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.
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.
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!"
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.
Good job, pat yourselves on the back and suck each other's cocks.
I don't believe they are talking about that particular use of Whistleblowers.
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.
As a whistle blower myself, I found that the trick is to do diaphragm exercises. Lots of people focus too much on the muscles in the mouth, but the real airflow comes from the lungs. Also, get yourself a real competition-grade whistle, not a cheap piece of Chinese-made junk. I personally am fond of the late Soviet militiary whistles - not only do they have a distinctive sound, but the titanium pea is extremely efficient at transforming air pressure to sound with little resistance.
Fox: "I think we should call it... your grave!" Cast: "Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!"
And we lapped it up....
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.
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.
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.
Quite logical, really. These days, HR will do a background check on *anybody* they hire. All you need is an Internet connection, after all. When the whistleblowing comes up, the HR guy decides, "He's a trouble-maker. I've got dozens of other resumes. I'll pick somebody who's not a trouble-maker."
Man killed with polonium wasn't a dissident, but what US would have called a "terrorist" if operations he undertook against Russia were undertaken against it instead. That is active spy recruitment, channelling finance of military assistance to various separatist and anti-establishment groups in Russia and so on. If you call him a dissident, you'll have who reclassify a whole lot of people US calls terrorists today into "dissidents".
US has an active assassination program running RIGHT NOW killing people like him every week or so. So you should have been awake for a long time now.
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
Hahahaha!
Stop it, you're killing me!
All too funny.
Russia hardly even tries any more to pretend that their media isn't a bunch of scripted reports with paid actors or that they're remotely a free, fair democracy. Heck, in the last election, Chechnya had 99.59% turnout with 99.82% voting for the "Butcher of Grozny". Some precincts were apparently so eager to vote for him that they had 107% turnout. Really impressive on Putin's part! ;) It's amazing that they can still find useful idiots like you to defend them.
Fox: "I think we should call it... your grave!" Cast: "Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!"
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.
It is. That's why it spies on them.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Just amazing, such an incredible two-faced attitude toward whistleblowers. Alexander Litvinenko was about as clear cut example of a whistleblower as you can get. He was an FSB officer who leaked the reports that the FSB had ordered the assassination of Boris Berezovsky. He was was arrested for his leaks, but acquitted - but the government continued going after him after his acquittal, so he fled to the UK and was granted asylum. In the UK, out of reach of the Russian government, he continued writing books and giving interviews leaking more information, including claims of the Russian government's involvement in the murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya and the Russian apartment bombings that both solidified public resolve for Russia to re-invade Chechnya and helped bring Putin to power.
And he was killed for that. By polonium. Traced straight back to a nuclear power plant in Russia via a British Airwaves jet from Moscow.
Now, let's just say that Litvinenko was just speculating wildly or BSing about everything he said about Russia. That doesn't change the fact that for whatever reason, he was asssinated by polonium traced straight back to nuclear power plant in Russia via a British Airwaves jet from Moscow.
But to you, a guy writing negative things about Putin makes him terrorist recruiter and that was justified? Seriously?
Fox: "I think we should call it... your grave!" Cast: "Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!"
It's like having a PhD and a felony conviction, all rolled into one.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?