Blowing the whistle: What would you do?
First of two parts
Situation: You work for the United States intelligence services. Your job entails the analysis of highly classified intelligence information.
During the performance of your assignments, you discover the U.S. government is engaged secretly in illegal activity. These operations are in violation of the Constitution, which includes the right to privacy and the forbidding of unreasonable searches. Such searches must be authorized with a warrant. You know some of this material is undergoing warrantless searching.
You learn these secret activities have been authorized by a few individuals in the intelligence community and a handful of people in the White House and Congress. Yet the magnitude of the operations point to the existence of a conspiracy within the United States government. In spite of their scope, you hear these programs are mostly ineffective.
You discover your government has harassed several large commercial enterprises to enter into this conspiracy by threatening them if they do not contribute to this illegal arrangement. You learn NSA has gained access to servers such as those run by Google, Microsoft, and Facebook.
If left unchecked, you believe these increasingly intrusive programs into the private lives of America’s citizens could set precedents for America becoming a surveillance state, taking on the Big Brother spying aspects of despotic governments. This concern is intensified, because you learn the government is continuing to implement additional spying programs.
Initially intended to monitor foreigners’ communications, these programs are now targeting American citizens, but without going through the conventional legal channels for these kinds of operations. Incrementally and gradually, the Fourth Amendment’s foundations are being compromised.
You fear for your own security and well-being. After all, you are a voluntary participant in activities that are breaking the law. Therefore, you are also breaking the law. You could serve jail time. You recall the financial meltdown, in which high-level officials never served time for what were clearly fraudulent practices, but one of their underlings was sentenced to prison. Because of the seriousness of your possibly exposing this operation, you could end up behind bars for the rest of your life.
You know that one high-level government official, the head of NSA, misled Congress about the existence of these programs. Later, it was revealed to the public that he had lied, and thus should have been indicted for perjury under U.S. Code sections 1621 and 1001 of Title 18. He remains free, and a major player in the intelligence community.
You learn that his successor, while speaking to a convention in Las Vegas, told his audience. “...the agency ‘absolutely’ didn’t keep ‘files’ or ‘dossiers’ on ‘millions or hundreds of millions’ of Americans.” You know this assertion to be untrue.
You consider using the government’s whistleblower program, which is meant to protect government workers from retaliation for a worker coming forth to proper authorities with grievances against the government. But other whistleblowers about this type of activity had their lives and the lives of their families disrupted by the government after they blew the whistle. Government intrusions and intimidations became part of their existence.
You are aware of Thomas Drake, a prominent example of the danger of whistleblowing. He was a respected senior executive of NSA, a decorated military man. He challenged the legality of one of NSA’s systems (the Trailblazer Project) and was ill-treated for questioning the program. To release Uncle Sam’s throttle on his life, he had to plead guilty to a misdemeanor count for the unauthorized use of a computer.
So, what do you do?
In the second and last piece to this article, this question is explored in the context of a citizen’s responsibility to one’s nation, in relation to the responsibility to one’s self.
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Uyless Black is a Hayden-based researcher and author and decorated Vietnam veteran.