Whistleblowing

 

 

Edward Snowden (who calls himself a whistleblower) is meeting with representatives from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Transparency International at the airport in Moscow where he has been staying to discuss his next steps forward.

In an email published by Human Rights Watch, the former intelligence agency contractor – whose revelations to the Guardian about US surveillance have caused controversy around the world – also suggests he will make a “brief statement” to the groups. Reuters said Snowden had emailed them separately to say that the meeting would be closed to the press but that the whistleblower would speak to the media later.

The meeting is due to take place at 5pm Moscow time (2pm in London/9am in New York) in Sheremetyevo airport and we’ll be publishing as many details as we can live here.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty said they had received an email from Snowden setting out how he felt the US government was conducting an “unlawful campaign … to deny my right to seek and enjoy ... asylum under Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights”.

Tonya Lokshina of Human Rights Watch posted the email in full on Facebook. In the email he also thanks all the countries that have offered him support and asylum and offers to visit each one. Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua have offered him asylum. Venezuela’s foreign minister said yesterday the country had not yet received a reply to its offer. It is still unclear whether he would be able to leave the airport to take up any of these offers. The Kremlin said the whistleblower withdrew a request for asylum in Russia after Vladimir Putin said he would be welcome only if he stopped "his work aimed at bringing harm" to the United States – ”as strange as that sounds coming from my mouth."

More Americans now think Edward Snowden did the wrong thing in releasing classified documents about U.S. surveillance programs, according to a new HuffPost/YouGov poll.

According to the new poll, 38 percent of Americans think that Snowden, a former contractor for the National Security Agency, did the wrong thing, while 33 percent said he did the right thing. Still, 29 percent of Americans remain unsure about Snowden's actions.

Another HuffPost/YouGov poll conducted just after Snowden revealed his identity publicly found that 38 percent said Snowden did the right thing and only 35 percent said he did the wrong thing.

A whistleblower is a person who exposes misconduct, alleged dishonest or illegal activity occurring in an organization. The alleged misconduct may be classified in many ways; for example, a violation of a law, rule, regulation and/or a direct threat to public interest, such as fraud, health and safety violations, and corruption.

One of the first laws that protected whistleblowers was the 1863 United States False Claims Act (revised in 1986), which tried to combat fraud by suppliers of the United States government during the Civil War.

Whistleblowers frequently face reprisal, sometimes at the hands of the organization or group which they have accused, sometimes from related organizations, and sometimes under law.

Questions about the legitimacy of whistle blowing, the moral responsibility of whistle blowing, and the appraisal of the institutions of whistle blowing are part of the field of political ethics.