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Why whistleblowers are crucial for democracy: Linden MacIntyre – World – CBC News
Why whistleblowers are crucial for democracy: Linden MacIntyre – World – CBC News. (source)

Linden MacIntyre
the fifth estate
Linden MacIntyre has been a co-host of CBC Television’s the fifth estate since 1990.
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The conscientious public servant, having agreed verbally with the reporter that the conflict of interest in his department is egregious, has privately explained how it works – and has now nervously consented to make available a document that will authenticate the story. There is a brief encounter in a busy public square. An envelope appears out of one briefcase, disappears into another. A silent whistle has been blown.
That was an actual transaction that occurred on an overcast autumn day in 1977. A crooked mayor lost his job because of it.
the fifth estate
This week on the fifth estate: “The Strange World of JulianAssange.” The controversialWikiLeaks founder gets the Hollywood treatment in the new movie ‘The Fifth Estate’. Watch CBC Television’s the fifth estate this Friday, Nov. 1, for the inside story of JulianAssange in his own words.
It’s a scenario that has played out many times. A provincial cabinet minister once handed me a devastating analysis of a hugely expensive public project. I had it for a weekend, it was about 150 pages long. Trusted friends and I laboriouslycopied the entire document on a typewriter before I gave it back – and started to report its contents.
Another leak: an associate in Ottawa drove to a residential address where, by arrangement, an envelope was recovered from a private mailbox. The document retrieved from that mailbox was instrumental in derailing a secret process to licence an agricultural drug of dubious value and demonstrated peril.
That’s the way the whistle blew in “the old days.” Now the revolution in technology has simplified the process and amplified the whistle to a degree that would have been unimaginable even 20 years ago.
‘Even the agencies of espionage are now publicly accountable for their tactics – all because a young civilian named Edward Snowden found some of their activities abusive and corrupt.’
The secret diplomatic pouch is now potentially transparent, as demonstrated by an outraged U.S. army private, Bradley/Chelsea Manning, who co-operated with Julian Assange and Wikileaks to blow the whistle on a global scale. And even the agencies of espionage are now publicly accountable for their tactics – all because a young civilian named Edward Snowden found some of their activities abusive and corrupt.
The names Assange, Manning and Snowden are associated with a transformation in the vulnerability of institutions in both the public and private realms.
Institutions gather, store and analyze vast amounts of information about individuals and other institutions. The process, even when intentions are benign, is nonetheless invasive.
The purpose of the information gathering is, in one rendering, to protect us from each other and ourselves. But it is also for the purpose of manipulation, to influence how we vote and spend and think. And so, people of a certain moral profile who have access to the information will be offended and some will risk liberty and life to let us in on what the institutions know about us.
That’s the way the world has worked since people first discovered the utility of information and the power of secrecy. In a memorable scene from the movie The Fifth Estate, a journalist opines that speeches in the British House of Commons were once so secret that people caught leaking them to the public were hanged for it. Not exactly true – but the Commons debates were conducted secretly, and people went to prison for reporting them in pamphlets. Public outrage, fired by whistleblowing, eventually put a stop to secrecy in parliament.
The modern pamphlet is a blog or tweet, the brown envelope is now a tiny thumb-drive with the information-carrying capacity of a truckload of paper documents. And from the opposing perspective, technology has also enabled institutions to delve deeply into private lives for law enforcement, commerce and the vague new project known as “public safety”.
‘The human tendency to be offended by abuse – torture in a secret prison, a lie told under oath to fool the public, squandering of public treasure – remains a vital force in conscientious people.’
Technology has changed, but human nature hasn’t and that’s a good thing. The human tendency to be offended by abuse – torture in a secret prison, a lie told under oath to fool the public, squandering of public treasure – remains a vital force in conscientious people.
And we witness their responses with sufficient frequency to remind the advocates and practitioners of secrecy that they are vulnerable, too. They’re at the mercy of basic human instincts (be they narcissistic or humanitarian), and the technology that makes their secrets more accessible and portable than at any other time in human history.
The furious response to Manning and Wikileaks and Snowden underscores the impact of the message in their actions just as it obscures a fundamental question: Why did they do what they did and for whose benefit?
There was no possibility of personal gain and almost certainly they faced the prospect of severe punishment. They have been accused of recklessness and treachery. Extremists have called for their deaths. Manning will spend decades in prison. Both Julian Assange and Edward Snowden are fugitives from a prosecution that would be familiar to a Guantanamo detainee.
Maybe they were delusional. But the information inherent in the act of whistleblowing is perhaps more useful than the sordid details in the documents they leaked.
What we know shapes what we think. What we think determines our behaviour. There will always be clandestine efforts to manage what we think and thus control how we behave as consumers and as citizens. But there is also a fundamental human impulse to resist manipulation and, because secrecy is essential to manipulation and control, there will always be individuals who will rebel against it.
The English philosopher Jeremy Bentham put it strongly – but his words have been embraced in principle and often quoted by politicians and jurists while making and interpreting our laws: “In the darkness of secrecy, sinister interest and evil in every shape have full swing.”
In another essay more than 200 years ago, Bentham said, “Secrecy, being an instrument of conspiracy, ought never to be the system of a regular government”.
Those are words that whistleblowers live by, which makes them auditors of governance and guarantors of our democracy.
[This week on the fifth estate: “The Strange World of Julian Assange.” The controversial WikiLeaks founder gets the Hollywood treatment in the new movie ‘The Fifth Estate.’ Watch CBC Television’s the fifth estate this Friday, Nov. 1, for the inside story of Julian Assange in his own words.]
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Veteran New York Times Reporter: “This Is Most Closed, Control-Freak Administration I’ve Ever Covered” | Washington’s Blog
Veteran New York Times Reporter: “This Is Most Closed, Control-Freak Administration I’ve Ever Covered” | Washington’s Blog. (FULL ARTICE)
Seasoned CBS News Anchor: “Whenever I’m Asked What Is The Most Manipulative And Secretive Administration I’ve Covered, I Always Say It’s The One In Office Now”
American constitutional experts say that Obama is worse than Nixon.
The government has taken to protecting criminal wrongdoing by attacking whistleblowers … and any journalists who have the nerve to report on the beans spilled by the whistleblowers. (The government has also repealed long-standing laws against using propaganda against Americans on U.S. soil, and the government is manipulating social media – more proof here and here).
The Obama administration has prosecuted more whistleblowers than all other presidents combined.
And it goes out of its way to smear whistleblowers, threaten reporters who discuss whistleblower information and harass honest analysts….
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- Snowden to EU: Whistleblowers need protection (euobserver.com)
World Bank Whistleblower Karen Hudes Reveals How The Global Elite Rule The World
World Bank Whistleblower Karen Hudes Reveals How The Global Elite Rule The World.
Karen Hudes is a graduate of Yale Law School and she worked in the legal department of the World Bank for more than 20 years. In fact, when she was fired for blowing the whistle on corruption inside the World Bank, she held the position of Senior Counsel. She was in a unique position to see exactly how the global elite rule the world, and the information that she is now revealing to the public is absolutely stunning. According to Hudes, the elite use a very tight core of financial institutions and mega-corporations to dominate the planet. The goal is control. They want all of us enslaved to debt, they want all of our governments enslaved to debt, and they want all of our politicians addicted to the huge financial contributions that they funnel into their campaigns. Since the elite also own all of the big media companies, the mainstream media never lets us in on the secret that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way that our system works.
Remember, this is not some “conspiracy theorist” that is saying these things. This is a Yale-educated attorney that worked inside the World Bank for more than two decades. The following summary of her credentials comes directly from her website…
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- NWO – World Bank Whistleblower Karen Hudes Reveals How The Global Elite Rule The World (sallypoliticalpage.wordpress.com)
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Catherine Hart: NSA Whistleblowers Have Been Sounding the Alarm for a Decade
Catherine Hart: NSA Whistleblowers Have Been Sounding the Alarm for a Decade.
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The Whistleblower’s Guide To Secretly Tipping Off The Press In A “Turnkey Totalitarian” State | Zero Hedge
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- The spy who came in for your soul – ” We are, like, that far from a turnkey totalitarian state.” (engineeringevil.com)
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- Watergate Was For Amateurs: Justice Department Spied For Months On Associated Press Reporters (flyoverpress.wordpress.com)