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

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll bite - I AM a former employee of the NSA, and I can tell you this:

During our training there was an awful lot of winking taking place. Like, "It is against the law for us to copy American targets, so if we end up accidentally copying something from an American it is our responsibility to stop immediately and move on. "

Of course, this was back in the pre-internet days, so surely they've gotten MORE (and not less) responsible, right?

Not only that but a quick google search will show you that you are definitively wrong - from election shenanigans perpetrated by the Fed to small pockets of NSA employees targeting specific people (remember the IRS fiasco(s)?).

If you believe that the United States Government has any motivation to protect your privacy, you're delusional. If you think that the people that the NSA hires are "more ethical" than the usual band of idiots, you are also delusional and that's just a little bit sad.

A healthy dose of paranoia would do you some good. What they are doing is not right. It's not right even under the heading of "protecting Freedom!!!", if only because it flies in the face of the stated goal.

Re:Lack of protection

[joss]

Something was rotten in the state of denmark.

Snowden's revelations caused a huge shakeup in the intelligence community. Such as a federal judge ruling that the NSAs blanket collection was unconstitutional. If things were right beforehand, none of this would have happened
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