I'm sure there is some truth to your statement. I don't think it negates the need for society to protect whistleblowers who do so under a sense of moral obligation though (which is what the article is about).
>In a similar discussion the other day, a user literally wrote that they would have to be paid substantially well to report wrong-doings their company is involved with so as not to interrupt their lifestyle.
There's nothing disgusting about this, assuming that the wrong-doings are really bad and this would all go public. Society does not treat whistleblowers well. They generally lose their livelihoods when they go public with what they know. So yes, they should be paid substantially well to report wrong-doings, because they're usually ending their careers when they do this. If society isn't willing to stop ruining their careers when they "do the right thing", then society has no standing to call them "disgusting" for not willingly sacrificing their lives for the sake of truth.
Yeah I definitely don't agree with that opinion. Whistleblowing is about helping the public By doing the right thing for the right reasons. It's a highly moral act. When society puts a higher value on selfishness over selflessness corruption becomes a big part of the problem. We already live in a world where people are too selfish we don't need any more of that.
Whistleblowers are allowed to have an agenda. In practice most do. But for society it's better that shady stuff get revealed than them staying hidden because the whistleblower is not a paragon of morality.
One reason being that then you have a strong financial incentive to "whistleblow" on things that are less clear-cut, making it likely that (a) you'll eventually harm innocent people in the process, and (b) you'll inject too much noise/unnecessary work into the system.
As a rough analogy, imagine someone calling to report an impaired driver they encountered by pure happenstance, vs. someone who made it their personal full-time career to just go around on roads finding people he can report. I'm not sure if you see a difference but I certainly do.
That's some errr, interesting gatekeeping you're doing there? Whistleblowing CAN have consequences, but it SHOULDN'T because they're revealing amoral behaviour kept secret. This is why whistleblower protection schemes are a thing pretty much everywhere, including for example anonymous crime reporting hotlines.
> creates an incentive to present the facts in the way that maximizes the payday rather than the public good
Sure, it may create an incentive to do so. However, the facts must prove to be true and enforcement action must happen before the payout happens. So, however exaggerated the claims being made by the whistleblower in question, if it is not borne out by facts and substantiation, they are not getting anything for it. I am not sure I see an issue with that.
Perhaps that's why whistleblowers are given so many special protections. If what they did was perfectly legal, a lot of the extra protections wouldn't be necessary.
If you're in the CIA, for example, you can't blow the whistle legally, at all. You'll always be breaking some law (security clearance, most often).
This may be true, but especially in the case of whistleblowing, where unethical behavior is already suspected/reported, it seems like prudence favors an approach that does not depend on one's rights being respected.
I am making no implications or analogies; I am simply asking a hypothetical question in response to the parent post. Why does volunteering to follow some code make it morally wrong to blow the whistle?
> When an anonymous accusation has the potential to be career ending for the accused
I think this is only a problem when people treat such accusations as evidence or proof of wrongdoing, which they absolutely are not. At most, it can be cause to investigate further.
We do have whistle-blower protection laws, and I think those serve an important function in our legal context.
I don't think it's actually true that whistleblower protections in the US effectively sanction any disclosure or leak if what is leaked somehow implicates some crime. I'd welcome a source to back your assertion up, though.
> We keep learning, from news and TV/movie fiction, that whistleblowers usually lose big.
Even when they do, the public is usually better off after knowing the truth. Whistleblowing isn't something most people do to for personal gain (although some suspect this one might be). I think most whistleblowers expect that at least some sacrifice will be required if they come forward.
I'm not sure where I'm ignoring any of that but you seem to be saying that because a country can make laws preventing you from whistleblowing that therefore it's borderline irrelevant whether you're doing something illegal or not in order to whistleblow.
That is far too general of a position than what I'm comfortable with. Seems somewhat anarchist to me.
> With regard to whistleblowers: those who seek to be treated as true whistleblowers need to know they must come in early
> Late as he came forward, if it had been the truth, [...] he would have been entitled to whistleblowing protection
It seems you are drawing a conclusion that isn't warranted by the quote.
IMO, there is no way to give the whole truth about any situation. That edict is disingenuous and always has been; it's easy to elicit more details by drilling down, and it's similarly easy to interpret words in a way that they weren't meant to give the wrong impression - selective quoting is an art mastered by tabloids everywhere. And also, it's natural to be reticent about implicating oneself in a crime - in fact, there are laws permitting silence on risk of self-incrimination for very good reasons. It seems that you suggest whistleblowers should be denied this.
Nah whistleblowing is a simple way to bring light to unethical behavior and put these actions in front of the public so laws can be created and changed. Many of the unethical behaviors are completely new ground from the pov of the court system as we've trailblazed our way into the information age, mass surveillance, and data-mining. Maybe the majority doesn't think it's unethical yet because they simply don't know that it's occurring or the scale of the problem
> since the domestic programs deployed were lawful at the time
Assuming for the moment that this is true...
Even something that is secretly lawful can be entirely immoral and only doable if kept hidden from the public who would otherwise object. The whistleblower's responsibility is to the public, not just their organizational superiors.
It's unhealthy to believe that the law dictates ethics.
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