We should probably decry people who illegally funnel information to the press under Republican administrations, too, in order to avoid hypocrisy

He went to the press and revealed details which, when transmitted to Iranian authorities, put people's lives at risk. I can't imagine what positive outcome he intended from this, or what "wrongdoing" he was exposing, or what ethical principle he was following, except that he put people's lives at risk by breaking his oath of confidentiality.

Ultimately, I've been pretty happy with the Obama administration's attempts to contain Iran's nuclear weapons program while also working to support Iran's right to nuclear power, which began decades ago under the Shah. It's a muddy and nuanced approach, but it would be impossible if all CIA employees were given carte blanche to reveal every single detail of their jobs every single day with no penalty whatsoever.

We need to reform the entire whistleblower protection act and we need a truly independent entity set up for whistleblowers. As we don't have that, many whistleblowers have gone outside the system. And it's becoming worse and worse- not to mention the terrible fucking awful double standard.

revise our attitudes toward whistleblowers. It seems to me that there are whistleblowers who expose wrongdoing, and there are whistleblowers who participate in massive data-dumps which jeopardize the lives of others thoughtlessly. They seem to be all acting for different reasons, some to escape from the military (like Chelsea Manning), some for no reason (Sterling), and some for ethical reasons and in order to shed light on illegal behavior within organizations (the Pentagon Papers etc.).

We have a huge privacy problem. People have died and investments of literally billions toward causes important, sometimes critical, to our own wellbeing have been compromised or largely ruined by "whistleblowers." Not all are noble or wise by a long shot. Some are ignorant, naive, arrogant, disgruntled resentful.

Every single day without fail cyberattacks attempt to take down various parts of the interconnected systems we depend on to live. Many of these are trials of weapons in development to be deployed for real in future, others real attempts.

That's only one kind of attack being fended off, but people should know that a cyberattack that took down our entire grid coast to coast, difficult but far from impossible, would kill an estimated 90% of our population within the first year. That's according to a study presented to Congress.

There are many smaller attacks that are constantly defended against, such as elections tampering, derailing trains, technology theft, and on and on.

President Obama started prosecuting these things, not because he "hates" whistleblowers (outrageous suggestion) or because he plans on making himself a dictator, but because our wellbeing and in some cases our lives literally depend on lax security being tightened.

Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear!

This discussion is meant to engage frontal lobe executive functions to consider WHY President Obama is clamping down hard on willful security breaches.

Btw, running away from scary possibilities is not the best way to handle them.

I believe whisteblowers are necessary ! And thank you Wikileaks, Mr. Assange, Mr. Snowden, Ms Manning and all the others. Please keep it up.

important functions? No one. It's possible for an action to be both beneficial and harmful, Wildbilln.

II was responding to the shabby, dishonest claim that Democrat "hate," "hate," "hate" whistleblowers. Very silly and best aimed at those who prefer reacting from what they call their gut to thinking.

the Supreme Court made the decision that government employee whistleblowers essentially don't have First Amendment rights. Garcetti v. Ceballos is ripe for abuse by those in power over them, and punishment is often the result when an agency or government official is put on the scrutiny block for actions deemed questionable.


Summary of Garcetti v. Cweballos:

of a covert disinformation campaign to slow down potential Iranian development of a nuclear weapon. That would qualify as extraordinarily irresponsible behavior. Sterling claims that the disinformation effort was incompetent -- and, of course, it is possible that he is correct in that assessment. But it is also possible he did not have a complete view of the game-board and didn't really understand fully what position he was exposing

I suppose people are free to take the view that we should not engage in any covert campaigns at all, even with the aim of limiting the further spread of nuclear weapons, but that call really wasn't Sterling's to make here

Seems a bit weird.

... send to be what is disliked not people who out relevant data

Sterling was convicted, primarily, for revealing the identity of a Russian scientist who was working with the CIA to stem the Iranian nuclear program.

Think about that for a second.....you are defending a man convicted by a federal jury of revealing the identity of a true whistleblower.

And why did Sterling do this? Because he lost his lawsuit against the CIA...didn't get his book proposal, and ultimately, after going to Senate Intelligence and failing to get Republican staffers interested in a Clinton-era black op he was frustrated.

He must have been damn frustrated when Risen decided to sit on the "whistleblowing" for two years.

Whistle blowing most assuredly needs to go both ways. Not even a discussion.