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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."
What really needs to happen is that people responsible for illegal activity, including spying, need to go to fucking prison, just like any one of the great unwashed goes to prison for breaking laws. These people break these laws, which then requires some whistleblowing because they know they can do it with impunity.
"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.
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.
There was a lack of protection. If it was important enough he should have been willing to do the time.
He shouldn't have to. That's why we need protection.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
When the chain of command is ignoring the law, there is no fucking point in reporting to the chain of command ... they're the problem, which pretty much means they can't be part of the solution.
The problem with this is that they all knew damned well they were operating well beyond what they were allowed to, and weren't going to do anything about it -- other than keeping doing it.
The the agencies are deciding what is legal and what isn't with no consequence, it's time to stop trusting the agencies with deciding what is legal and what isn't.
"Legitimate whistleblower protection" has to include the fact that the people in charge ARE the damned problem. Because in this case, they were. And trusting them to fix the problem would mean they'd bury it, and nothing would change.
Sorry, when the system is that broken, you can't rely on the system to fix the problem.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
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
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.
So you're not willing to trust Snowden, nor are you willing to trust the journalists like Greenwald that he spoke to in Hong Kong, but you're willing to trust a Chinese state-run newspaper?
Got any idea how many cops have been decertified and/or imprisoned in the US lately? Police work, like the intel services, ATTRACT PEOPLE WHO ARE UTTER DOUCHEBAGS. Maybe MOST people are just average Americans, with a tendency to defend freedom - but you've also got a bunch of douchebags.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article...
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
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.
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.
To expand on this: Every government hacks into other governments; only the Chinese use it for the financial benefit of their own corporations.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
This just in: Person with proof of massive government wrongdoing smeared by government!
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
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
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
A quick google search turned up this.
And by Glenn Greewald, no less.
I'm not sure why this is so hard to believe. Have you been paying attention to what's going on with governments across the world for the past decade or so? It's not a rosy picture. In fact, it's downright horrific what they're doing.