Blog #9: Mediasphere - Whistleblowers

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 Whistleblowers


What is a whistleblower?

    A whistleblower is a government employee who disclose information that they believe may be illegal, fraudulent, or a risk to public safety. Normally, whistleblowers are protected by protection acts, but where it gets messy is when it comes to classified government information. The government can have as many protection acts as they want, but obviously they don't want secret information about them being leaked without consequences. Things like the Espionage Act are often used to create a loophole in such protective acts.

    Whistleblowers are an important part of our society. They are responsible for informing the public about their governments actions that may be harmful to them and would normally be completely behind the scenes. Whistleblowing has been going on for ages, and many of the things that have been brought up through whistleblowing have been of great cause for concern. 



Pros and Cons of Whistleblowing

    Whistleblowing has done a lot of good throughout time, exposing fraudulent and illegal things in our government, but it does come with some downsides. Firstly though, the pros of whistleblowing includes revealing information about your government that may be harmful to you or your family. You never know what the government may be doing behind the scenes that may be negatively affecting you without whistleblowers revealing them. It can also bring to light different practices that the government may be performing on people. A great example of this is John Kiriakou. John was a CIA agent who revealed the CIA had used waterboarding as a form of interrogation on an Al-Qaeda member. Whistleblowing can also allow further investigation into the things revealed. Regarding the same instance with John Kiriakou, it was later revealed that waterboarding wasn't used just once on the Al-Qaeda member but "at least 83 times" and that little to no useful information was gotten from it.

    While there are certainly pros to whistleblowing, it also comes with cons. One of which is that information leaked about your government may put them in a possibly compromised or dangerous situation. By revealing something about the government, it isn't just leaked to the citizens of the country, but the whole world. Another con is that while there are protective acts, whistleblowers are often jailed, sued, or forced to leave the country due to their actions. 

John Kiriakou



Edward Snowden

    Edward Snowden is a former CIA and NSA employee who in 2013, revealed a number of government documents including things like the NSA's mass surveillance programs such as PRISM. PRISM is a tool used by the NSA to collect data on every person ho uses mainstream services like Gmail, Facebook, etc. It was also revealed that the government has access to everything about your phone, including where it is and where its been, networks it has connected to as well as the networks around it, along with many other things. Later in the year that Snowden revealed these documents, he was convicted of espionage and theft of government property, forcing him to flee to Moscow where he currently resides. One one hand, Snowden is a hero for leaking numerous things that the government does to spy on you, but on the other hand, he is called a traitor for compromising national security.

Edward Snowden



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