Whistleblowers act against power structures and that's the ultimate transgression as far as the power structure is concerned.
Transgressions in favor of the state are one thing, you'll get a slap on the wrist at most, even personal benefit and promotion in some cases, but transgressions against the state are what will provoke a real response. See, for example, the incredible vigor pursued against the people who released the collateral murder videos, and not the people in the video who violated the geneva conventions by murdering surrendering combatants. One transgressed in favor of the state, and one against. That's all that matters.
And of course the power structure has investigated itself and found no wrong-doing, something something "you can't surrender to a helicopter therefore we were fine to shoot them", or whatever. You can't get a hmmwv out to a site during a decade-long occupation to take them in, better shoot them I guess.
It is the same thing in corporations too: you can be incompetent or your project can fail, and that's fine as long as you don't rock the boat. It's actually probably worse to rock the boat and try to save a failing project, not only do you take it on yourself if it fails (which it likely will anyway, because they won't listen/the project is too far gone) but even if it succeeds you've stuck your head up and shown yourself to not be a yes-man. We want team players here, not someone who's going to kick up a fuss and argue with the boss or jump them on the ladder. Doesn’t matter if what you said was true or not, you don’t transgress the power structures.
What makes it worse is, whistleblowers are trouble makers often. They are difficult people, at best like Snowden, they lay low. It makes it easier to dismiss them. Why? Because people who are good and social with the group do not have a contrarian character. To whistleblow against a very powerful organisation, like the NSA, you have to be a pain in the ass. I don't mean that in a bad way. Normal sociable people just don't do that.
So when a whistleblower breaks out, and they get chastised there almost is never support from within the organization for them.
> whistleblowers are trouble makers often ... Why? Because people who are good and social with the group do not have a contrarian character.
Most "troublemakers", as you call them, that I have known are people deeply moral and worried about their peers and society. I have seen two types, thou. Some have such a strong moral compass that will fight for what is right even knowing that it will have consequences. And the naive ones that think that, as they are morally right, the structures of power will recognize their sins and correct the situation. None of them were anti-social.
>Because people who are good and social with the group do not have a contrarian character. To whistleblow against a very powerful organisation, like the NSA, you have to be a pain in the ass. I don't mean that in a bad way. Normal sociable people just don't do that.
You're making way too simplistic a generalization here. Some sociable people can be sociable and friendly with a group until that group changes and they decide that it no longer fits their morality. They can still be contrarians, and then make waves anyhow. You absolutely don't have to be an introverted, hard nosed loner to end up being a whistleblower or contrarian troublemaker. This sounds a bit more like wishful fantasy for people who are socially inept trying to paint it as more noble.
If anything, a sociable, open person is more likely to have the kind of self assured personality that makes them decide it's not a problem to disagree among their peer group whenever it becomes necessary. Read more history, it's full of troublemakers who were also sociable.
> Because people who are good and social with the group do not have a contrarian character
That’s an interesting observation, and in my experience working in small businesses and large enterprise organizations, it’s entirely and totally wrong. Some of the worst people I’ve ever known in the workplace kiss up to the boss and to people in power while running the company into the ground. These are not good people. It’s actually a kind of evil in a way, as they present a likable "go along to get along" persona and facade while doing a terrible job. I would much rather be surrounded by humble yet candid truth tellers, who tell it like it is with empathy and compassion and care.
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
> Because people who are good and social with the group do not have a contrarian character.
To whistleblow against a very powerful organisation... you have to be a pain in the ass.
I am confused - people who are good and social have no principles and value? They have no backbone to stand up for them?
This is like the worst definition of social - like amoral sociopaths desperate to fit in.
This is why I don't operate in these power structures. From 1995 to 2005 I worked for corporations and seeing it was harmful to my well being, I decide to provide computer services directly to the public. Now I set my own rules, and I work very hard to set my own ethical spaces where people are forced to do the right thing if they want to operate in my world. I have found that people want to do the right things, but that they need people around them for encouragement. Treat everyone, even the most hardened criminals like they have it with in them to change and all the need is people to believe in them.
For me, the dead world of the labor force takes on a symbolic meaning. Words are like super powers, the have resonance and meaning. Look at the etymology of words and the source meaning will always give you the correct answer to what you are energetically putting your life force into.
corporation (n.)
> mid-15c., corporacioun, "persons united in a body for some purpose," from such use in Anglo-Latin, from Late Latin corporationem (nominative corporatio) "assumption of a body" (used of the incarnation of Christ),
> noun of action from past-participle stem of Latin corporare "embody, make or fashion into a body," from corpus (genitive corporis) "body, dead body, animal body," also "a whole composed of united parts, a structure, system,community, corporation, political body, a guild" (from PIE root *kwrep- "body, form, appearance").
Corporations are dead things. Start small and make choices that slowly shifts your energy to people and things that actual have living essence like small business and endeavors that benefit the common good. We can't do in every part of our life, but just a slight shift can be like a cascade effect over time.
While you may be less subject to corporate power structures the way you are operating now, you are still subject to all kinds of other power structures. As the GP has submitted, try working against the power structure of the country you are living in and you most likely will suffer greatly. The same even happens on lower levels (state, municipality, family?).
And even regarding corporate power structures you are only avoiding a certain kind of their possible influences. For example, if a corporation buys up all water supply in your living area you can feel that influence, even if you are not working for them.
There is nothing inherently good or bad about a group of people working toward some common purpose. In principle, given the right value system, incentives, and organizational structure, you could create a corporation that does an extraordinary amount of good in the world.
The problem is bad power structures, not power structures per se. Just because corporations as they exist today have problems doesn't mean that we should give up on organizations of people entirely. It means we need to do the necessary work in philosophy, psychology, economics, business administration, etc. that will enable the creation of more effective and ethical power structures.
Any large group of people organized together for enough time forms a body - the body of tradition and regulation.
A large body of text is also known as a corpus.
Both the large groups and the large texts are dead in the sense that they do not change of their own power. They are static and closed to new information.
Both text and groups must be re-animated by the individual.
I agree wholeheartedly with your sentiment and your behavior. I'm grateful for everyone of us out there working with strong moral boundaries. Thank you!
I also disagree with your perspective on corporations. To me they seem very much alive - in a less recognisable form, more complex than we can grasp with human minds.
I argue mainly because I'd like to keep the term as something free of judgment. A group of people that comes together as a larger body or organism can be quite beautiful too.
That's exactly the problem. You know they are speaking an essential truth when you look at the feathers ruffled by Snowden, Assange and those who follow in their path.
They will get their due acclaim if we're lucky to have a more moral and free society in the future.
I am not a fan of the idea that "oh, the right people are mad, therefore it must have been a Good thing to do!" The same feathers would have been ruffled if Snowden had leaked our nuclear codes. The point is that he exposed wrongdoing, and the public agreed.
There are plenty of people who are punished by the state that the majority does not believe are "speaking an essential truth". For example: domestic terrorists.
Snowden actually got a lot of support. I remember that even some high profile corporate executives expressed support... Though a cynical take on that would be that it was just to cover their own asses because they wanted to make themselves (and their companies/platforms) look like victims of government surveillance as opposed to facilitators.
The narrative weirdly lacks, why his leak was "against power structures".
The spin of the story has it, it was all about "spying against illegal activity". While really all that spying is just part of the objective to actively influence states. Not only passively observing your neighbors under the shower.
Particularly civil societies. Of "allies" at first, but conveniently, you have five eyes, looking at each other.
You don't in all seriousness spy on foreign leaders to "uncover child trafficking" or manipulate YT to "counter terrorism".
Foiled plots are few and far between. Mass media manipulation and economic exploitation persist and are commonplace.
A democratic society not subject to tight control seemingly is a very scary thing. Even more so when it is your own.
>The spin of the story has it, it was all about "spying against illegal activity".
Doing anything against the current government is illegal in every country and always has been. The US rebelling against British rule was also illegal at the time.
>A democratic society not subject to tight control seemingly is a very scary thing. Even more so when it is your own.
Again, the "who watches the watchmen" question. Most of our western democracies are lacking checks and bounds. We can only vote who represents us, but we can't vote for what they do when in power. If we disagree with them we have to wait ~4 more years before we can vote them out. In that time they can do an insane amount of irreversible damage and there's no consequences for them.
Supporting whistleblower is very expensive too. Since big structures have means beyond any small group.. every attempt is paid in full by the source.
We tried once on a subreddit, but even after 2 rounds of donation, this poor guy's life was burned to the ground 90%. (joblesness, lawyer fees, potential lawsuits, social anger from people supporting big corps, wife leaving him, no roof at time.. brutal)
If they are to be helped, it has to be done with fine strategies and not a full frontal fight.
> It's actually probably worse to rock the boat and try to save a failing project, not only do you take it on yourself if it fails (which it likely will anyway, because they won't listen/the project is too far gone) but even if it succeeds you've stuck your head up and shown yourself to not be a yes-man.
This is really bad career advice. There are certain situations where it makes sense to rock the boat, situations where it doesn't matter, and situations where it'll fuck you over
This rule that you've come up with seems really overgeneralized. If I disagree with someone or someone disagrees with me, we reach consensus. If someone disagrees with me instead of just nodding at everything, it makes it easier to form a mental picture of what that person actually knows. Someone who just agrees with everything has something to hide
This type of attitude is self perpetuating and creates an unproductive and political work culture
I rocked the boat to save a failing project and then I had to bust my ass working 24 hour stints for several months to make sure it succeeded while I watched incompetent people go on vacations.
Depends entirely on where you work. In any place with 4+ layers of management it sounds like a reasonably good idea.
You want to be seen as doing your best for the project, but not sticking your head out more than is reasonable.
The project will fail, but you’ll be remembered as the one that almost made it succeed, and you’ll have more political capital to make the changes you desire going forward.
Conversely, if you keep hammering at something when it is clear everyone doesn’t believe you or doesn’t share the same values, you are just making everyone hate you. Even if the project does somehow succeed.
Yeah, and it's why I think it's fundamentally impossible to prevent retaliation against whistleblowers. Organizations act in favor of self-preservation, like any living thing. Whistleblowers by definition act against them, so an organization will always benefit by removing them. Failure to do so will prolong the damage and encourage further transgressions.
We have to be really careful with this sort of relativisation. Killing people in a foreign country is not the same thing as selling bad products or dealing with information in an inappropriate way, at home.
It’s a travesty that Edward Snowden is still a fugitive in the United States. James Clapper went in front of congress and lied about the scope of surveillance on US citizens. Snowden saw it as his moral obligation to expose those lies, and he did it in the least destructive way possible by leaking the evidence to qualified journalists.
Over 25 per cent (at the least) of FBI employees can access secret databases on people.
'In his investigation, Horowitz found that none of the 29 randomly chosen queries had been carried out properly or legally. Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) said from an earlier conversation with Horowitz that in 25 of the cases, “there was unsupported, uncorroborated, or inconsistent information.” The FBI couldn’t even produce the relevant investigative files in the other four.'
Who, exactly, is responsible for the FBI, CIA, NSA, et al. if they over-reach?
We tend to believe there's an implicit checks-and-balances system in place, but the most dramatic historical time time a government official wanted to defund a secret-holder of the government was JFK.
In other words, how is this not a quiet dictatorship by another name?
Any query made by the FBI of this sort of data would at minimum be CJI exempt from most disclosure. For FISA stuff, even more controls would be in place
As a non-USAer I'm so glad he went beyond domestic spying. He showed the world how the USA spied on many of its supposed allies. The scope of the system of espionage they built is orwellian and just astonishing.
If there is one evil force conspiring for global domination that is the NSA and whichever institution they take order from. Thanks again, Snowden.
What I don't understand is the complete lack of response from countries like Italy and Germany once they found out being spied by an ally. Imagine what the USA would have done if the roles were reversed.
According to Greenwald there were millions of pages, largely because everything from parking spaces to nuclear weapons were frivolously marked "top secret" in order to increase the perceived importance of bureaucrats.
Snowden gave the pile to the Guardian (Greenwald and another journalist), who decided what to publish, which was a major task because of all the unimportant stuff.
How could Snowden have gone through that pile in a couple of days while on the run and possibly afraid for his life?
The point of sharing it only with trusted established journalists was that their qualified to know what needs redacting.
Surely even the documents that primarily concern specifically unconstitutional domestic spying would still have stuff in them that is material to national security and not unconstitutional.
Exposing illegal government surveillance programs is far more important than "national security". His leak exposed US foreign operations; who cares? Maybe don't do stuff that is so illegal and immoral that your own citizens feel compelled to risk everything to expose it.
As a European I actually think Snowden's primary motivation was opposition to US foreign policy and control of the world. There is no other reason to contact Glenn Greenwald in late 2012. In 2008-2012 Glenn Greenwald was primarily known as one of the harshest opponents of US foreign policy and someone who didn't shy away from defending Russia, Iran and other geopolitical adversaries of the US.
If it was about anti-surveillance/pro-privacy activism there are so many other ways Snowden could have leaked it and so many other people and organizations he could have leaked to. Snowden would probably be living in Vienna by now and not in Moscow if he was just an anti-surveillance activist. However his primary motivation for the leaks was to lower US influence and control of the rest of the world.
Obviously for the rest of the world Snowden is a net positive that raised awareness about mass surveillance by US Big Tech. But I cringe whenever Americans declare him "an American hero". I am sure Snowden cringe even more at that term to be honest.
Agreed. He worked with journalists to try the make the leak safe.
Let’s focus on impact- Now everyone is at least aware that digital activities are under surveillance including phone call metadata. We have made that trade off for some security. Thank you Snowden.
Perhaps the most horrifying aspect of the whole Snowden ordeal was not discovering hard proof we've been living in a borderline-Orwellian surveillance state, but the utter indifference of the American people at this revelation.
> Now everyone is at least aware that digital activities are under surveillance including phone call metadata. We have made that trade off for some security. Thank you Snowden.
We've traded away privacy, but whether that increases security remains to be seen.
It certainly increases the money we spend on alleged security. And "creates jobs" or whatever other euphemism we have for pork barrel decision-making today.
And yet, it is not journalists that are privy to classified material, it is lawmakers, military staff, intelligence staff, and their contractors and consultants.
What makes a journalist a better place to whistle to than an elected politician on the intelligence committee or any one of a number of other options.
My basic position on this is that secret holders never have the full picture, but at least they have the trust of the state they serve. A journalist is not always just a journalist.
Now, before you disregard my opinion completely please add to your consideration the following facts:
- I dated and lived with a nationally renowned journalist and editor, so I know a bit about journalists.
- I worked for CSIS and currently work for the CIA as an NOC Agent. AKA a spy.
- I have been in situations where I deeply felt the right thing to do was not to list to the people above my command. What I did in one particular situation was contact a politician I deeply trust who has high level clearance and left a vague message for that politician.
- I think some good has come out of the Snowden leaks, even though I don't think he did it the right way. It's a nuanced discussion and the public doesn't know everything. This work is tough.
He probably could have attempted to only leak the domestic surveillance, or at least screen out as much of the foreign intelligence methods as much as possible.
Half of it was whistleblowing (domestic surveillance) but half of it was pseudo-treasonous (foreign surveillance).
You know the saying beggars can't be choosers? We are currently begging for transparency.
The filtering process by independent journalists is the only actual recourse I can think of to solve this. Exfiltrating confidential documents is usually not a process that gives you a lot of time to sort out what is worth it or not, furthermore the volume of data might very well also be a problem to handle on your own.
Consider the time it took a lot of journalists to find the pertinent documents in this specific case among about 200,000 leaked documents (of various lengths), when Snowden is thought to have exfiltrated 1.7 millions documents.
I don't understand why people who make this argument think it's OK for the US government to spy on the private communications of all Chinese citizens but not for it to spy on those of American citizens. Is it OK for China to spy on American citizen's private communications, then?
It becomes even more problematic within the Five Eyes cooperation context, because if the NSA is spying on British private citizen communications, and GCHQ is spying on American private citizen communications, and the NSA and GCHQ are exchanging data without any limits, well???
Universal standards of human behavior and the right to personal privacy are hardly limited to some arbitrary nation-state boundary line, are they?
As far as targeted spying on government authorities and military operations, well, that's justified. Indeed it's a good thing that different countries are paying attention to each other in this manner, it has a stabilizing influence and can help to avoid conflicts if everyone knows what everyone else is up to.
> half of it was pseudo-treasonous (foreign surveillance)
When Snowden was telling everyone we spy on our allies, that is absolutely not treason.
From the Constitution, Article III, Section 3:
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
>He probably could have attempted to only leak the domestic surveillance,
This was the whole point of giving the docs to the guardian and wapo. Wapo then decided to publish the non-domestic stuff that he asked them not to, entirely their decision and it would not have been published otherwise. Then wapo decided to lobby against Snowden's pardon because non-domestic stuff was published. By them. Just wow. Likewise the Nyt who Snowden did not trust and deliberately excluded, managed to get the archive from the guardian and then went nuts, also blaming snowden for what they themselves published that he asked them not to.
So yeah if you were following along at home it was really hard not to have the reputations of the wapo and nyt take a really massive hit. I genuinely didn't think there were so craven but they are and everything is worse for them being so. It makes me entertain conspiracy theories about how many cia agents are on staff there and in senior editorial positions. Everyone will call that a conspiracy theory and treat it with contempt today and I guess that's fair, no evidence, only stench. Then if & when it comes out in the future, those same people will claim everyone always knew...
What’s he supposed to do? Deny it and be ejected, potentially to a country that will extradite him?
He already released the documents; it’s up to the American people to do something about it, and we (well, the government) haven’t. Whether he’s in Russia or federal prison changes nothing about the fact that he already did his “part”.
Snowden is perhaps not the best of examples because of all the controversy. If we change the subject a little, what is your stance on, say, the Panama Papers?
1) Criminals infiltrate government.
2) Government makes it legal to avoid taxation by placing funds in offshore accounts.
3) Large sums of money are hidden in Panamanian accounts via Mossack Fonseca.
4) Someone leaks documentation of these accounts to journalists.
5) Criminals say it's not whistleblowing because no laws were broken, it's just snooping into private affairs.
Of course, ordinary citizens don't get such privileges. If they could, everyone could get out of student loan debt by setting up a Delaware shell corporation controlled by another family member or group of friends, transferring their loan debt to it, and then let the shell corporation go bankrupt. The only downside would be that nobody would be that likely to loan you more money, but you'd have no more debt to pay off.
On to the differences between tragedy and travesty:
> A “tragedy” is of course a dreadful event or disaster that results in sadness, injury or destruction. While a “travesty” is more of a distorted or cheap imitation of something – often applied to the debasement of something held high, such as justice, rules, ideals and so on.
I'm not sure I believe much about what Snowden released. I see him as more of a psyop agent than a whistleblower. The govt could have orchestrated that whole ordeal to instill a chilling effect on the population, none of it had to be true for the population to react and self censor
> Despite the importance of their actions, named whistleblowers are often subjected to oppressive and stigmatized labels—like "snitch" or "leaker."
Modern societies are predicated on the notion that laws apply equally to all members of the society and transgressions are identified by authorities (the executive) and punished in a transparent manner by courts (the judicial), acting under the rule of laws set in place by government bodies (the legislative) that are responsive to the general population's interests.
There are those who are scoffing to themselves at this description, and their viewpoint has some historical merit. The "stationary bandit" theory of government is a common alternative view: criminal elements with no respect for the above concept of equal treatment under the law infiltrate and take over governments so that they can engage in criminal activity while being protected by the very powers of state authority that were intended to keep their activities in check.
These organized crime cartels then have the legislators rewrite the laws so that their criminal behavior is protected and not prosecuted (witness the failure of the US government to prosecute any of the major fraudsters involved in the 2008 economic collapse, or to prosecute the members of government who lied about WMDs in Iraq in 2002-2003, or to prosecute those involved in the illegal domestic mass surveillance operation, or to prosecute those pushing opiates on the population, etc.).
The more blatant organized crime cartels (mafia, drug cartels, etc.) are well-known for calling members of their organizations who testify against them in court names like 'rats', 'snitches', and so on. If this becomes widespread behavior (major US media figures calling Snowden a 'weasel' come to mind), then it becomes rather clear that the government and its major corporate affiliates have become a kleptocracy run by a group of stationary bandits. We could call this a 'public-private partnership', I suppose. For more:
I continue to maintain that Snowden was one of the greatest American patriots in decades.
There are many leakers that deliberately act with the intention to harm the state; That wasn't Snowden - he threw away his life to stage an intervention.
Why has he been left to rot in a dictatorship?
I'd say sign a pardon for the man, but unless he can get out of Russia there's a damned good chance that things would only get worse for him.
I am 99% sure Snowden is cringing at the term "American patriots".
Snowden's primary motivation was most likely opposition to US foreign policy and control of the world. There is no other reason to contact Glenn Greenwald in late 2012. In 2008-2012 Glenn Greenwald was primarily known as one of the harshest opponents of US foreign policy and someone who didn't shy away from defending Russia, Iran and other geopolitical adversaries of the US.
If it was about anti-surveillance/pro-privacy activism there are so many other ways Snowden could have leaked it and so many other people and organizations he could have leaked to. Snowden would probably be living in Vienna by now and not in Moscow if he was just an anti-surveillance activist. However his primary motivation for the leaks was to lower US influence and control of the rest of the world.
Snowden is a world citizen who opposed what "American patriots" were doing to the rest of the world.
He has stated his primary reason was that he was pro-privacy and anti-surveillance. There is no reason to doubt this. He had a huge trove of info he could have sold to China or Russia and he didn't. He has given us no reason to not believe him, and if you're paying attention to Washington you'll see why he didn't go through those channels, especially in the era of shipping off people to be tortured in other countries and "water boarding" is just "coercive means".
> I am 99% sure Snowden is cringing at the term "American patriots".
Perhaps for the current perverse use of the term "patriot", which to many Americans seems to boil down to "yes-man for the state". But in its purest form, I do believe Snowden to be a patriot, even if he'd object to the term.
The article only mentions her as a picture (on purpose, I'm sure), but I'd like to take a second to address this:
Chelsea Manning is a very bad example of a whistleblower. First, she didn't reveal anything new. All the information that was produced was previously known. Second, she was releasing documents because she was angry that she was deployed. Third, she didn't even attempt to use the whistle blowing process in the military that is quite in tact (it was called request mast when I was in but goes by different names depending on the branch). How she was treated afterward was terrible, but to continue validating her story by labeling her a whistleblower is harmful imo. It's okay to say not all whistleblowers are cut from the same cloth while simultaneously promoting the system of request mast/whistleblowing in the government.
>First, she didn't reveal anything new. All the information that was produced was previously known
Just as a start, the Iraq War logs detailed fifteen thousand previously unknown civilian deaths.
While you can argue we knew our military was doing terrible stuff, without her leaks it wouldn't have been clear what terrible stuff they were doing.
>Second, she was releasing documents because she was angry that she was deployed
Source? While I'm not 100% clear what her motivations were, I've never heard that claim.
As for the third, it was clear what she released was being hidden. I can't imagine what the proper channel would be for something like the "collateral murder" video. "Hey you know that time you killed journalists and lied about it? Well there's evidence you lied about it."
> While you can argue we knew our military was doing terrible stuff, without her leaks it wouldn't have been clear what terrible stuff they were doing.
The Iraq war logs weren't even mostly about us. They were mostly about our partners. Her testimony aligns to what those databases were for. [1]
> Source? While I'm not 100% clear what her motivations were, I've never heard that claim.
I was trying to find the chat logs from IRC that make that situation a lot more emblematic. She was having relationship issues at the time and was demurred by long deployment times/work. (To her credit, I did a similar deployment for roughly a year and they are exhausting) In her testimony she glosses over much of what was in the chat logs, instead trying to explain her actions from a place of promoting "national discourse".
The helicopter gunship situation is accurate. If there's anything she released that was useful it was that.
I was also in the military, and can tell you if she had complained no one would have cared and probably would have just gotten her into more trouble. Whistleblowing to the military chain of command is just for stuff like if your CO is stealing money or your LT is coercing a sailor into a sexual relationship, not for stuff that makes the military look bad. The stuff Manning released was definitely not stuff you would take to 'mast'.
That's not really true, when I was in I was cognizant of a group of Marines that were being charged due to a request mast. They did have to request past their local unit leadership, which the process allowed for.
"85% of people on earth are followers, 10% are leaders or creators, or manipulators and 5% are observers. The followers need something to follow or believe so the creators capitalize on that and take advantage of their desire to be lead. The observers see everything that's going on and can ruin everything for the 10% but, the 85% label the 5% crazy or plan to get rid of them because the 10% have control."
400M observers, of which a large portion might desire to be whistleblowers, but either see it as futile, or as incredibly dangerous to themselves, and therefore stay silent.
Regardless, the absolute numbers or exact percent values aren't important. If we believe the concept is plausible, it's enough to think of the vast majority being followers, with a small number of leaders/creators/manipulators and an even smaller number of observers/whistleblowers.
Maybe 85/10/5 is right, maybe it's 95/4/1, maybe 99/0.8/0.2, whatever. As with many things, it's an intentional oversimplification, intended to illustrate a general idea.
"team leaders", self-employed and small informal business owner could easily fill that number. One just need to be a self-starter, sociable and have an organization to manage
It sounds plausible that one in ten people are leaders, although I don't know how you could measure how many people would report a crime if they saw it occur.
Also companies have emerged for providing secure platforms for whistleblowers.
Though, as national security and related things are in the hands of the member states, I am not sure how well this EU law and its national adaptations apply to the cases discussed in this article (probably wholesale exemptions have been adopted by the member states at this front).
EDIT #1: At some point they also tried to draft a law for protecting people involved in vulnerability disclosure, which would have been great, but I think this lawmaking proposal failed.
EDIT #2: I should have read the article better; it seems similar laws exist also in the US.
The cartoon at the top of the article highlights the fact that the laws aren't working (the UK was in the EU when some of these people were imprisoned).
Yet the EU continues to make life very difficult for EU whistleblower Roelie Post [0].
Perhaps because she fought against child trafficking and US-based adoption firms are lobbying in the EU for adopting vulnerable children from countries like Romania.
I didn't know that. Nor am I claiming that the law is working properly or have any evidence to any direction. The recent issues at UN are also "interesting":
Laws are pointless if they aren't used. The US has laws to allow whistleblowing. However they are so vague US prosecutors can easily get around them to prosecute and imprison whistleblowers, and the system itself is so corrupt that the "channels" you would use to actually do it would shut down the process almost immediately to save embarrassment to the government. The laws are just feel good laws and don't work, that's why people go straight to the press.
The US also has laws protecting whistleblowers, which to me just highlighted the complete moral bankruptcy of some Republican members of the US Congress when they tried to out the whistleblower who brought Trump's phone call with the Ukrainian president to light, but more importantly, when they tried to impugn his motives.
The thing that made me so angry about this is that a huge point of whistleblower laws is that it doesn't matter what the motives of the whistleblower are. Of course many whistleblowers are disgruntled for various reasons, but who cares? Whistleblowing laws aren't about taking the whistleblower's accusations at face value, it's just about protecting whistleblowers' ability to bring inside information and evidence to light, and then that information can be investigated independently.
The push by folks like Rand Paul to expose and condemn the whistleblower was one of the most disgusting political acts I've ever seen.
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Transgressions in favor of the state are one thing, you'll get a slap on the wrist at most, even personal benefit and promotion in some cases, but transgressions against the state are what will provoke a real response. See, for example, the incredible vigor pursued against the people who released the collateral murder videos, and not the people in the video who violated the geneva conventions by murdering surrendering combatants. One transgressed in favor of the state, and one against. That's all that matters.
And of course the power structure has investigated itself and found no wrong-doing, something something "you can't surrender to a helicopter therefore we were fine to shoot them", or whatever. You can't get a hmmwv out to a site during a decade-long occupation to take them in, better shoot them I guess.
It is the same thing in corporations too: you can be incompetent or your project can fail, and that's fine as long as you don't rock the boat. It's actually probably worse to rock the boat and try to save a failing project, not only do you take it on yourself if it fails (which it likely will anyway, because they won't listen/the project is too far gone) but even if it succeeds you've stuck your head up and shown yourself to not be a yes-man. We want team players here, not someone who's going to kick up a fuss and argue with the boss or jump them on the ladder. Doesn’t matter if what you said was true or not, you don’t transgress the power structures.
So when a whistleblower breaks out, and they get chastised there almost is never support from within the organization for them.
Most "troublemakers", as you call them, that I have known are people deeply moral and worried about their peers and society. I have seen two types, thou. Some have such a strong moral compass that will fight for what is right even knowing that it will have consequences. And the naive ones that think that, as they are morally right, the structures of power will recognize their sins and correct the situation. None of them were anti-social.
But that is just my personal experience.
You're making way too simplistic a generalization here. Some sociable people can be sociable and friendly with a group until that group changes and they decide that it no longer fits their morality. They can still be contrarians, and then make waves anyhow. You absolutely don't have to be an introverted, hard nosed loner to end up being a whistleblower or contrarian troublemaker. This sounds a bit more like wishful fantasy for people who are socially inept trying to paint it as more noble.
If anything, a sociable, open person is more likely to have the kind of self assured personality that makes them decide it's not a problem to disagree among their peer group whenever it becomes necessary. Read more history, it's full of troublemakers who were also sociable.
That’s an interesting observation, and in my experience working in small businesses and large enterprise organizations, it’s entirely and totally wrong. Some of the worst people I’ve ever known in the workplace kiss up to the boss and to people in power while running the company into the ground. These are not good people. It’s actually a kind of evil in a way, as they present a likable "go along to get along" persona and facade while doing a terrible job. I would much rather be surrounded by humble yet candid truth tellers, who tell it like it is with empathy and compassion and care.
And actual real world lite "whistle-blower" I have Deen was not like that.
I am confused - people who are good and social have no principles and value? They have no backbone to stand up for them?
This is like the worst definition of social - like amoral sociopaths desperate to fit in.
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Where does this line of thinking come from? It isn't true because e.g. MLK, Malcolm X
It sounds like you're trying to psychologize whistleblowing or activism
Where did you learn this from? Did you grow up in an authoritarian regime or something?
For me, the dead world of the labor force takes on a symbolic meaning. Words are like super powers, the have resonance and meaning. Look at the etymology of words and the source meaning will always give you the correct answer to what you are energetically putting your life force into.
corporation (n.)
> mid-15c., corporacioun, "persons united in a body for some purpose," from such use in Anglo-Latin, from Late Latin corporationem (nominative corporatio) "assumption of a body" (used of the incarnation of Christ),
> noun of action from past-participle stem of Latin corporare "embody, make or fashion into a body," from corpus (genitive corporis) "body, dead body, animal body," also "a whole composed of united parts, a structure, system,community, corporation, political body, a guild" (from PIE root *kwrep- "body, form, appearance").
Corporations are dead things. Start small and make choices that slowly shifts your energy to people and things that actual have living essence like small business and endeavors that benefit the common good. We can't do in every part of our life, but just a slight shift can be like a cascade effect over time.
And even regarding corporate power structures you are only avoiding a certain kind of their possible influences. For example, if a corporation buys up all water supply in your living area you can feel that influence, even if you are not working for them.
The problem is bad power structures, not power structures per se. Just because corporations as they exist today have problems doesn't mean that we should give up on organizations of people entirely. It means we need to do the necessary work in philosophy, psychology, economics, business administration, etc. that will enable the creation of more effective and ethical power structures.
A large body of text is also known as a corpus.
Both the large groups and the large texts are dead in the sense that they do not change of their own power. They are static and closed to new information.
Both text and groups must be re-animated by the individual.
I also disagree with your perspective on corporations. To me they seem very much alive - in a less recognisable form, more complex than we can grasp with human minds.
I argue mainly because I'd like to keep the term as something free of judgment. A group of people that comes together as a larger body or organism can be quite beautiful too.
They live forever, devour our work product and consider themselves persons.
They will get their due acclaim if we're lucky to have a more moral and free society in the future.
There are plenty of people who are punished by the state that the majority does not believe are "speaking an essential truth". For example: domestic terrorists.
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The spin of the story has it, it was all about "spying against illegal activity". While really all that spying is just part of the objective to actively influence states. Not only passively observing your neighbors under the shower. Particularly civil societies. Of "allies" at first, but conveniently, you have five eyes, looking at each other.
You don't in all seriousness spy on foreign leaders to "uncover child trafficking" or manipulate YT to "counter terrorism". Foiled plots are few and far between. Mass media manipulation and economic exploitation persist and are commonplace.
A democratic society not subject to tight control seemingly is a very scary thing. Even more so when it is your own.
Doing anything against the current government is illegal in every country and always has been. The US rebelling against British rule was also illegal at the time.
>A democratic society not subject to tight control seemingly is a very scary thing. Even more so when it is your own.
Again, the "who watches the watchmen" question. Most of our western democracies are lacking checks and bounds. We can only vote who represents us, but we can't vote for what they do when in power. If we disagree with them we have to wait ~4 more years before we can vote them out. In that time they can do an insane amount of irreversible damage and there's no consequences for them.
We tried once on a subreddit, but even after 2 rounds of donation, this poor guy's life was burned to the ground 90%. (joblesness, lawyer fees, potential lawsuits, social anger from people supporting big corps, wife leaving him, no roof at time.. brutal)
If they are to be helped, it has to be done with fine strategies and not a full frontal fight.
This is really bad career advice. There are certain situations where it makes sense to rock the boat, situations where it doesn't matter, and situations where it'll fuck you over
This rule that you've come up with seems really overgeneralized. If I disagree with someone or someone disagrees with me, we reach consensus. If someone disagrees with me instead of just nodding at everything, it makes it easier to form a mental picture of what that person actually knows. Someone who just agrees with everything has something to hide
This type of attitude is self perpetuating and creates an unproductive and political work culture
His advice is legit.
Depends entirely on where you work. In any place with 4+ layers of management it sounds like a reasonably good idea.
You want to be seen as doing your best for the project, but not sticking your head out more than is reasonable.
The project will fail, but you’ll be remembered as the one that almost made it succeed, and you’ll have more political capital to make the changes you desire going forward.
Conversely, if you keep hammering at something when it is clear everyone doesn’t believe you or doesn’t share the same values, you are just making everyone hate you. Even if the project does somehow succeed.
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We have to be really careful with this sort of relativisation. Killing people in a foreign country is not the same thing as selling bad products or dealing with information in an inappropriate way, at home.
Simply wistleblowing to report legal breaches by your employer can sometimes ruin your career.
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Over 25 per cent (at the least) of FBI employees can access secret databases on people.
'In his investigation, Horowitz found that none of the 29 randomly chosen queries had been carried out properly or legally. Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) said from an earlier conversation with Horowitz that in 25 of the cases, “there was unsupported, uncorroborated, or inconsistent information.” The FBI couldn’t even produce the relevant investigative files in the other four.'
We tend to believe there's an implicit checks-and-balances system in place, but the most dramatic historical time time a government official wanted to defund a secret-holder of the government was JFK.
In other words, how is this not a quiet dictatorship by another name?
Just take a look at the list of secrets he revealed. Most of them are not about domestic spying at all:
https://www.lawfareblog.com/snowden-revelations
If he wanted to blow the whistle on domestic spying, he could have shared documents with journalists about domestic spying.
If there is one evil force conspiring for global domination that is the NSA and whichever institution they take order from. Thanks again, Snowden.
What I don't understand is the complete lack of response from countries like Italy and Germany once they found out being spied by an ally. Imagine what the USA would have done if the roles were reversed.
Snowden gave the pile to the Guardian (Greenwald and another journalist), who decided what to publish, which was a major task because of all the unimportant stuff.
How could Snowden have gone through that pile in a couple of days while on the run and possibly afraid for his life?
Surely even the documents that primarily concern specifically unconstitutional domestic spying would still have stuff in them that is material to national security and not unconstitutional.
Then he owed it to humanity and acted on it. Kudos to him.
But even so, those demand him to be 100% ethical, why don't they also demand that from the NSA and the rest of the state?
He did it in a responsible way. Perhaps if there was better support for whistle-blower he could have done it even better.
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If it was about anti-surveillance/pro-privacy activism there are so many other ways Snowden could have leaked it and so many other people and organizations he could have leaked to. Snowden would probably be living in Vienna by now and not in Moscow if he was just an anti-surveillance activist. However his primary motivation for the leaks was to lower US influence and control of the rest of the world.
Obviously for the rest of the world Snowden is a net positive that raised awareness about mass surveillance by US Big Tech. But I cringe whenever Americans declare him "an American hero". I am sure Snowden cringe even more at that term to be honest.
Let’s focus on impact- Now everyone is at least aware that digital activities are under surveillance including phone call metadata. We have made that trade off for some security. Thank you Snowden.
We've traded away privacy, but whether that increases security remains to be seen.
It certainly increases the money we spend on alleged security. And "creates jobs" or whatever other euphemism we have for pork barrel decision-making today.
What makes a journalist a better place to whistle to than an elected politician on the intelligence committee or any one of a number of other options.
My basic position on this is that secret holders never have the full picture, but at least they have the trust of the state they serve. A journalist is not always just a journalist.
Now, before you disregard my opinion completely please add to your consideration the following facts:
- I dated and lived with a nationally renowned journalist and editor, so I know a bit about journalists.
- I worked for CSIS and currently work for the CIA as an NOC Agent. AKA a spy.
- I have been in situations where I deeply felt the right thing to do was not to list to the people above my command. What I did in one particular situation was contact a politician I deeply trust who has high level clearance and left a vague message for that politician.
- I think some good has come out of the Snowden leaks, even though I don't think he did it the right way. It's a nuanced discussion and the public doesn't know everything. This work is tough.
Half of it was whistleblowing (domestic surveillance) but half of it was pseudo-treasonous (foreign surveillance).
The filtering process by independent journalists is the only actual recourse I can think of to solve this. Exfiltrating confidential documents is usually not a process that gives you a lot of time to sort out what is worth it or not, furthermore the volume of data might very well also be a problem to handle on your own.
Consider the time it took a lot of journalists to find the pertinent documents in this specific case among about 200,000 leaked documents (of various lengths), when Snowden is thought to have exfiltrated 1.7 millions documents.
It becomes even more problematic within the Five Eyes cooperation context, because if the NSA is spying on British private citizen communications, and GCHQ is spying on American private citizen communications, and the NSA and GCHQ are exchanging data without any limits, well???
Universal standards of human behavior and the right to personal privacy are hardly limited to some arbitrary nation-state boundary line, are they?
As far as targeted spying on government authorities and military operations, well, that's justified. Indeed it's a good thing that different countries are paying attention to each other in this manner, it has a stabilizing influence and can help to avoid conflicts if everyone knows what everyone else is up to.
When Snowden was telling everyone we spy on our allies, that is absolutely not treason.
From the Constitution, Article III, Section 3:
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
This was the whole point of giving the docs to the guardian and wapo. Wapo then decided to publish the non-domestic stuff that he asked them not to, entirely their decision and it would not have been published otherwise. Then wapo decided to lobby against Snowden's pardon because non-domestic stuff was published. By them. Just wow. Likewise the Nyt who Snowden did not trust and deliberately excluded, managed to get the archive from the guardian and then went nuts, also blaming snowden for what they themselves published that he asked them not to.
So yeah if you were following along at home it was really hard not to have the reputations of the wapo and nyt take a really massive hit. I genuinely didn't think there were so craven but they are and everything is worse for them being so. It makes me entertain conspiracy theories about how many cia agents are on staff there and in senior editorial positions. Everyone will call that a conspiracy theory and treat it with contempt today and I guess that's fair, no evidence, only stench. Then if & when it comes out in the future, those same people will claim everyone always knew...
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He already released the documents; it’s up to the American people to do something about it, and we (well, the government) haven’t. Whether he’s in Russia or federal prison changes nothing about the fact that he already did his “part”.
IIRC his passport was revoked, but if I'm wrong I'd enjoy some readings that say otherwise. Its been a while since I followed the story.
Of course, ordinary citizens don't get such privileges. If they could, everyone could get out of student loan debt by setting up a Delaware shell corporation controlled by another family member or group of friends, transferring their loan debt to it, and then let the shell corporation go bankrupt. The only downside would be that nobody would be that likely to loan you more money, but you'd have no more debt to pay off.
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something that is shocking, upsetting, or ridiculous because it is not what it is supposed to be
“It is a travesty and a tragedy that so many people would be denied the right to vote.”
“The investigation into the causes of the accident was a complete travesty. [=sham]”
“The trial was a travesty of justice.”
https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/travesty
On to the differences between tragedy and travesty:
> A “tragedy” is of course a dreadful event or disaster that results in sadness, injury or destruction. While a “travesty” is more of a distorted or cheap imitation of something – often applied to the debasement of something held high, such as justice, rules, ideals and so on.
https://www.writerscentre.com.au/blog/qa-tragedy-vs-travesty...
Modern societies are predicated on the notion that laws apply equally to all members of the society and transgressions are identified by authorities (the executive) and punished in a transparent manner by courts (the judicial), acting under the rule of laws set in place by government bodies (the legislative) that are responsive to the general population's interests.
There are those who are scoffing to themselves at this description, and their viewpoint has some historical merit. The "stationary bandit" theory of government is a common alternative view: criminal elements with no respect for the above concept of equal treatment under the law infiltrate and take over governments so that they can engage in criminal activity while being protected by the very powers of state authority that were intended to keep their activities in check.
These organized crime cartels then have the legislators rewrite the laws so that their criminal behavior is protected and not prosecuted (witness the failure of the US government to prosecute any of the major fraudsters involved in the 2008 economic collapse, or to prosecute the members of government who lied about WMDs in Iraq in 2002-2003, or to prosecute those involved in the illegal domestic mass surveillance operation, or to prosecute those pushing opiates on the population, etc.).
The more blatant organized crime cartels (mafia, drug cartels, etc.) are well-known for calling members of their organizations who testify against them in court names like 'rats', 'snitches', and so on. If this becomes widespread behavior (major US media figures calling Snowden a 'weasel' come to mind), then it becomes rather clear that the government and its major corporate affiliates have become a kleptocracy run by a group of stationary bandits. We could call this a 'public-private partnership', I suppose. For more:
https://broadstreet.blog/2021/04/05/the-rise-of-the-stationa...
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There are many leakers that deliberately act with the intention to harm the state; That wasn't Snowden - he threw away his life to stage an intervention.
Why has he been left to rot in a dictatorship?
I'd say sign a pardon for the man, but unless he can get out of Russia there's a damned good chance that things would only get worse for him.
Snowden's primary motivation was most likely opposition to US foreign policy and control of the world. There is no other reason to contact Glenn Greenwald in late 2012. In 2008-2012 Glenn Greenwald was primarily known as one of the harshest opponents of US foreign policy and someone who didn't shy away from defending Russia, Iran and other geopolitical adversaries of the US.
If it was about anti-surveillance/pro-privacy activism there are so many other ways Snowden could have leaked it and so many other people and organizations he could have leaked to. Snowden would probably be living in Vienna by now and not in Moscow if he was just an anti-surveillance activist. However his primary motivation for the leaks was to lower US influence and control of the rest of the world.
Snowden is a world citizen who opposed what "American patriots" were doing to the rest of the world.
Perhaps for the current perverse use of the term "patriot", which to many Americans seems to boil down to "yes-man for the state". But in its purest form, I do believe Snowden to be a patriot, even if he'd object to the term.
Chelsea Manning is a very bad example of a whistleblower. First, she didn't reveal anything new. All the information that was produced was previously known. Second, she was releasing documents because she was angry that she was deployed. Third, she didn't even attempt to use the whistle blowing process in the military that is quite in tact (it was called request mast when I was in but goes by different names depending on the branch). How she was treated afterward was terrible, but to continue validating her story by labeling her a whistleblower is harmful imo. It's okay to say not all whistleblowers are cut from the same cloth while simultaneously promoting the system of request mast/whistleblowing in the government.
Just as a start, the Iraq War logs detailed fifteen thousand previously unknown civilian deaths.
While you can argue we knew our military was doing terrible stuff, without her leaks it wouldn't have been clear what terrible stuff they were doing.
>Second, she was releasing documents because she was angry that she was deployed
Source? While I'm not 100% clear what her motivations were, I've never heard that claim.
As for the third, it was clear what she released was being hidden. I can't imagine what the proper channel would be for something like the "collateral murder" video. "Hey you know that time you killed journalists and lied about it? Well there's evidence you lied about it."
The Iraq war logs weren't even mostly about us. They were mostly about our partners. Her testimony aligns to what those databases were for. [1]
> Source? While I'm not 100% clear what her motivations were, I've never heard that claim.
I was trying to find the chat logs from IRC that make that situation a lot more emblematic. She was having relationship issues at the time and was demurred by long deployment times/work. (To her credit, I did a similar deployment for roughly a year and they are exhausting) In her testimony she glosses over much of what was in the chat logs, instead trying to explain her actions from a place of promoting "national discourse".
The helicopter gunship situation is accurate. If there's anything she released that was useful it was that.
1: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/01/bradley-mannin...
I was also in the military, and can tell you if she had complained no one would have cared and probably would have just gotten her into more trouble. Whistleblowing to the military chain of command is just for stuff like if your CO is stealing money or your LT is coercing a sailor into a sexual relationship, not for stuff that makes the military look bad. The stuff Manning released was definitely not stuff you would take to 'mast'.
"85% of people on earth are followers, 10% are leaders or creators, or manipulators and 5% are observers. The followers need something to follow or believe so the creators capitalize on that and take advantage of their desire to be lead. The observers see everything that's going on and can ruin everything for the 10% but, the 85% label the 5% crazy or plan to get rid of them because the 10% have control."
Regardless, the absolute numbers or exact percent values aren't important. If we believe the concept is plausible, it's enough to think of the vast majority being followers, with a small number of leaders/creators/manipulators and an even smaller number of observers/whistleblowers.
Maybe 85/10/5 is right, maybe it's 95/4/1, maybe 99/0.8/0.2, whatever. As with many things, it's an intentional oversimplification, intended to illustrate a general idea.
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https://commission.europa.eu/aid-development-cooperation-fun...
Also companies have emerged for providing secure platforms for whistleblowers.
Though, as national security and related things are in the hands of the member states, I am not sure how well this EU law and its national adaptations apply to the cases discussed in this article (probably wholesale exemptions have been adopted by the member states at this front).
EDIT #1: At some point they also tried to draft a law for protecting people involved in vulnerability disclosure, which would have been great, but I think this lawmaking proposal failed.
EDIT #2: I should have read the article better; it seems similar laws exist also in the US.
Perhaps because she fought against child trafficking and US-based adoption firms are lobbying in the EU for adopting vulnerable children from countries like Romania.
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[0]: http://www.roeliepost.com/about/
https://www.transparency.org/en/press/un-whistleblower-expos...
The thing that made me so angry about this is that a huge point of whistleblower laws is that it doesn't matter what the motives of the whistleblower are. Of course many whistleblowers are disgruntled for various reasons, but who cares? Whistleblowing laws aren't about taking the whistleblower's accusations at face value, it's just about protecting whistleblowers' ability to bring inside information and evidence to light, and then that information can be investigated independently.
The push by folks like Rand Paul to expose and condemn the whistleblower was one of the most disgusting political acts I've ever seen.
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- George Orwell