The post 90 top US national security pros say whistle-blower did the right thing appeared first on Occasional Planet.
]]>While the Trump administration blusters and tries to discredit the brave staffer who blew the whistle on Trump’s politically motivated extortion of the president of Ukraine, 90 former top brass in national security have issued an open letter in support of the whistle-blower. Released on Oct. 7, 2019—just before a second whistle-blower came forward—the letter emphasizes that revealing wrongdoing is the right thing to do, and that the individual involved deserves protection from retaliation.
The people who signed on to the letter are a who’s who of national security — some who are refugees from the current administration that doesn’t value expertise, thoughtful decision-making or moral responsibility, and many from previous administrations that — for the most part — did (or pretended to). Listed among them are marquee names like Brennan and Clapper, who had served in different roles under both the Obama and Bush administrations. The letter isalso signed by former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and former Senior Director for Counterterrorism on the National Security Council Javed Ali, along with a number of other former Defense Department, State Department and CIA officials.
Some of the signatories had even worked under the Trump administration, including James Nealon, who served as the assistant secretary for international engagement at the Department of Homeland Security until he resigned in February 2018 over the government’s immigration policies, as well as Roberta Jacobson, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Mexico until she resigned in May 2018, and Andrea Kendall-Taylor, who was a deputy national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia until resigning in July 2018.
The letter speaks for itself. Here it is in its entirety:
We are former national security officials who proudly served in a wide array of roles throughout the U.S. Government,” they wrote. “We are writing about the Intelligence Community whistleblower’s lawful disclosure, which was recently made public. While the identity of the whistleblower is not publicly known, we do know that he or she is an employee of the U.S. Government. As such, he or she has by law the right — and indeed the responsibility — to make known, through appropriate channels, indications of serious wrongdoing. That is precisely what this whistleblower did; and we applaud the whistleblower not only for living up to that responsibility but also for using precisely the channels made available by federal law for raising such concerns.
“A responsible whistleblower makes all Americans safer by ensuring that serious wrongdoing can be investigated and addressed, thus advancing the cause of national security to which we have devoted our careers. What’s more, being a responsible whistleblower means that, by law, one is protected from certain egregious forms of retaliation. Whatever one’s view of the matters discussed in the whistleblower’s complaint, all Americans should be united in demanding that all branches of our government and all outlets of our media protect this whistleblower and his or her identity. Simply put, he or she has done what our law demands; now he or she deserves our protection.”
The post 90 top US national security pros say whistle-blower did the right thing appeared first on Occasional Planet.
]]>The post News tips in a new world: To encrypt or not to encrypt? appeared first on Occasional Planet.
]]>How do major media outlets get important, confidential news tips and document leaks in today’s hyper-vigilant, surveillance-mad environment? Are all newspapers and electronic media going the Wikileaks route, making it easier for government whistle-blowers and concerned citizens to share information without revealing who they are?
Here’s what I’ve learned, via some simple research: Approaches to soliciting and accepting news tips vary widely among print and electronic media.
Among the top 10 American newspapers [by circulation], the New York Times, the Washington Post, and USA Today appear to be the only three that offer a way to submit documents and tips via identity-protecting encryption.
On its website, the New York Times begins by inviting news tips [as newspapers have done for centuries], and giving examples of how a good news tip is phrased:
Here is evidence that this government representative is breaking the law.
Here is proof that this company is conducting itself unethically.
Then, the NYT offers three ways to submit a news tip anonymously:
WhatsApp is a free messaging app owned by Facebook that allows full end-to-end encryption for its service. Only the sender and recipient can read messages, photos, videos, voice messages, documents and calls. Though you can limit some account information shared to Facebook, WhatsApp still keeps records of the phone numbers involved in the exchange and the users’ metadata, including timestamps on messages.
Signal: The free and open source messaging app offers end-to-end encryption to send messages, photos, video and calls. Signal retains only your phone number, when you first registered with the service and when you were last active. No metadata surrounding communications is retained. The app also allow messages to self-destruct, removing them from the recipient’s and sender’s phones (once it’s been seen) after a set amount of time.
Email: You may send us encrypted or unencrypted emails. Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is an encryption software that allows you to send encrypted emails and documents. Mailvelope is a browser extension for Chrome and Firefox that makes it easy to use PGP. The extension will only encrypt the contents of the email you’re sending. Mailvelope will not encrypt metadata such as sender, recipient, subject or information about when the email was sent. This metadata will be available to your email provider
WaPo goes several steps further than the NYT, offering six news-tip channels. Upfront, it warns that, “No system is 100% secure, but these tools attempt to create a more secure environment than that provided by normal communication channels for encrypted submissions.”
In addition to WhatsApp, Signal and user-encrypted email [Pretty Good Privacy, or PGP], WaPO offers:
Peerio: A free, end-to-end encrypted messaging app, which allows you to communicate directly with The Post. Peerio provides fully encrypted cloud storage for files. You can transfer files to The Post as large as 400 megabytes.
Pidgin: This is a secure, desktop messaging app. When used with the OTR (off-the-record) plug-in, it can be used to send encrypted messages. We recommend you also turn off logging for added security. Pidgin also supports encrypted file transfers.
SecureDrop: An open-source whistleblower submission system [created by the Freedom of the Press Foundation] that media organizations can use to securely accept documents from and communicate with anonymous sources. SecureDrop submissions are entirely encrypted and do not include any identifying metadata
USA Today suggests that anonymous whistle-blowers and tipsters use Secure Drop to send documents and news items to the parent paper and/or to its 109 affiliates across the country. [Although USA Today offers encryption, it has been making a concerted effort not to quote anonymous sources. More comments on that later.]
Interesting story: In 2011, the Wall Street Journal launched its own, homegrown rival to Wikileaks. The Journal named the system SafeHouse. The system faced immediate criticism for its weak security measures. One cybersecurity analyst called it “a ‘total anonymity failure’ that could compromise the security of whistleblowers.” WSJ quickly vowed to upgrade it. At some point though – I am still trying to track down exactly when and why – WSJ shut down SafeHouse. The WSJ website now directs tipsters to send information to newseditors@wsj.com. This is a standard email address, and submitters are required to include their contact information.
The LA Times invites news tips, but offers only a conventional e-mail address for submissions. The only nod to confidentiality is that personal contact information is optional.
Surprisingly, the often sensational New York Post simply states, “Send us your news tips,” and includes an old-school email form. Other papers ranked in America’s top 10 also seem not to expect big news to arrive in a 21st Century cyber-secure style, which I interpret to mean that they don’t expect to break big news based on confidential information [not that there’s anything wrong with that]: Newsday appears uninterested in anonymous tips, calling its “tip” page “User Article,” requiring that all contact information be included, and offering a fill-in section that allows up to 5,000 characters. The Chicago Tribune invites user-submitted “breaking news tip and ideas” in a personal-info-optional on-line form. The New York Daily News instructs readers, in small type, to send news tips to the City Desk. On the amNewYork website, you’ll find the same personal-info-required form that appears on many other newspaper websites.
My limited research into a sampling of non-print media makes me think that these outlets don’t rely that much on anonymous tipsters.
MSNBC, whose lineup of commentators and reporters are often intent on breaking “exclusive” stories, encourages audience members to “Send it to Rachel” [Maddow], or any other of its reporters, using either conventional email, Twitter, WhatsApp or Telegram, another messaging encryption app.
Fox News answers the question, “Where can I send story questions, corrections, or news tips?” by listing an email address.
CNN maintains a phone line expressly for reporting tips, but it’s a bit hard to find. On its iReport page, CNN says:
Is breaking news happening near you? We’d like you to share your images and information with CNN.
Once you’re in a safe place, you can get your story to us by posting on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook with the hashtag #CNNiReport. A CNN producer may contact you, so keep an eye out for notifications from your social accounts.
You can also post your photos and stories in the box below. [Blogger’s note: No such box sighted]
Please note: Breaking news situations can be unpredictable and sometimes dangerous. Do not expose yourself to a risky or potentially dangerous situation.
CBS News quietly lists its street mailing address, and suggests that you “email us an investigative tip.”
NPR approaches news tips by asking: Do You Have A Tip? If you have solid tips or documents on stories we should probe, please submit them to NPR’s investigative team.
Huffington Post suggests that its readers “Give Us The Scoop.”
Do you have a news tip, firsthand account, information or photos about a news story to pass along to our editors? Send a news tip or email us at scoop@huffingtonpost.com
It’s easy to overlook one additional mechanism for anonymous tippers that remains workable and effective: snail mail. Just about all of the news organizations I looked at for this post included the US Postal Service as a means of getting information to them securely. With the obvious caveat of not including one’s name and return address, the New York Times and the Washington Post both note that dropping a document or tip into a corner mailbox still works. Isn’t that amazing and wonderful? With all of the electronic surveillance and hacking that we worry about, we can still trust the US Postal Service to respect the privacy of paper mail. Score one for old school.
I freely acknowledge that this roundup is far from exhaustive. I’ve looked at only a small sample. I didn’t find much on international new organizations, like the BBC or The Times of London. And I wouldn’t feel comfortable commenting on news organizations that reflect a culture I don’t know. So everything I’m about to write is opinion and speculation.
I’m just wondering: Why have some news outlets taken the extra step of enabling whistle-blowers to send them encrypted information, while others have not.
I’m not suggesting that all news organizations should be enabling anonymous whistle-blowers by offering encrypted messaging services. But it seems to me that the organizations that make anonymity possible may have several motivations: To be in the vanguard of breaking news – which can be economically advantageous; and to view the role of the press as a noble bastion against government secrecy—the protector of democracy when no one else will step forward. [And wow, is that important right now.]
That is not to denigrate all news outlets who do not offer sophisticated news-tip formats. It seems to me that some smaller organizations just don’t have the resources to follow up on the big revelations, so they leave that to others and simply try to reliably pass along others’ reporting. Some probably depend more on inside sources and experts cultivated by their reporters and get valuable, breaking, background information that way. Or, perhaps, they’ve seen enough traditionally delivered news tips that were bogus or crackpot to not want to encourage more. And maybe some sense that their readers and followers simply aren’t likely to have the goods.
Some people want to ban the use of anonymous sources, including our president. [Good luck with that.] But some news organizations are trying. In an article in New York Magazine, writer Kurt Anderson says:
In the last year, USA Today has reduced its use of unnamed sources to an average of fewer than one a day. If you want a sense of how banning anonymous sources might transform journalism, USA Today provides a pretty good preview. As The New Yorker’s David Remnick said when I asked him about his reporter Seymour Hersh’s use of anonymous sources, “How many national-security stories has USA Today broken?”
One thing seems true, though: As we see our current president and his whisperers embarking on a path of secrecy and suppression of the free press, getting the real story is going to be more important than ever – even if it comes in through a hidden back door.
The post News tips in a new world: To encrypt or not to encrypt? appeared first on Occasional Planet.
]]>The post How to be a whistle-blower appeared first on Occasional Planet.
]]>The whistleblower du jour is Edward Snowden, whose revelations about NSA snooping are getting top billing on news sites in 2013. In 2010, we learned about something called The National Whistleblower Assembly, which offered tips and support to government whistleblowers, and we’re republishing the post in light of what’s happening now.
When a government worker makes the decision to “blow the whistle” on corruption and fraud in an agency or program, he or she embarks on an often lonely and always risky journey. in Jun3 2010, whistleblowers, journalists, government employees and leaders of government-watchdog groups gathered in Washington, DC, at the improbable-sounding National Whistleblower Assembly to offer support and advice for the courageous efforts of these truth-tellers.
The two-day convention was sponsored by a who’s who of government watchdogs and government-employee organizations, including the American Federation of Government Employees, Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, National Treasury Employees Union and Semmelweis Society International. The prime movers were the Government Accountability Project (GAP) and the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), two well-established and highly respected, independent, non-profit groups. GAP’s mission is to promote corporate and government accountability by protecting whistleblowers, advancing occupational free speech, and empowering citizen activists. POGO investigates and exposes corruption and other misconduct in order to achieve a more effective, accountable, open, and ethical federal government. Founded in 1981, POGO originally worked to expose outrageously overpriced military spending on items such as a $7,600 coffee maker and a $436 hammer.
This year’s conference—the group’s 10th—served up an intriguing line-up of seminars, speeches and panel discussions, led by famous whistleblowers, including Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1974. In an atmosphere that encourages “honesty without fear,” (the slogan of the National Whistleblower Center), participants could attend seminars on air-traffic safety, corporate and occupational safety, and FBI and medical whistle-blowing. In addition, this year’s conference served as a collective final push to get the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act (S 372), adopted into law.
As an example of the kind of practical support the assembly offered, here’s a summary, by James Budnick of POGO, of tips for whistleblowers, presented at a panel discussion called, “How to Work Effectively with the Media.”
The post How to be a whistle-blower appeared first on Occasional Planet.
]]>The post The strange odyssey of S. 743: Whistleblowers finally get some help appeared first on Occasional Planet.
]]>Sometimes there’s actually good news from Capitol Hill. This time around it’s that a bill protecting federal workers who act in the public interest by reporting waste, fraud, or abuse is now the law of the land. It was just this past November [2012] when the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act (WPEA, S. 743) finally navigated its way to passage. Not only did it pass. It was unanimously approved.
Hold your applause, though. Unanimous approval in 2012 followed fourteen years of debate. Fourteen years of procedural warfare would actually be a more accurate description of the saga.
Let’s put those fourteen years in context. Fourteen years is four years longer than it took the hero Odysseus to wend his way home after the wars. Fourteen years is twice as long as it took James Joyce to write his journey masterwork, Ulysses. And even though the whistleblower act didn’t have to battle sea monsters nor the entrapments of seduction, it did face other daunting obstacles before securing passage.
In fact, during four consecutive congressional sessions, the bill seemed poised to pass when last-minute, off-the-floor shenanigans scuttled the deal. During one infamous session, in the final hours of the final day of the 2009–2010 session, members of Congress on both sides of the aisle were stunned when an anonymous final-hour secret hold killed the bill. This was how the debacle was reported by the Government Accountability Project:
Earlier that month, the Senate had passed the . . . WPEA by unanimous consent. By midday, the legislation had also passed the House of Representatives, again by unanimous consent, with certain protections stripped. Headed back to the Senate, passage was expected to be merely a formality to a bill that was a decade in the making.
Instead, the legislation was sabotaged by one (or more) senator’s anonymous secret hold, a sinister tactic that allows for a senator to halt legislation from being voted on while remaining anonymous.
Who, you might ask, would oppose a common-sense bill that protects federal workers who just want to assure the honesty and efficiency of the day-to-day workings of our government? Look no further than inside the halls of bureaucracy themselves. According to Government Accountability Project Legal Director Tom Devine, “government managers at all levels made pleas and repeatedly blocked the bill through procedural sabotage.”
The shock and anger at the secret hold was so intense that NPR’s “On the Media” and the Government Accountability Project together launched the “Blow the Whistle Project.” Harnessing the power of what progressive historian Howard Zinn called “small acts” rather than “grand, heroic actions,” individual listeners of three hundred public radio stations across the country called their senators to ask them if they were responsible for the secret hold. In the end, through basic, grassroots organizing and committed individuals taking a few minutes to make phone calls, the project was able to narrow down the search to two senators—Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama) and Jon Kyl (R-Arizona)—who might have been responsible for the secret hold.
In the end, the more responsible urges of our elected officials prevailed. What this means is that today, the protections of the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act are helping federal employees breathe a bit easier, knowing that if they see something they can say something—without fear of punishment or censure. And when our federal workers—who work for us after all—are able to fulfill the obligations of their jobs without fear, we all benefit.
The post The strange odyssey of S. 743: Whistleblowers finally get some help appeared first on Occasional Planet.
]]>