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."
People seem to think the national security field is made up of shadowy organizations who are trampling on the constitution every day. In actuality, these organizations are staffed and run by thousands of average Americans who like freedom and our way of life, and aren't going to violate these principles.
Only people on the outside looking in ever wonder if these organizations have a nefarious goal to violate laws and subvert the constitution. Anyone who's ever worked in military intelligence or national security knows that every person and boss at every level is doing his best to follow all applicable laws, the constitution, and the bill of rights.
http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1266777/exclusive-snowden-safe-hong-kong-more-us-cyberspying-details-revealed?page=all
From the first week of Snowden revealing himself in Hong Kong, during a time when he still didn't know if he was going to be fucked by the Chinese and extradited back to the U.S.
Why? Because such disclosure defeats the most important goal which is to not let the victims know they have been owned. If the victim knows they were owned, they fix the hole and you can't do it again. No temporary knowledge is ever worth what you can get next year and the one after that.
If you go public, then you are almost always not engaged in espionage, you are a Whistle Blower.
The few exceptions are the revelations of specific details such as plans on how to build top secret physical objects, copies of top secret computer code, or the names of undercover agents. That type of information should never be disclosed, not even publicly.
General methods, avenues of attack, etc. simply do deserve the same level of protection. The fact that we do X is never really secret, no matter what the government says.
Part of it is the reputation issue. China's main problem is that they care more about their politicians' reputation than what the politicians are doing.
America should NEVER make that mistake - what someone actually does is always far more important than their reputation - and that includes the reputation of government agencies.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
This is more or less, what Tom Drake said. Drake, who was a high level NSA official, started to address the agency's illegal activities by going through proper channels. When that failed, he and others within the NSA, leaked information to the NY Times while being very careful to limit the disclosures to things that were not too sensitive but still showed illegal activity. There were congressional hearings and the NSA denied everything. They got away with it because Drake's leaks did not include enough detailed evidence. At this point, they could have cut back those activities, which they had denied doing (but were, in fact, doing) because the process clearly pointed them out as illegal and unwanted by the American public. That's where Snowden came in and provided the detailed evidence. I think that no small part of his decision to flee had to do with creating a dramatic effect. His being on the run helps to keep the issue in the public spotlight. If that stops working, he may choose some opportune time to turn himself in if it can be done for further dramatic effect. So, I think there is actually some benefit for a whistleblower, like Snowden, to break the law to the point of an act of civil disobedience. Meanwhile, Tom Drake was protected as a whistleblower although he had a tough time with his legal defence for a while.