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Comment by brown9-2 | Hacker News Reader

But he didn't do that.

Are you a whistleblower if what you reveal isn't illegal?

Yes, if what you reveal is unethical but legal. Laws are not handed down from the heavens; laws are created by a notoriously corrupt set of human beings (politicians), and can easily become disconnected from morality.

The better question is: Are you a whistleblower in a legal sense if what you reveal is legal?

The government doesn't operate on unicorns and happy thoughts, it operates on the law. It's the job of the people to elect representatives such that the law conforms as much as possible to unicorns and happy thoughts.

Yes (or at least, possibly).

> A federal agency violates the Whistleblower Protection Act if it takes or fails to take (or threatens to take or fail to take) a personnel action with respect to any employee or applicant because of any disclosure of information by the employee or applicant that he or she reasonably believes evidences a violation of a law, rule or regulation; gross mismanagement; gross waste of funds; an abuse of authority; or a substantial and specific danger to public health or safety.

Source: http://www.sec.gov/eeoinfo/whistleblowers.htm

Looking up the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989 [1] even more closely, it appears it won't apply to Snowden here. If the material is protected from disclosure by law or E.O. (like this was) then you can only report it to the Office of Special Counsel or the agency I.G. and receive whistleblower protection.

It's in fact arguable that things like PRISM even violated any of those provisions, which makes it risky (on a legal basis) to leak even if he wasn't in the intelligence community.

[1] http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c101:1:./temp/~c101m8S...:

There is a difference between full protection (not being allowed to be fired) and not being convicted for 25-life under espionage act.

It would be insane to retain Snowden in his former role. He is an untrustworthy SCIF sysadmin. He might be worthwhile in the IG office or some public facing role, but I am fine if he is fired, clearance revoked, etc pre trial, even if his disclosures ultimately are positive and lead to legal changes and he isn't convicted.

Good point, though that does make me wonder if he might have technically fallen under Whistleblower Protection (technically an HR thing) and still been liable to imprisonment based on the Espionage Act. Seems weird they'd be orthogonal, but then we're in a weird situation.

laws are created by a notoriously corrupt set of human beings (politicians)

Your argument is flawed, because you're mistaking your personal opinions for fact and then trying to build logical arguments on them. Politicians are people, they're not 'a notoriously corrupt set of human beings' distinct from the normal mass of humanity.

Even disregarding the corruption part, his point still stands. Laws are made by people. People are not infallible. People make mistakes. It is therefore obvious that there is potential for bad and unjust laws.

Adding in the corruption part, you can then see that there is potential for laws and policies that are purposefully unjust.

Of course there is! My objection is that he starts from the premise that politicians are inherently evil.

It's a fact that politicians are more notorious for corruption than the average person. But even ignoring that, his argument does not depend on politicians being more evil than the average person. You're seeing a fatal flaw where there is only a molehill.

There was a lot of illegal activity, or at least potential illegal activity, uncovered. Most notably perjury by officials, and violation of a FISA strikedown (which the EFF is trying to dig into).

The level of illegality is unclear, because we cannot investigate and the only court that can determine that consists of government officials, in secret, and no oversight. Almost every action they are taking could be completely illegal, we have no way of knowing or assessing.

What he revealed is clearly unconstitutional. To say otherwise suggests that you lack basic reading comprehension or never had American history taught in 5th grade or middle school.

(...Or that our teachers taught us lies on purpose, I guess... rolls eyes)

A number of people hold that this is illegal under the 4th amendment and founding principles of our country.

I think there are good arguments that many of the policies regarding tapping, surveillance, and secret lists and trials extend into violation of not just the 4th, but the 1st, 5th, and 6th also.

It would be (relatively) trivial for congress to decide to make it so that "rounding up every red haired and freckled person and putting them in a concentration camp" would be legal.

The question isn't legality, per se - it's whether we believe that it follows the values and principles that we want our country to have.

.. and it's not like it hasn't been done before, to Japanese Americans in WWII.

Who said it is legal or illegal?

If some law contravenes the constitution that law is not legal therefore whatever the law says should not be done is legal.

yes

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