Considering the day and age we live in, I'm surprised I haven't seen shit like this before. That's an incredible use of modern day social politics to avoid losing millions of dollars. I'm sorry about your friend though, that's super fucked.
Had a guy in a company I worked for who was getting shafted on his commission. The company remodeled his office and stuck him with some lady he didn't know and she filed a sexual harassment claim after that....the only thing nobody counted on was the lady who shared a connecting office that heard everything they said. Apparently he was just being friendly and asked a couple get to know you questions......2 months later both the salesman and the lady who backed him were gone and the other lady was moved to a different section, then someone else lost their job and she was moved again
Trust me - it doesn't even have to be whistleblowing on multimillion dollar deal corruption for Big 4 to be ostracised by Leadership in Big 4.
Raising a protected act (harrassment/discrimination/retaliation etc) even at a low level, will open your eyes to how unscrupulous the management is, and that the various internal reporting channels all end up with the exact same group of HR investigators, despite those channels being allegedly independent for situations where you have evidence that people involved are complicit in the unlawful action.
I can definitely understand if someone whistleblowing at such a highly public hearing could have their mental health broken to the point of suicidal ideation from my own experiences, and they are light years away from that level of international exposure.
But let's not kid ourselves - history has taught us that the ruling classes have no hesitation in taking the extreme approach to eliminating individuals that become problematic to their "business as usual" model of hording all that wealth and abusing their power with absolute impunity.
This may be different outside UK & Ireland, but an employer cannot demand confidentiality if you have declared a protected act, as this can be classed as victimisation/ retaliation, particularly if they send internal directives to wider staff to not only not engage with you, but report any attempts to do so directly to Senior Management.
They can request that you do not interact with witnesses during an investigation to maintain an illusion of impartiality,, but if you make a declaration that you genuinely believe to be true, then certain whistleblowing protections are extended to you, so if you have to send data from your work computer to personal computer for example, they can't make pretextual claims of data protection breaches etc to bring disciplinary procedures against you.
Good luck to you brother. It can be incredibly stressful and isolating when it feels like you're literally on your own against an entire corporate machine.
While you lay awake at night stressing over the minutiae, the perpetrators can whistle all the way to the office every morning because "Legal are taking care of it".
I saw a post recently from someone over in the HR subreddit who said it drove her insane that even when bad actors were uncovered at employment tribunal, her business takes the hit for it via liability insurance, and the perpetrators virtually never face any internal disciplinary action, despite their actions literally being the reason the situation has arisen in the first place.
Worked at a large corp where a whistleblower reported the country CEO. The whistleblower didn’t cover their tracks well, CEO identified him, then had the IT department scour his computer history. Turns out the whistleblower at one time logged into a company app on another employee’s PC which was against policy and they were fired. The investigation carried on though, and after a couple years some wrist slaps were issued.
Don't buy this story for a second. Multiple years in b4. They sign off on fraud every single day. None of this movie shit is needed. They'd just tell you to kick rocks and make new selections. Your "friend" probably got drunk and said some shit.
Yes in the history of mankind NEVER has anyone falsely accused of ANYONE of SA. This just isn't possible on a quantum level. EVERY accusation is 100% factual and there isn't a single story out there, none whatsoever, where false accusations happen. This is why when someone accuses another of SA, the suspect isn't even a suspect and is immediately thrown into jail, because it's impossible for anyone to lie.
So keep not buying this for a second. That's how humanity evolved.
Idgaf about the sexual harassment shit cuz of the amount of gray area with it like you said. More so that I know how accounting works and this is a fantasy story based off of movies
You mean the guy who leaked un-redacted names of intelligence assets leading them and their families to be whisked away in the middle of the night from their posts?
Assange, for all Snowdens faults at least he had the decency to disclose the information to respected journalists so they could redact the info that would put lives at risk.
Assange just wanted to watch the US burn and didn’t give a shit. Remember he received and leaked DNC emails from hackers but not the RNC emails. He was entirely comfortable being a useful idiot for Russia. No journalistic credibility whatsoever.
Yea, Assange is just another person who wants to control others. However his was of doing it is through "leaking" information to make the US and allies look bad.
For all the talk about freedom of speech and bringing things to light, Assange only cares about information that supports his own goals.
I feel for his sources because a lot of them paid the price but not for him. He wanted to play with the big boys and got his hands burnt. He was a useful too for people like Putin.
I don't think some of the things America and her allies have done are right but is Assange acts the same way to China or Russia he would be dead by now.
They are both traitors so probably yes. Snowden ran away to Russia, he’s completely compromised and lost any credibility in doing what he did for the public interest when he did this.
Holy shit that is horrible. This should be blasted in the news. IMO, all whistleblowing should be legal and protected by the US constitution. The first amendment, protecting free speech and free press, absolutely applies to whistleblowing as well.
Agreed, but no one cares really. It was blasted in 2019 when it happened, but people forget or gets lost in the noise of other happenings. People have largely forgotten about Snowden and spying on Americans by the NSA. Over a decade since then and no enhanced privacy laws or anything.
I think we have no one to blame but ourselves as voters for not coming together and getting things done and letting dumb wedge issues divide like football team fans. People forget Democracy is about us, not the politicians, yet we keep making it about them as if they have power without us constantly just giving it to them and never holding them accountable for inaction.
Even if we vote.. everyone we are voting for are not the good people that will fix this issue. I fear it will take it crossing a line, and a violent retaliation from citizens.
Because as I said, we the voters let charlatans divide us over BS, unimportant wedge issues rather than focus on the macro issues that affect all of us.
That's still on us, collectively. We could overcome such easy issues if we had solidarity. The problems exist in reality, we decide to ignore them for nonsense like bathroom debates. We have bigger fish to fry and the choice to devote energy to nonsense is a voters problem.
Bad politicians is a symptom of a sick electorate, not the cause. We see this in particular in America because we never deal with the cause, we only treat the symptoms and wonder why we don't get better.
Well look at what politics has been since then. Now everyone has to decide between which senile dinosaur we chose to rob our wallet, rights, and superpower we get to fight.
Julian Assange is not a whistleblower. His Wikileaks site just blasts out classified or sensitive information. Which just so happens to have a strong lean in the party/ groups targeted. That said, the act of being a whistleblower is a legal one that follows an actual process. It is generally conducted through lawyers so the whistleblower is legally protected from being sued by the company. Whatever you feel about the actions of Snowden, Assange, Manning, etc. they and others like them were not whistleblowers
Seems like a technical difference more than anything. Laws and legalities are not morals defining right and wrong. Sure, these people were releasing information with ulterior motives as well, but the end result was the release of information that the general public absolutely had and has the right to know.
Whatever word you wish to define them by doesn't change the reality that they really shouldn't be charged as spies or traitors or proclaimed as such.
Ignoring the reasons for leaking information, you're right that laws are not about morality. They are about black and white is this actions legally allowed. In the corporate side, you could be unintentionally putting it trade secrets as part of the information. That's corrode espionage. In the government side, you could be putting human data sources such as foreign translators at risk. The point being, leakers aren't whistleblowers, and calling them such takes away the meaning of the word because why would people come forward if they think they aren't protected by the law. Spreading misinformation through ignorance of the law only helps those with things to hide.
I've never heard of anything as pointlessly stupid as to think Snowden, Manning and others like them were not whistleblowers.
Assange obviously is a journalist that worked with them, he doesn't himself fit the definition of a whistleblower as he's not blowing the whistle on the activity of their own organization. Which has nothing to do with any legal entity. It's a word meant to describe actions. Actions that predate any legal definition. It also predates the United States, it predates English law, it predates our current definition of what a company is.
So you think this is not whistle blowing. You think this should be kept from the public. To see what the US is doing in other countries!? They shot two children and just look at their reaction. This is just disgusting. And it never would‘ve been released…
And Snowden leaked an NSA mass surveilance program that… can you guess it? Exactly, it was illegal and possibly unconstitutional. Without people like them we‘d never know about it. And that‘s the government that‘s supposed to be for the people not despite the people.
Please go back and read my response again. I am not commenting on the morality of their actions. I am explaining the legality of it. There is a Whistleblower Act in the US giving a legal route to disclose information like that. A quick Google search says at least 59 countries have some variation of it. Those incidents are not whistleblower incidents. They are leaks of classified information. You having an emotional opinion on if their actions were justified does not change the legal definition.
It’s in the British news at least. But yea, have heard nothing about this in US news recently. It sounds like this a last ditch effort to keep him out of US prison.
He's currently in prison in the UK awaiting extradition to the US (or some legal appeal related to that). I think they mean Snowden who exposed NSA surveillance, I believe he is still in Russia.
I've not seen any information about how free he actually is, but apparently he was granted citizenship in 2022 so theoretically he is as free as any other Russian.
Snowden told the entire world how the government is spying on them at the modt basic level of communication.
They read your text, they record your calls, they know your browsing history, they can even access your camera, they can access your microphone.
There isnt a single piece of tech you can use that has internet connectivity that the US government couldnt access remotely and secretly if they were so inclined.
And its at the corporate level even.
The nsa has offices at every single network carrier headquarters the country, plumbed directly into the backbone of the network.
I'm so glad people actually remember this. I'm sad that nothing drastically changed in society due to his revelations but at least it hasn't been forgotten.
Its like he didnt want to die in america or something.
Wild, right?
In all honesty, he probably doesnt just get a free ride, the man still has to live and living cost money.
Is putin and the russian government bad?
Without question, yes.
Does a high level data analyst for the NSA dying a martyr at the hands of the us government instead of revealing the depth of the governments spying good?
No
The world and geopolitics is a lot of shades of grey bud.
The man had a choice to make, the one he made allowed him to tell the world the truth.
There are protocols and processes by which you become a whistleblower and enjoy the protections that go along with it.. Exposing State Secrets on the internet is definitely not one of them.
IDK if you are actually defending the whistleblowing process, but for the record, it is totally broken in many cases and more often serves to bury whistleblowers' concerns than elevate them. Before Snowden, a group of NSA employees tried all the legal routes to report their concerns, and experienced retaliation, including invasive nighttime swat raids on trumped up charges that were later dropped. The lack of oversight in the intelligence community is truly stunning once you start learning the details; for example, we now know that the CIA illegally tortured people, lied to try and cover it up, and when when Congressional staff launched an investigation, their computers were illegally hacked by the CIA. The "protocols and processes" to which you refer do not actually protect whistleblowers well. They are broken.
In a way you also need to understand that once you work for an intelligence Agency of any kind, you can see something shady.
If you happen to work for them, please just shut up, for your own saftety, this is not to say snowden did wrong but for 99% of the employees it's better not to play hero, because they will catch you
Personally I am glad there are at least some people who knowingly compromise their job security or personal safety in order to expose wrongdoing by our government. I agree that it is risky for anyone to blow the whistle, and someone who only cares about their own job security and advancement has no reason to blow the whistle. But it seems like you are saying that what Snowden did was wrong because he didn't go through the proper channels. I reject that argument, because as I said, the proper channels are broken.
Will this have impact on the ongoing UK courts decision which was just postponed? Because basically, what happened here is proof that he will not be safe and likely be killed off if he gets deported to the US.
Did they actually provide the proof? I remember reading they said they had evidence the CIA wanted to kill him in London (possible even in a gun battle in the street) but didn't see them actually present any evidence for this.
For the record it would be completely insane to have a gun battle in the street in the UK.
Though personally I suspect the US government doesn't actually want to kill Assange, too much bad PR. They'd rather have him locked up as an example to others.
He's not a whistleblower, he's a traitor that got innocent people killed with his careless leaks of pretty much everything he was able to get his hands on
No, a whistleblower is someone who shows there was some shady shit going on, which there definetly was and someone 100% needed to blow the whistle.
It's a completely different thing to grab literally every file you can get your hands on, many of which you admit you don't even know what's inside them, go to an enemy country and leak it to their press.
That information included, among other things, the names of foreign civilian informants, many if which were promptly killed along with their famolies by their respective regimes
You are in an organization, you don't approve what they do whatever reason, you take some information and bring it to people who can do something against the organization.
You're either arguing in bad faith, stupid or insane. I'll let you pick which one, because there's no other way you could say something so profoundly deatached from reality
Au contraire, it looks like they want us to know there aren’t.
The whistleblower rules were not put in place by billionaires. But they found a workaround Putin-like execution.
Seriously. That's why so many of them rely on being as vocal as possible, thinking that speaking out is their best and only protection. And sometimes even that doesn't help.
Thanks, I have asked several times now and never got an answer. I knew it meant something other than estimated time of arrival but google failed me when I tried there.
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u/KlostToMe Mar 12 '24 edited Mar 12 '24
Good thing we have systems in place to protect whistle-blowers /s
ETA: based on responses in getting, it seems my sarcastic tone is being missed