltimore Sun. In 2010, the government dropped all 10 felony charges against him and he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge for unauthorized use of a computer and lost his livelihood. "You have to mortgage your house, you have to empty your bank account. I went from making well over $150,000 a year to a quarter of that," says Drake. "The cost alone, financially — never mind the personal cost — is approaching million dollars in terms of lost income, expenses and other costs I incurred."
John Kiriakou became the first former government official to confirm the use of waterboarding against al-Qaida suspects in 2009. "I have applied for every job I can think of – everything from grocery stores to Toys R Us to Starbucks. You name it, I've applied there. Haven't gotten even an email or a call back," says Kiriakou. According to Kasperkevic, this is what most whistleblowers can expect. The potential threat of prosecution, the mounting legal bills and the lack of future job opportunities all contribute to a hesitation among many to rock the boat. "Obama and his attorney general, Eric Holder, declared a war on whistleblowers virtually as soon as they assumed office," says Kiriakou. "Washington has always needed an "ism" to fight against, an idea against which it could rally its citizens like lemmings. First, it was anarchism, then socialism, then communism. Now, it's terrorism. Any whistleblower who goes public in the name of protecting human rights or civil liberties is accused of helping the terrorists."
John Kiriakou became the first former government official to confirm the use of waterboarding against al-Qaida suspects in 2009. "I have applied for every job I can think of – everything from grocery stores to Toys R Us to Starbucks. You name it, I've applied there. Haven't gotten even an email or a call back," says Kiriakou. According to Kasperkevic, this is what most whistleblowers can expect. The potential threat of prosecution, the mounting legal bills and the lack of future job opportunities all contribute to a hesitation among many to rock the boat. "Obama and his attorney general, Eric Holder, declared a war on whistleblowers virtually as soon as they assumed office," says Kiriakou. "Washington has always needed an "ism" to fight against, an idea against which it could rally its citizens like lemmings. First, it was anarchism, then socialism, then communism. Now, it's terrorism. Any whistleblower who goes public in the name of protecting human rights or civil liberties is accused of helping the terrorists."
It's a very effective method at discouraging effective and functional resistance against status quo.
Similar procedures were used against key people behind Occupy movement according to similar reports.
The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.
...and; People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.
More to the point is that of course, all these disproportionate and draconian measures have ensured no whistle-blowing takes place. Good job, pat yourselves on the back and suck each other's cocks.
-nuff said
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
How's that transparent government working out?
If I remember correctly, before and after entering office, Obama vowed to improve government transparency and protecting whistle blowers. While in sections, such as with ARRA, government transparency was increased, the remainder of the government was obscured further.
Place something witty here
"Obama and his attorney general, Eric Holder, declared a war on whistleblowers virtually as soon as they assumed office," says Kiriakou.
Obama is certainly not any better than his predecessors, but I have to wonder if he is any worse. Valery Plame was on G. W. Bush's watch, for example.
yeah...i feel for this guy. i can relate.
in this day and age, pretty much anything you do that could potentially show that you are not a good little robot that sits up and says "more, please" when corporations and law enforcement slap you around goes on your record and eliminates you from enjoying that sort of upper middle-class life. how wonderful for the law-n-order types...no so much for independant souls.
it's happening all around us in real time...the Goodell story, Ray Rice...hashtag mobs become judge and jury for a few days and completely destroy lives.
now I get it...in this case it's different but corporate HR departments are just hashtag mobs of 1.
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
As a whistle blower I found that the real trick is not to need the employers at all. Secondly most whistle blowers only see what is in front of them and never get to dig deep enough to see what is at work behind the obvious culprits. Those that are willing to dig deep, use the courts, and are relentless do risk death. If you force an agency or even a company to play straight you may be striking at the wallet of organised crime. The bad guys usually refrain from hits but if the problem is big enough a man can have a sudden, final, incident that closes the book on the complaint.
Well...
egrep ".*ism$" /usr/share/dict/words | perl -MList::Util=shuffle -e 'print shuffle();' | tail -n 10 ... tells me that the next ten things that the US is going to wage war against are:
Factionalism
Occidentalism
Aerotropism
Briticism
Rebaptism
Establishmentarianism.
Freemasonism
Achronism
Henotheism
Selenotropism
I look forward to the War on Henotheism. Make up your minds, there's either one god or there's multiple! If you don't pick between the existence of one god or multiple, then the Henotheists win!
(Side note: Slashdot, stop playing content critic with your "Filter error: That's an awful long string of letters there")
Fox: "I think we should call it... your grave!" Cast: "Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!"
It is indeed sad to read about the state of whistle blowers in the US of A. It seems a long time ago (in a galaxy far away) that honour, freedom of speech, right to dissent, etc meant something. Nowadays they are only platitudes and words to be used by politicians when making speeches. These whistle blowers should be given medals and should be honoured for their service to the country.
These guys are the first people I'd choose to hire if I had a position to hire them for. I want to work with people who are willing to fight against deception and corruption. They value the good of the people, that's you and me, above everything else, even their own job.
Manning tried to impress an actual hacker and the hacker dude didn't want any part of it.
Snowden grabbed the goods and and made headlines across the planet.
Why in Sam Hill do whistle blowers have to step into the spotlight with their incriminating evidence?
There are lots of ways to drop that crap off and be quiet about it.
The system is training for that, you know. It's the next logical step.
Want to expose a wrongdoing?
Wear the cloak of AC.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
They can become coaches, traffic cops, train conductors, referees...lots of jobs require employees to blow whistles.
It may be a moral good, even a moral necessity to do it. But you're *never* rewarded for it, even under the best of circumstances (all these bullshit whistleblower bounty programs are just for show). And at worst, you'll end up in prison or dead.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
While I imagine being a whistleblower hurts job prospects, especially those government related, I find it rather dumb to make a conclusion based on two people. Furthermore, I highly doubt it affects job opportunities at Starbucks or other low income jobs. He probably needs to dumb down his resume for a job like that. They aren't going to hire someone who looks like he will leave the first chance he gets.
How people can miss this one truth of government I'll never know. They all tend to find an "enemy" to focus the peoples hostilities on, and if there isn't one they invent one. We are at one of the most peaceful, lowest crime points in our history and yet we're burning more of our resources (money, time, effort, rights) then ever to "defeat" a few wackjobs, most of who couldn't knock over a 7-11 if you handed them a hockey mask, gun and drove them right to the door. Yes there are a few exceptions, people who have both hate and the intelligence to do a lot of damage, but even they couldn't do anywhere near the damage that we are doing to ourselves trying to stop them. I can't remember where I read it but there's a saying that I think pretty well sums it up "the terrorists (anarchists/communists/etc) said "boo" and our response was to pull out a gun and shoot ourselves in the head."
And we lapped it up....
How is it logical that he loses his job and now he can't get any job?
I can understand probably government is off limits for him, and if he goes to a big company maybe the background check would keep him from a job. But there have to be plenty of small businesses who would be willing to hire him, and certainly if he just goes looking for anonymous low brow work, well that shouldn't be a problem, no?
This article seems to suggest if you piss off Uncle Sam, he'll force you into homelessness....
If you truly appreciate what they have done, donate money to help defray their legal costs.
Kiriakou was sentenced to 30 months in prison after he pled guilty to a felony. in america its important to distinguish misdemeanors and felonies as most employers dont care about the former. Misdemeanors are traffic citations or DUI first offense and many are willing to overlook them in white-collar professions. a felony however is a different matter. Felonies in the US ban you in many states from public assistance like food stamps or government housing assistance. a felony can get you apartment application rejected, you car insurance increased, your credit rating destroyed, and will (despite what you were convicted of) destroy your life forever. If you want to buy a home, most homeowners associations will categorically deny the sale if you have a prior felony conviction. Felons cant hold politcal office, and are often subject to very strict mandatory parole terms imposed after their sentence for up to a year or more. Whats worse is most prisons also require you to pay restitution for their "services" and while a misdemeanor is often expungeable from your criminal record, a felony is not. Prior felony convictions in many states cannot be served at bars, and may be forbidden from owning a firearm. Kiriakou isnt being punished for "helping the terrorists." Hes just learning what its like to live in americas untouchable caste, a scarlet letter that affects more than 5 million americans currently.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I don't live him.
Leaving government for the private sector usually involves a great deal of soft corruption: employers who want inside connections, inside knowledge, and lobbying power; obviously, these people can't bring that to the table. Beyond that, they may not have that many skills employers want.
How exactly is the Obama administration taking action that is any different from the Bush administration, the Clinton administration, the first Bush administration, the Reagan administration, or any other before then? The only difference is that the Obama administration pretends to be willing to protect whistleblowers; the previous administrations were openly opposed to them to the degree that nobody dared blow the whistle at all.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Or for that matter inconvenienced in any particular way. And Richard Armitage, the person who outed her as a former field operative wasn't punished that I'm aware.
Elementary. If you piss off the government of a country, then you better move to another country.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Seriously.
You work for the NSA these days? You've proven to me you have ethics issues, sorry.
They got caught with their dicks in the cookie jar, and still (still!) they blame the kid who called them out for it.
Don't fool yourself with ideologies and policy statements and fancy speeches. It's all Bullshit. Democrats = Republicans = Cunts. Power likes to suck itself off and *hates* it when someone gets in the way. Somehow we all know this, but sometimes we need to see it to really believe it. Did many of those who voted for Obama really think the government under his administration would not only be caught spying on US citizens, but that he himself would actively defend it, and that he would use his underlings to spend more effort on the Snowden witchhunt and character assassination than looking into the NSA overreach wrongdoing? It's disgusting behavior, but not wholly unexpected for any reasonably diligent student of political history.
The only people worse than those trying to acquire power are those trying to retain it.
Obama called Starbucks and tole them not to hire him.
Please.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
By being a whistleblower they have displayed to the world that they have a lot of risk taking abilities. Now that they have appeared on slashdot, they should consider writing a book about their experiences. The hesitation, the resistance they faced at their work-place, then the moment... They can then sell the rights to their story to movie studios too!! That's the way forward to high risk takers such as whistleblowers. Make it all or loose it all!! They can then go around delivering lectures about their experiences, their book. Go independent, I mean!!
Start a web site that can serve as a talent pool for people like this. Many people would consider them american heroes, and if they had more visibility, maybe they would get hired faster. If they show up on a background check, the employers would be more likely to know why and give them a pass.
Twinstiq, game news
You can look at this as an issue of government tyranny over "the little guy," or as people that clearly cannot be trusted as employees. Would you want to hire someone who just willing used their employment to trash their employer? You'll never be able to please all the people all the time, but you certainly don't want the people you end up not pleasing turning that displeasure into damage to your organization. It's just too damned risky -- apparently even for Toys-R-Us!
I saw things at work which were questionable or illegal like my mgr. dumping outdated chemicals into the process at a water treatment plant and falsifying reports to the state regulatory agency. I kept some records and pictures but never said anything about it because I feared that my job would be in jeopardy. One manager was corrupt and a co-worker filed a lawsuit which he won but then had to change jobs, sell his house and move to another city.
This could just mean that having a high-level government position doesn't actually imply you have any employable skills. I think this is likely in many instances, since your average hiring manager has never heard of some of these guys.
And yet, when I talk to people about shady things that it looks like to government has done or is doing, I am told that if such a thing were happening someone would talk. Someone with a conscience would come forward and expose the shady operation.
Well, not necessarily. As we see here, there is a high cost to coming forward. If what you are coming forward about is classified, expect to go to prison as well (with the bonus of perhaps not being able to prove your allegation because it is all classified). People's sense of self preservation and responsibility to family may just keep them from talking about any nefarious deeds they know about. We can't take for granted the idea that people will come forward about crimes or malfeasance. Sometimes they do, and we should be grateful for their sacrifice. But many more do not because the personal cost is too high.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
If we were serious about ending criminal acts in the US government, we would:
1) create a fully independent office inside the government to investigate and prosecute wrongdoers, with powers no less than congress' Special Prosecutor (i.e. equal to the presidency)
2) offer whistleblowers generous retirement benefits for life (to escape retribution)
3) give them blanket immunity from prosecution
4) prosecute the gov't wrongdoers all the way up the chain of command, *starting* at top executive levels
But the US government does the opposite. That's the very definition of racketeering and organized crime.
By the many brave people in the field who've been outed by members of the Obama administration either through incompetence or as part of a pattern of trying to impress some reporter. Informants who've been actually murdered, as opposed to driving around Virginia pretending to endangered.
How people can miss this one truth of government I'll never know. They all tend to find an "enemy" to focus the peoples hostilities on, and if there isn't one they invent one.
This is a good thing to remember when the news is telling us about the bad guy du jour that we must go fight against. Whatever they are telling you, it's bullshit. We may not know what the truth is, but whatever they are telling you on TV isn't it.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Well, I'm the boss, and I'd hire him. Not much you could leak about the company I run. We already 'tell all'. Only problem is the pay for the position is less than 1/3 what he made before, but still better than wallmart, or typical retail.
If you're going to be a whistleblower, do it anonymously. Very anonymously. And be sure you have your facts straight and that they cannot be disputed or disproved. And be very sure that you have a nice cache of damning documents very securely stashed that can be released to the press should your employer attempt retaliation.
We big-government socialists knew that, not sure why you libertarians didn't?
Which libertarians? The working class ones or the ones who get to tell other people what to do?
Don't try to out wierd me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you, free with my breakfast cereal. --Zaphod Beeblebr
The trick with whistle blowing is to make sure you have left the job BEFORE you blow the whistle. Snowden made sure he was out of the country. Others found employment elsewhere before blowing the whistle. With digital finger prints left in logs a whistle blower cannot assume that attempts to be anonymous will be successful.
Wouldn't it be better to call this "Where anyone looking for a job in the US is working?"
These experiences don't sound unique to whistleblowers in the least; the market right now for the employee is terrible.
hence the phrase. More than one person has committed some crime so that they can not be homeless
Terrorism, the universal justification for pretty much every imaginable government abuse. Far better than blaming a conspiracy of an ethnic group like the previous generation fascists chose, terrorism is better because it can apply to anyone, regardless of ethnic makeup. Plus, it never ends, there will no doubt always be terrorists, or at least always someone that can be accused of it. Anyone you don't like can be accused of "helping the terrorists." When in actual fact, blaming terrorists itself helps the terrorists. See? We can all play that game.
Move to Europe. Many Europeans, especially in tech, are quite critical to all the American surveillance, and would probably be quite sympathetic to these whistle blowers. Their actions might even make it easier for them to get jobs in Europe than otherwise! Europe also needs programmers. Most of Scandinavia speaks so English so well that one can get a job speaking only English (if you have high-valued skills), so you have other options that Britain.
Guy? I thought it was food they eat in Quebec and do serve in McDonalds? ... Oh the Russian dude.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
The machinations employed by government agencies and powerful corporations to punish whistle blowers clearly emphasizes the need for powerful investigative journalism, news organizations with the balls to stand up to steep fines and possible jail time to protect sources, and the absolute requirement that whistle blowers employ intelligence tradecraft to protect their anonymity at all costs.
It took several decades for FBI Deputy Director Mark Felt to be named as Deep Throat, and was only "outed" when Felt - then 91 and riddled with dementia - was named in a 2005 Vanity Fair article, largely only because Woodward confirmed his identity due to Felts' family having solved the mystery.
If you can't trust a journalist to sit in prison to protect your identity, and you are sitting on a time bomb of corporate or government malfeasance that needs to be made public, you had god damned better be sure to have that information delivered using methods that scrubs your identity from both the documents and the delivery.
THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.
You are correct in that there is something notable about them that could ideally be turned into currency, though I'd worry that:
1. The "goods" they have to share have already been shared, and if they kept stuff to themselves they now want to share... publishers tend not to want to divulge "state secrets" for a variety of reasons.
2. People have to buy the book, and then people buying the movie rights have to believe that people want to see a movie about it. Even if they believe the former, considering they are now a public figure many movies can be made based on known facts and not someone's memoirs.
3. I'm fuzzy on this, but in many states there are laws saying if you were convincted of something you can't make profit via your crimes, whether we think they should be a crime or not. eg, a serial killer can't sell the rights to his story in prison -- or he can be the money won't go to them.
4. Even if this did take hold, there's a certain shady quality to this that could be used as ammo against the act of whistleblowing.
Sadly, few enough seem to really care. Most young people have other priorities, and if you're on the left and you care you are damaging the presidency of the 1st black president (I remember Bill Maher calling Snowden a fantasist) and if you are on the right you are potentially damaging your pro-security bonafides (overlap with some of the corporate left here too).
Rather than there being some form of captalist reward via their notoriety, I'd wonder if someone with the resources couldn't create a trust/institution that would essentially give living stipends/grants to those who have shown to be whistleblowers as a form of patronage. Nothing extravagant, but enough to know you won't be on the street.
vote him in as a congressman, or even a rep.,... these are the people we need in those positions.
I was thinking for these guys which lost everything the best they could do is just leaving the country. Most "patriotic" citizens would applaud and say "good riddance".
Yet, then comes the worse part: they can't leave, I suppose. Because for someone to raise his butt and stand up against the demolishing of the country -- under the risk of becoming a pariah -- it's inconceivable to leave the country they love. Even after becoming "persona non grata", they still probably are the most American inside, refusing to adapt to modern times.
Meanwhile, the country is adapting to terrorism. Which, unfortunately, might be what the terrorists wanted...
I don't live him.
He means, we all aspire to live as if we're Putin, who aspires to live like he was Chuck Norris.
If we were directly exposed to trying to live like Chuck Norris we would die from infinitely trying to roundhouse kick ourselves in the head for trying to live the Chuck Norris. Consequently we "does not live the guy" because Putin saves us from not being Chuck Norris as he is the only man manly enough to survive his own roundhouse kick to the head.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I don't live him.
He means, we all aspire to live as if we're Putin, who aspires to live like he was Chuck Norris.
If we were directly exposed to trying to live like Chuck Norris we would die from infinitely trying to roundhouse kick ourselves in the head for trying to live the Chuck Norris. Consequently we "does not live the guy" because Putin saves us from not being Chuck Norris as he is the only man manly enough to survive his own roundhouse kick to the head.
That brings about an interesting problem. What happens if chuck norris tries to roundhouse kick himself in the face? On the one hand, chuck norris does not miss. On the other hand, chuck norris does not let anyone kick him in the face. I think it may create a big bang.
I think it may create a big bang.
It did create the Big Bang, we are now in the infinite time and mass between kicks.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I will not be a little league whistle blower; though I could be. I look like the bad guy to the politicians, but not city staff.
What everyone is missing is the mosquito effect. Don't come at them head on, find the elephant in the room and use mosquitoes.
Lately, I have been irritated at local city government fiscal prudence and realized my stature was big league, while not major league like at the state level, but my activity and success at change was at the county level. I realized after decades of county level (big league), and being on city level boards, I consider them little league teams (mostly 30 something and young 40 somethings) that are just getting out of the 20 something diapers. I resigned fast after realizing city governments are run by little league players in my review of all their internal memo's and write-off's that cost taxpayers millions.
So what about federal government, which league are they to all of us? What size of mosquito should one use? I have lots of ideas but I recant my focus to be just business and not political.
The rules of politics are: if they know you have nothing against them, they ignore you, if you have no money, they ignore you, if you become an activist, they ignore you and make sure you will never find work again in their range of influence.
Be well.