Why the Snowden Situation Shows 'Protected Disclosure' Is Critical (zdnet.com)

An anonymous reader writes: In the wake of NSA leaks debacle, New Zealand's Inspector General of Security and Intelligence has developed a process to enable whistleblowers to act safely. "The Edward Snowden disclosures demonstrate how critical it is to have a clear path, with appropriate protections, for disclosing information about suspected wrongdoing (PDF) within an intelligence and security agency," Cheryl Gwyn says. The Inspector General's powers were boosted after it was discovered New Zealand's Government Communications Security Bureau had been spying illegally on Kim Dotcom and others. "Edward Snowden has consistently said it was impossible for him to make internal disclosures about what he believed was wrongdoing due to the lack of whistleblower protections he faced in the U.S."

Comments

Re:Lack of protection

[Coren22]

Edward Snowden specifically did not blow the whistle. He was trained on the proper method to blow the whistle, and Eric Holder details that method in the article I linked. Whistleblowers don't run to foreign governments that are just as bad or worse at freedom, and in the intelligence industry, people know you take it to congress who has oversight of the intelligence agencies. He chose to run to China, who would disappear someone who did what he did, then to Russia that has killed people for speaking out against the government. Yeah, he is real heroic, running to the people who are so much worse than what he is running from.

Of course. Stop the job and maybe put a few people in prison after a public trial, of course.

Why would ANYONE go to jail for spying? What do you think spy agencies are for? This is literally what we formed the NSA and CIA to do. The NSA also is tasked with securing the US Governments communications, but they are primarily a foreign intelligence agency. Their entire job is to spy on other governments to prevent them doing harm to the US.

Myself, for starters. If it can't be revealed to the public at all, it's not a legal warrant in my view.

So, according to you, we should compromise Top Secret information in order to get permission to stop a plot to hurt people/destroy shit in the US? I am so glad that you have no power, because you have no idea how this works or how it should work. Sources and methods are not meant to be revealed to the general public, as once they are revealed, they are useless in the future. You would have the predicessor of the NSA telling the world that the Enigma was broken in order to get permission to use the information, what kind of freaking moron makes that argument? If Germany found out that the Allies broke Enigma, World War 2 likely would have gone their way.