Stripping whistleblowers from their constitutional rights and condemning them to a lifetime in prison is arguably a worse national security risk.
A society needs layers of checks and balances, and whistleblowing is one such layer. When whistleblowing is penalized so harshly you create an environment of unchecked power. Citizens can't do anything because even when they know they're being lied to, they need to know the specifics of what's going on in order to protest effectively. Because as we've now learned even the elected representatives get sidelined, so they're pretty much useless.
Realistically speaking, how much damage can one whistleblower really do when they have no malicious intent? Not much. What are the negative consequences of unchecked power? Effectively unlimited.
One does not know what a whistleblowers intent is ahead of time. Further, we are talking about secret service stuff here rather than all whistleblowing.
No whistleblowers in this area does not mean no oversight or no checks and balances. It's just that as an audit mechanism, it presents a lot of risk since it leaves what can ultimately effect national security to the discretion of the whistleblower.
It means an extremely opaque system of checks precisely in an area of the state that is particularly succeptable to abuse. That is a real risk to national security here.
Contrary, I can see exactly zero potential for jeopardising national security by any mooderately sane law on whistleblower protection in this area.
All whistleblowing is taking things into one's own hands at the risk of persecution, and here its only more so, given the seriousness of the charges one will face if one's defense on the basis of whistleblower protection ie arguing one acted in the public interest and revealed gross abuse of power fails.
Whatever is at the discretion for the potential leaker to decide, is at that discretion regardless of legal defense opportunities a leaker may have after the fact.
It is simply ludicrous that revealing rampant abuse of power by precisely those tasked with protection of the constitutional order, and precisely at the point where such control is most needed can be a punishable offense in any democracy.
But naturally any such leak needs to be able to stand up in court and satisfy some reasonable criteria of public interest and of having revealed serious violations - nobody is suggesting blatant espionage be legalized ffs.
I think that's agreeable but you're just asking for legislation that results in a balanced outcome.
In this case there was clearly a public good. There was also a massive national security compromise in the US ability to conduct surveillance.
Which effects national security more in the long run strikes me as a difficult thing to speculate about. However in the short term I'd imagine every organisation of interest to the US in the world promptly switched keys, hardware, routine, whatever after the story broke...
Yeah, though not so much that some kind of legislation should be found that creates a balanced outcome, but that just even broad strokes of some vanilla whistleblower protection legislations are themselves reasonable and balanced, and hence should apply in the security setting too.
> There was also a massive national security compromise in the US ability to conduct surveillance.
but, but that's the whole point of the exercise, isn't it; the curtailment of mass surveillance? I mean, we're talking about a public agency; it needs to act within a clear public mandate when striving to reach its goals. It is not an end in itself, so when it oversteps its mandate, its not in fact providing any public good, but diminishing it, and so hindering it in further action on this course is in the public interest.
So sure, having the public aware that it engages in mass surveilence and bulk collection on both its citizens and non-targeted citizens of the world more generally -- is inconvenient to the agency, but is a win for the public. And consequently so are any actions third parties then take to make its life more difficult -- because really it is the rouge party here!
Something seems upside down to me in this logic where obscuring the price you pay for a public service can be permissable simply because people expect some reasonable level of that service. And hence the scandal of realizing the true cost of that service, and the public finding it too expensive can be seen as a story that has two sides, merely because any limits that public may decide to put on the price naturally cause the quality of the service to degrade. But,but if the public isn't the one that decides on the quid pro quo here, who the hell is being served here anyhow??
Surely if its the public that's served by a public agency, then a person who uncovers that the agency is costing us way way more than is known and than it claims - even under oath to the congress for christ's sake - is a desirable correction, for no decision could even be made under false information.
A society needs layers of checks and balances, and whistleblowing is one such layer. When whistleblowing is penalized so harshly you create an environment of unchecked power. Citizens can't do anything because even when they know they're being lied to, they need to know the specifics of what's going on in order to protest effectively. Because as we've now learned even the elected representatives get sidelined, so they're pretty much useless.
Realistically speaking, how much damage can one whistleblower really do when they have no malicious intent? Not much. What are the negative consequences of unchecked power? Effectively unlimited.