WikiLeaks proves stronger whistleblower protection needed

[Joanne98]

By Louis Clark

Hysteria and anger over WikiLeaks have led to calls in Congress to widen the scope of espionage law violations. Essentially, this serves as a warning shot to future whistleblowers.

But the experiences of other truth-tellers show why this is a mistake.

Information is power. Therefore, power automatically gravitates to those who control the flow of information. In America today, the prevalent anti-Washington sentiment is healthy if it represents a populist revolt against centralized and corrupt authority, which benefits from secrecy.

But that’s not what critics are saying. To respond to WikiLeaks’ document dumps by making it even easier for large, bureaucratic, and unaccountable institutions to escape scrutiny pleases the numerous officials fanning the flames of outrage — for reasons well beyond the possible identification of sources.

Namely, government officials don’t want their huge mistakes and unethical actions to come to public view. When CIA whistleblower Frank Snepp revealed that the CIA and Pentagon had negligently allowed the files of tens of thousands of Vietnamese collaborators to fall into the hands of the victorious North Vietnamese Army, the only known action taken was to sue Snepp — an obvious warning shot to other potential leakers of presumed “state secrets.”

http://www.thereporteronline.net/atf.php?sid=23265¤t_edition=2010-12-30

Louis Clark is President of the Government Accountability Project, the nation’s leading whistleblower protection and advocacy organization, whistleblower.org.

[jwirr]

1. Good luck on that - we just got ourselves a repug congress.

[Uncle Joe]

2. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Joanne.

[The Backlash Cometh]

3. In this case, it is going to take pressure from other countries for this

whistle blower protection to come through.

[stray cat]

4. Whistle blowing exposes specific wrong doing - not indiscrIminate dumping of documents

Without even reading them to see whose info are displaying

[bvar22]

5. WhistleBlowers an endangered species in the USA.

Obama More Aggressive Than Bush In Targeting Whistle blowers---NYTimes

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/12/us/politics/12leak.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1&hp