The Proper Channels For Whistleblowers Are Still A Joke

from the like-a-big,-dysfunctional-family...-fighting-over-a-will dept

This administration has made it clear whistleblowing isn't tolerated. It has prosecuted more whistleblowers than all other administrations combined. It's even planning a "Welcome Home" prosecution for the nation's most famous whistleblower -- Edward Snowden -- should he ever decide to return to the US.

Officials, of course, claim to love whistleblowing. That seems to be the main objection raised to Snowden's activities: "If only he'd gone through the proper channels, we wouldn't be seeking to jail him the moment he returns to American soil (or the soil of any country with a favorable extradition policy)."

But there are no official channels -- or, at least, no channels whistleblowers feel safe using.

Foreign Policy has the story of another NSA whistleblower the agency has chosen to make miserable rather than investigate the source of her complaints. It started with an FBI raid of her house -- something she found out via a phone call from an FBI agent already in her house. From there, it got worse.

“They suspended my clearances without giving me any reason,” she remembers. She wasn’t allowed at work, and for two years, the NSA made her “call every day like a criminal, checking in every morning before 8.” Khorasani went to the agency only for interrogations, she says: eight or nine sessions that ran at least five hours each. She was asked about her family, her travel, and her contacts.

This was all triggered by a meeting she set up with Thomas Drake -- another famous whistleblower prosecuted by this administration -- about how to follow through with a complaint about what she felt was an unfair reassignment. According to Drake, it was already too late.

“He said, ‘You’ve got the bull’s-eyes on you. You’re done,’” Khorasani recalls.

As the article points out, her story is one of several. The agency -- and the administration -- have made no meaningful distinction between whistleblowing and insider threats. They treat both in the same way, even if one is an integral part of government accountability. Anything the agency considers to be a threat, it handles with swift severity.

Individuals can find their clearances yanked, something that is signalled to other NSA employees with a red security badge, rather than the normal blue one. Employees are encouraged to report anything questionable about other employees to supervisors. Some employees aren't even employees. They're plants put in place to encourage incriminating statements or actions.

This isn't doing the NSA -- and dozens of other government agencies -- any favors. Talented people are leaving because they don't want to work in this environment. Potential employees are looking elsewhere for work. And still others are being forced out of a job because they aren't willing to simply shut up when they see something that bothers them.

The DOJ is no different. It's no fan of whistleblowers either. Unfortunately for it, it's not a national security agency so it can't maintain quite as much control over disclosures by whistleblowers. That's why it's been fighting legislators over whistleblower protection proposals. Marcy Wheeler has highlighted some of its objections to Senator Grassley's legislation, raised in recent testimony in front of a Congressional committee.

First off, it apparently feels too many of the proper channels are out of its direct control.

[A]s Attorney General Loretta Lynch revealed, DOJ is worried that permitting FBI Agents to report crimes or waste through their chain of command would risk exposing intelligence programs.

"What I would say is that as we work through this issue, please know that, again, any concerns that the Department raises are not out of a disagreement with the point of view of the protection of whistleblowers but again, just making sure that the FBI’s intelligence are also protected at the same time."

I suspect (though am looking for guidance) that the problem may be that the bill permits whistleblowers to go to any member of Congress, rather than just ones on the Intelligence Committees. It’s also possible that DOJ worries whistleblowers will be able to go to someone senior to them, but not read into a given program.

It's also likely concerned that whistleblowers will expose a number of questionable activities.

Still, coming from an agency that doesn’t adequately report things like its National Security Letter usage to Congress, which has changed its reporting to the Intelligence Oversight Board so as to exempt more activities, and can’t even count its usage of other intelligence programs, it seems like a tremendous problem that DOJ doesn’t want FBI whistleblowers to have protection because it might expose what FBI is doing on intelligence.

The FBI must be severely damaged at this point, or have too many secrets it would hate to see fall into the hands of legislators not connected to its mostly-captive audience in the Intelligence Committee. Grassley noted one of the agency's objections to additional whistleblower protections is that there's so damn much about the agency employees would complain about.

One of the issues that your department has raised is that allowing FBI employees to report wrong-doing to their chain of command could lead to too many complaints. You know? What’s wrong with too many complaints? … Seems to me you’d invite every wrong doing to get reported to somebody so it could get corrected.

If there's any agency that is sorely in need of some periodic deep housecleaning, it's the FBI.

This is the FBI! Not only a bureau that has tremendous power over people, but also one with a well-documented history of abuse. It should be the first entity that has whistleblower protection, not the last!

This is why there aren't more whistleblowers. The "proper channels" at the NSA will most likely net a whistleblower a search of their house and belongings en route to a forced resignation. Meanwhile, the FBI, with the DOJ's backing, is trying to narrow the reporting channels so it can -- like its NATSEC big brother -- eliminate unhappy employees before they can do any damage.

Filed Under: insider threats, leakers, nsa, proper channels, whistleblowers, white house

Snowden: NSA Revealed Only One Email, Shows NSA Lied Before... Also: None Of This Matters

from the battle-continues dept

After NBC confirmed Ed Snowden's earlier claims that he had tried to make use of internal channels to question NSA surveillance programs, James Clapper released a single email from Snowden to the legal department at the NSA, which they claim shows he never actually raised these issues. Snowden quickly responded, noting that this is not the only email, that he raised the issue more directly with his supervisors... and, most importantly, that none of this really matters.

Oh yeah, also that the NSA lied before when it claimed no such thing existed.

The NSA’s new discovery of written contact between me and its lawyers - after more than a year of denying any such contact existed - raises serious concerns. It reveals as false the NSA’s claim to Barton Gellman of the Washington Post in December of last year, that “after extensive investigation, including interviews with his former NSA supervisors and co-workers, we have not found any evidence to support Mr. Snowden’s contention that he brought these matters to anyone’s attention.”

Today’s release is incomplete, and does not include my correspondence with the Signals Intelligence Directorate’s Office of Compliance, which believed that a classified executive order could take precedence over an act of Congress, contradicting what was just published. It also did not include concerns about how indefensible collection activities - such as breaking into the back-haul communications of major US internet companies - are sometimes concealed under E.O. 12333 to avoid Congressional reporting requirements and regulations.

More importantly, though, Snowden points out that none of this really matters:

Ultimately, whether my disclosures were justified does not depend on whether I raised these concerns previously. That’s because the system is designed to ensure that even the most valid concerns are suppressed and ignored, not acted upon. The fact that two powerful Democratic Senators - Ron Wyden and Mark Udall - knew of mass surveillance that they believed was abusive and felt constrained to do anything about it underscores how futile such internal action is -- and will remain -- until these processes are reformed.

Still, the fact is that I did raise such concerns both verbally and in writing, and on multiple, continuing occasions - as I have always said, and as NSA has always denied. Just as when the NSA claimed it followed German laws in Germany just weeks before it was revealed that they did not, or when NSA said they did not engage in economic espionage a few short months before it was revealed they actually did so on a regular and recurring basis, or even when they claimed they had “no domestic spying program” before we learned they collected the phone records of every American they could, so too are today’s claims that “this is only evidence we have of him reporting concerns” false.

Separately, after ODNI published the email, Tim Lee wrote a great piece over at Vox.com highlighting why it really doesn't matter at all if he did, or did not, raise the matter internally:

But the NSA's response to Snowden also has a deeper problem: it wouldn't have made a difference if Snowden had raised his concerns more forcefully through internal channels.

Remember, the NSA's position is that it hasn't done anything wrong. The agency claims that its domestic surveillance programs comply with the law, and that it gets plenty of oversight from both the courts and Congress. The NSA has stuck to this position despite a year of pressure from Congress and the public. Why would it have been any more receptive to the concerns of a lowly contractor?

Maybe Snowden should have brought his concerns to sympathetic members of Congress? That wouldn't have done any good either, because key members of Congress already knew about the program. And some of them were outraged about it!

And, of course, other whistleblowers had their lives completely destroyed. Still, this story is one worth paying attention to, because it demonstrates a serious problem with how the intelligence community handles anyone concerned about its programs. The idea that there are internal controls to handle such a thing is pretty clearly misleading, whether or not Snowden made full use of those channels.

Filed Under: ed snowden, nsa, proper channels, whistleblowing

NBC Confirms That Snowden Did Try To Raise Concerns Internally Before Going To Journalists

from the well-there-you-go dept

Last night, NBC aired Brian William's long interview with Ed Snowden in Moscow. It's worth watching. For a guy with no media training, he gives an astoundingly good interview. His statements remain consistent with what he's said in the past and, at least to me, he appears to reinforce his previous statements with these answers. While there really wasn't much new in the interview itself, it's still a good look into Snowden's situation and his mindset. The most "revealing" thing in the episode actually didn't come from Snowden, however. Instead, after he (again) claimed that he had raised his concerns internally, Williams stated that NBC had confirmed at least one case in which Snowden had communicated with the NSA's legal office to raise concerns about the legality of its programs. That's fairly big news, given that the NSA and its defenders keep insisting that Snowden should have just raised issues internally. He did.

Snowden also didn't mince words about why he thinks Putin has made a huge mistake in cracking down on freedoms in Russia, specifically calling out the new law that orders bloggers to register with the government. He noted that he wished he could do more in Russia, but is somewhat limited by the fact that he doesn't speak Russian.

The other thing I found worth noting: at one point, Williams asked Snowden what he would say to President Obama if they were in a room together. Snowden responded that he would leave that to the President's advisors, as he did not feel qualified to advise the President. Williams, after a pause, followed up by pointing out that he hadn't really meant about advising the President on the larger matters of the NSA, but rather about Snowden's own situation. And, again, Snowden indicated that this was a decision that the President would have to make. For all the talk from Snowden's critics about how he's some sort of "narcissist" (that word gets thrown around a lot), this exchange seemed to reveal quite the opposite.

Many people with large egos and who have become known as "experts" on a specific topic, when asked what they would say to the President when meeting, would immediately jump to their specific talking points. But Snowden wouldn't even presume that was appropriate. Similarly, when then asked about his own personal situation, the look on Snowden's face suggested he'd never even thought about what he would say to someone directly with the power to allow him to come back home. Perhaps he's an astoundingly good actor -- but Snowden really does come off as someone who is both incredibly self-aware and astoundingly humble given what he's done.

Filed Under: brian williams, ed snowden, nsa, proper channels, russia, surveillance, whistleblowing

Snowden Says NSA Is Lying When It Claims He Didn't Raise Concerns Through The Proper Channels

from the blow-that-whistle dept

In a new interview with Vanity Fair magazine, Ed Snowden seems to be hitting back at nearly every bogus claim made by his critics. He kicks it off by responding to the claims that if he were a real whistleblower, he should have just gone through "official channels." He claims that he did that and nothing happened. In fact, he suggests that Congress ought to ask the NSA about that.

The N.S.A. at this point not only knows I raised complaints, but that there is evidence that I made my concerns known to the N.S.A.'s lawyers, because I did some of it through e-mail. I directly challenge the N.S.A. to deny that I contacted N.S.A. oversight and compliance bodies directly via e-mail and that I specifically expressed concerns about their suspect interpretation of the law, and I welcome members of Congress to request a written answer to this question [from the N.S.A.].

How about the silly claim that he took 1.7 million documents? As we've mentioned this number keeps going up. First it was 50,000 documents. Then 70,000. Then 1.5 million. And the latest is 1.7 million. And all of it seems based on a faulty assumption that every document Snowden has ever "touched" he took with him. That is almost certainly false. And, as we've also noted in the past, Snowden has made it clear that he no longer has any of the documents. He reiterated that to Vanity Fair:

Snowden cautions about some of the numbers that investigators have publicized, especially the 1.7 million figure, which, he tells Vanity Fair, is “simply a scare number based on an intentionally crude metric: everything that I ever digitally interacted with in my career.” He adds, “Look at the language officials use in sworn testimony about these records: ‘could have,’ ‘may have,’ ‘potentially.’ They’re prevaricating. Every single one of those officials knows I don’t have 1.7 million files, but what are they going to say? What senior official is going to go in front of Congress and say, ‘We have no idea what he has, because the N.S.A.’s auditing of systems holding hundreds of millions of Americans’ data is so negligent that any high-school dropout can walk out the door with it?’ ”

“I know exactly how many documents I have,” Snowden continues. “Zero.”

There's more in the publicly released summary, and apparently the full story (not yet released) will have even more. Of course, it won't stop the NSA's defenders from making the same old claims again and again without proof.

Filed Under: ed snowden, lies, nsa, proper channels, surveillance, whistleblowing