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Privacy Rights in the Digital Age

Whistleblowers

by Douglas B. McKechnie
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People who disclose secret or confidential information they believe to be evidence of illegal, unethical, or disreputable institutional activities. Whistleblowers may exist in the private sector, such as employees who work for corporations and disclose alleged corporate misdeeds. Whistleblowers may also exist in the public sector, such as civil servants who divulge state secrets. Whistleblowers have been instrumental in exposing matters of public concern that would otherwise have remained secret yet, once exposed, have a dramatic effect on politics and public policy.

While whistleblowers have exposed what many believe to be corporate and governmental violations of digital privacy, whistleblowing is not a new phenomenon. There is a long history of people with access to confidential information releasing that information to expose wrongdoing or to educate the public. The Continental Congress—the governing body of the thirteen colonies during the American Revolution—passed the first whistleblower law in reaction to the dismissal from the navy of two officers who reported the torture of British prisoners of war during the Revolutionary War. Since then, the U.S. government has often reacted to embarrassing revelations of wrongdoing by passing additional whistleblower protections. For example, in reaction to President Richard Nixon's illegalities while in office, the United States passed the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, which contained, among other things, whistleblower protections for federal employees. The whistleblower protections in the act were then updated by the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989 and again by the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act of 2012, which is considered one of the key whistleblower laws in the United States. It provides protections for federal employee whistleblowers who reveal evidence of waste, fraud, and abuse. Yet the law protects federal employees only in certain circumstances and only when they reveal certain kinds of information. Other whistleblower laws either at the federal level or at the state level protect people based on the specific industry in which they work or the specific information they reveal. It is this ad hoc patchwork of protections that have led some to criticize whistleblower protections laws in the United States as full of loopholes and exceptions.

Whistleblowers have played an instrumental role in exposing the secret collection of data by governments. For example, in 2005, the New York Times published an article exposing the George W. Bush administration's secret warrantless wiretapping program. The article reported that, under the authorization of President Bush, the National Security Agency (NSA) monitored the electronic communication and Internet activity between suspected terrorists outside the United States even when the person with whom the suspects were communicating was in the United States. Critics of the program argued that, because the NSA failed to get approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court, it violated the law. Initially, the New York Times withheld the exposé, but when the Bush administration threatened to seek a court order prohibiting the publication of the article, the newspaper immediately published it. It was not until three years later that Thomas Tamm, a lawyer in the U.S. Department of Justice at the time of the surveillance, revealed himself to be the person who leaked the information to the newspaper. Tamm reported that he contacted the New York Times to leak the program because it “didn't smell right.” Tamm was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the U.S. Justice Department, but ultimately the investigation was ended in 2011 and the government did not pursue charges.

At times, whistleblowers who have revealed information about government surveillance and the collection of personal data have come from outside government. In 2003, Babak Pasdar was hired by a major telecommunications company as a computer security expert. Pasdar's responsibilities were to upgrade and implement a new security infrastructure for the company. While completing the upgrade, Pasdar discovered a hole in the company's security that allowed data to flow out of the company to a third party. The result of the hole in security was that the third party had total access to all of the company's customer data, including text and voice communication, user location, and billing. After reporting the security lapse to the company, Pasdar's attempts to monitor and rectify the situation were rebuffed. Believing the situation posed a significant threat to privacy, Pasdar approached the Government Accountability Project, a government watchdog group, and signed an affidavit detailing his findings. Named the “Quantico Circuit,” the conduit for information out of the telecommunication company was so named as a reference to Quantico, Virginia, the home of the FBI. The revelation of the “Quantico Circuit” and Pasdar's whistleblowing ultimately led to a lawsuit against Verizon Wireless for permitting the transfer of its customers' data.

With the U.S. government's increasing use of contractors for computer security, whistleblowers in the digital age also straddle the division between government and the private sector. While considered by some a traitor and others a patriot, Edward Snowden is perhaps one of the best known whistleblowers of the twenty-first century. Snowden, a former member of the U.S. Army, worked as a computer security expert for various organizations, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). In 2012, while working for a private contractor that was assisting the U.S. government and its agencies with computer security, Snowden began downloading files evidencing and detailing numerous secret surveillance programs conducted by the government along with its European allies. After being transferred to Hawaii, Snowden quit his job and was hired by another private contractor to do very similar computer security work. Snowden reportedly gained even greater access to the government's mass surveillance programs at his new job and continued to collect evidence of their existence. After three months with his new employer, Snowden took a leave of absence and flew to Hong Kong, determined to leak the information he had collected. Snowden eventually made contact with Glenn Greenwald, a journalist for the British newspaper the Guardian, and Laura Poitras, a documentary filmmaker. Greenwald and Poitras, along with another reporter from the Guardian, met Snowden in Hong Kong. Once they arrived, Greenwald interviewed Snowden over the course of two weeks. Snowden revealed the information that he had collected and that documented the existence of the government's mass surveillance programs. The Guardian eventually ran a multi-article exposé describing mass surveillance programs run by the U.S. government with the help of its international partners and private telecommunication companies. Snowden was eventually charged with violating the U.S. Espionage Act, which makes it a crime to communicate classified, national security information without authorization. He fled to Russia, where he was granted temporary asylum and has sought asylum elsewhere ever since.

Whistleblowers play a unique role in society. While the evidence of wrongdoing they obtain is considered confidential or secret, it is the information's secrecy that compels them to reveal it. They are usually driven by a sense of duty to expose what they believe to be illegal or unethical behavior. While some believe whistleblowers to be heroes, others believe them to be traitors. That conflict often makes being a whistleblower a heavy burden to bear.

Further Reading

1 

Bellia, Patricia L. “Wikileaks and the Institutional Framework for National Security Disclosures.” Yale Law Journal 121 (2012): 1448–1526.

2 

Vaughn, Robert G. The Successes and Failures of Whistleblower Laws. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, 2012.

See also: Electronic surveillance; Espionage Act; Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA); Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC); National Security Agency (NSA); Snowden, Edward; Wiretapping

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
McKechnie, Douglas B. "Whistleblowers." Privacy Rights in the Digital Age, edited by Christopher T. Anglim & JD, Salem Press, 2016. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=PRDA_0227.
APA 7th
McKechnie, D. B. (2016). Whistleblowers. In C. Anglim & JD (Ed.), Privacy Rights in the Digital Age. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
McKechnie, Douglas B. "Whistleblowers." Edited by Christopher T. Anglim & JD. Privacy Rights in the Digital Age. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2016. Accessed September 17, 2025. online.salempress.com.