There’s a lot to unpack in this tweet from this Third Way centrist.
1) Whistleblowers don’t go to Congress and “get protected.” Proper channels are fraught with problems that may amount to whistleblower traps. That shouldn’t be the case but consult cases of NSA Four.
1) Whistleblowers don’t go to Congress and “get protected.” Proper channels are fraught with problems that may amount to whistleblower traps. That shouldn’t be the case but consult cases of NSA Four.
2) Leakers of classified information might go to jail. That is, if they are not high-ranking officials like David Petraeus, Leon Panetta, Michael Vickers, James Cartwright, or John Brennan. It’s only a strict liability offense if you lack friends in high places.
3) The public policy value has little to do with the “legal consequences.” That is one of the biggest problems and part of why Edward Snowden left the country before he exposed mass surveillance programs.
4) Intelligence committees in Congress are often in on the waste, fraud, abuse, or illegality. An elite group co-signed CIA torture and rendition. They were complicit in warrantless wiretapping. You can’t blow the whistle to people in on the scandalous activity.
5) One only makes a distinction between Snowden being a whistleblower, per weak protection laws, versus being a whistleblower, per public opinion, if they fashion themselves as someone tasked with promoting and protecting a bipartisan national security consensus
*Note: That consensus has included warrantless wiretapping, torture, and indefinite detention. It includes targeted killings. It once encompassed lies to sell the public the Iraq War. Anyone challenging this consensus could arbitrarily be denied whistleblower protections.
