Edward Snowden went to the press with revelations because he was aware of the experience of previous whistleblowers.
Drake, Binney, Wiebe, Loomis, Roark followed the official channels and reported their concerns within the system. There was intense retaliation against them. They were arreested, fired and charged with crimes that could put them into jail for the rest of their lives.
It did not stop there. John Crane who worked as assistant inspector general of the DoD was supervising the whistleblower unit as well as handling all whistleblower allegations. He faced retaliation after taking them seriously.
Before Snowden: The Whistleblowers Who Tried To Lift The Veil http://www.npr.org/2014/07/22/333741495/before-snowden-the-w...
How the Pentagon punished NSA whistleblowers https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/22/how-pentagon...
Prosecutors tried hard to build a case to put them into into prison. They received punitive treatment and bullying, their houses were raided.
They raided Drake's house after he anonymously contacted DoD IG. Someone leaked this confidential information to DoJ. He faced 35 years of imprisonment. The judge in the case had some harsh words against government. https://fas.org/sgp/jud/drake/071511-transcript.pdf
So I think my objection to this narrative is clearer if we put it back into context.
What we're really debating is whether someone like Snowden had the means to appropriately handle the issues he discovered through official channels. The narrative on places like HN is that by raising issues and escalating them, perhaps beyond NSA, and NSA's IG, all the way to Senate Intelligence, someone like Snowden would face retaliation.
Here, I think, I have two points to raise:
* First, if by retaliation we mean "termination", it's hard to fit that into the actual Snowden story. Snowden took the Booz job in the first place in order to gain access to this information and route it to the people he thought needed it. His only reason to be there was to do the thing we're saying he'd get fired for. That's not a real deterrent.
* Second, if we look at actual prosecutions --- or even FBI investigations, like what happened to Binney and Roark --- they're tied up with news leaks. It's hard, I think, to find a case of an NSA whistleblower who faced law enforcement retaliation for escalating concerns to the NSA IG or Senate committees. Where you see the DOJ go ape-shit is when NSA secrets wind up on the front page of the New York Times. Indeed, that's what happened to Roark and Binney and Loomis! They got caught up in an investigation into an NYT story that was launched at the (direct!) behest of George Bush.
I agree with this. The natural follow-up is, "Are there any examples of those doing internal whistleblowing on programs endorsed as much as these by Executive and Congressional groups getting results that Snowden leaks have gotten?" It usually business as usual with occasional fine or scathing report that I've seen. I doubt a leak-less version of Snowden would get new bills in, jurisdictions changed for major companies, all kinds of privacy startups, etc.
I'd be interested in example you have where similar things came from internal links. You didn't claim you did but I'm asking just in case.
"If I have time to go through this information, I would like to make it available to journalists in each country to make their own assessment, independent of my bias, as to whether or not the knowledge of US network operations against their people should be published."
It's possible he meant for the purpose of leaking data, but it's wrong to assert it only due to your assumptions.
Quote:
Asked specifically if he felt like he had exhausted all other avenues before deciding to leak classified information to the public, Snowden responded:
Yes. I had reported these clearly problematic programs to more than ten distinct officials, none of whom took any action to address them.
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/03/07...
Quote:
"After extensive investigation, including interviews with his former NSA supervisors and co-workers, we have not found any evidence to support Mr. Snowden’s contention that he brought these matters to anyone’s attention."
He says he told people, NSA says he didn't.
The NSA has nothing to gain, and more to lose, if they say that he did follow proper procedures.
I imagine this is the sort of thing that might be settled in a trial, should one ever occur.
It is in fact correct. You have an outdated claim by Snowden which is not supported by any evidence, this year NSA released emails of his 'internal' communications with FOIA and it was discussed (here on HN [0]). As far as documented evidence his only attempt to raise an issue internally was emailing legal counsel regarding a 'test question' - this is laughable.
If you want whistle-blower protections, you need to go through official channels and document document document. I am not saying the US has good protections (obviously it doesn't) - but we have to admit that Snowden isn't the model of someone that tried to go through the proper channels.