Slashdot Mirror
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."
"If it was important enough he should have been willing to do the time"
Snowden has publicly stated that he is willing to do time.
However, had he not taken the course of action that he did then we would not know the extent of government spying and Snowden would be considered just another conspiracy kook making accusations without any hard evidence.
Snowden did the right thing and took the appropriate measures to do so. We all owe him our gratitude.
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
Your expectation is that if you discover wrongdoing, you should be the one to do prison time rather than those responsible?
There is clear evidence (both claimed by Snowden and confirmed by the NSA) that he did report his concerns to management only to be shot down, unfortunately that was the only path available to him at the time and so the inevitable happened. I for one am grateful that this information was leaked.
For the record, Snowden has said he would be willing to go to court and face jail time for this IF he could get a fair hearing. It's obvious he would never get this in the US.
There was a lack of protection. If it was important enough he should have been willing to do the time. You can't have individuals deciding what is and what is not a national security secret with no consequence. A legitimate whistleblower protection for reporting to someone in the chain of command (e.g. someone working for Congress on that specific issue) would have been appropriate.
Except the chain command has no interest in trouble-making whistle blowers. What is needed is a change in culture and attitude on the part of intelligence agencies, so that they are concerned with legality and civil rights and not just the shortest path to the most information. The boosting of the IG's power in this case better include subpoena and arrest power (or however these things work in New Zealand) or I don't see how it will help.
As to your first point, fuck that. Someone should be willing to have their life ruined in order to expose wrongdoing? That's exactly why more people don't come forward to begin with. I'll agree that is would be chaotic to have everyone deciding whether something should be secret or not. But "national security" and classification have been so abused and used to hide criminality, those who cite it have lost credibility. The speed and altitude capabilities of our newest spy plane? Sure, national security secret. The positions of our troops and battle plans? Absolutely, national security. The fact that the NSA is illegally spying on everyone in contravention of the Constitution? Nope, not national security.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
It's an impasse of sorts in Snowden case: in order to serve justice, US needs to modify Espionage Act to allow "public interest defense". But if it is allowed then Snowden's lawyers will pull all the dirt about NSA dealing and the case will escalate to Supreme Court (Snowden has standing after all) were all this shit might be declared unconstitutional. And US government cannot afford that risk, thus no justice for you, Snowden.
Your anecdote isn't even close to being of the same magnitude, and without a verifiable source you are a lying shit.
As several news articles have pointed out, the very same man who Snowden saw lying to Congress about the extent of the spying would have been the one Snowden would ultimately be reporting to, were he to report his concerns. Sure, they might have then fired Snowden as a result - but it's also entirely possible they wouldn't. The main thing is, there was no chance whatsoever that the NSA would decide to come clean and tell the truth because a junior IT guy pointed out they were lying. They knew they were lying at much higher levels and were ok with that.
These organizations are staffed and run by thousands of average Americans who like freedom and our way of life... every person and boss at every level is doing his best to follow all applicable laws, the constitution, and the bill of rights.
So, don't take this the wrong way, but: Do you actually know any people? Have you ever had a job?
Because none of that is how being an employee works. If there's no accountability, people just surf the internet all day. If there is some kind of accountability, people do their best to keep their immediate supervisor happy, so that they don't get fired. If the accountability system is measurement-based, and most are, that means maximizing your "performance", which means maximizing some statistic about how you do your job. If any part of your job can't be measured, you can't be held accountable for it.
In most fields, the employee is under no pressure to break laws, because the laws are irrelevant. If you're writing software, for instance, it's pretty hard to accidentally break a law by typing a semicolon in the wrong place. So the laws don't interfere with you maximizing your measured performance.
But when you work for law enforcement? There are hundreds of laws designed specifically to get in your way. You have to work around them constantly. Law officers resent these laws, much as a computer programmer might resent bugs in the underlying operating system. So the natural inclination is to work around them. And they do, because there's often no reason not to.
Because how do you measure the statistic "laws adhered to, in spirit and in letter"? It's hard. Usually you can't. So nobody measures it. So people aren't held accountable for it. But the employee is still under pressure to maximize some other stats, and these laws prevent them from doing that. That is, following the laws lowers their measured performance, which has a negative effect on their employment. Breaking the laws, on the other hand, has no effect on their employment.
So laws get broken. It happens every day.