Whistleblowing

Edward Snowden has taken $1.2m in speaking fees in exile, US filing says

Whistleblower Edward Snowden has earned more than $1.2m in speaking fees since he leaked confidential US material to outlets including the Guardian and went into exile in Moscow, according to a filing by the US justice department in court in Massachusetts.

Trump says he will 'take a look' at pardon for Edward Snowden

 

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The federal government is seeking to strip the former National Security Agency contractor, whom Donald Trump last week suggested he may pardon, of profits earned since his disclosures of US surveillance programs in June 2013.

As well as speaking fees, Snowden released a book, Permanent Record, in September 2019. His right to an undisclosed advance on the book has not been challenged by the US government, Politico reported, but it does want to seize its profits.

Whistleblowing

Edward Snowden has mastered the art of teleconferencing

In 2014, Edward Snowden whizzed through the corridors of the Vancouver Convention Center, appearing ecstatic from a well-received surprise appearance at the TED conference. Embodied in a serviceable telepresence robot (aka the “Snowbot”), his name badge read: “Talk to me about: mass surveillance, encryption, civic duty.”

Less than a year after the US government charged him with espionage,  the exiled NSA whistleblower had become the world’s most sought after virtual speaker—and one of the most skilled.

As video meetings become a fixture of our work life, the ability to give remote presentations has become an important skill. Coaches suggest looking to news anchors and talking heads for pointers, but Snowden, who’s had six years of practice dialing in remotely from his apartment in Moscow, offers a more nuanced model for DIY Zoomers.

Whistleblowing

'Ousted' US vaccine expert Rick Bright to file whistleblower complaint

A vaccine expert who says he lost his job because he disagreed with Donald Trump's claims about treatments for Covid-19 is to file a whistleblower complaint, his lawyers say.

Dr Rick Bright led the US government agency trying to develop a vaccine for the coronavirus.

He says he was ousted for questioning the potential of hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug touted by Mr Trump.

President Trump said he had "never heard" of Dr Bright.

The president has previously mentioned the use of hydroxychloroquine and the related drug chloroquine as a possible "game changer" for Covid-19. However, many experts have cautioned that hydroxychloroquine could be ineffective, or even dangerous.

"In our filing we will make clear that Dr Bright was sidelined for one reason only - because he resisted efforts to provide unfettered access to potentially dangerous drugs, including chloroquine, a drug promoted by the administration as a panacea, but which is untested and possibly deadly when used improperly," a statement from the doctor's lawyers said.

Whistleblowing

Snowden asks to remain in Russia for three more years

Former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden is requesting an extended residency permit in Russia for three more years.

His lawyer Anatoly Kucherena said his permit was due for expiration in April of this year, according to a report by CNN.

"Yes, a couple of days ago we have filed documents to extend his permit for three more years and we hope it will be satisfied," Kucherena said, according to Russian state news agency TASS.

Snowden has been accused of espionage and theft of government property in the U.S. for leaking details about an NSA intelligence and surveillance program to the media in 2013.

Since then, he has been living in exile in Moscow after he initially fled to Hong Kong. In 2017, the Russian government granted an extended residency to him until 2020.

Whistleblowing

Julian Assange Extradition Hearing Begins In London

The extradition hearing for WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange began Monday in London — the latest turn in the legal saga of perhaps the world's most famous secret-spiller.

American officials want Assange, 48, brought to the U.S. to face charges. The U.S. government lawyer, James Lewis, argued that the case is not about journalism or First Amendment rights, but about computer hacking and publishing unredacted classified documents. "Reporting or journalism is not an excuse for criminal activities or a license to break ordinary criminal laws," Lewis told the Woolwich Crown Court, according to The New York Times.

Assange has been indicted in the U.S. on 18 counts related to illegally obtaining, receiving and disclosing classified information in 2010. He is accused of conspiring with Chelsea Manning, a former intelligence analyst in the U.S. Army, in a coordinated effort to compromise U.S. government computer networks, and obtain and publish classified documents related to national security.

Whistleblowing

'All traitors must die': Feds charge man for threatening whistleblower attorney

Federal prosecutors in Michigan have charged a man with making a death threat against one of the attorneys for a whistleblower who initiated the impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump, according to newly unsealed court records.

The man, Brittan J. Atkinson, allegedly emailed the attorney in November, calling him a “traitor” who “must die a miserable death.” The attorney, Mark Zaid, confirmed to POLITICO that he received the email the day after Trump held up Zaid’s photo and read some of Zaid’s tweets during a rally.

“All traitors must die miserable deaths,” reads the email to Zaid that was sent on November 7. “Those that represent traitors shall meet the same fate. We will hunt you down and bleed you out like the pigs you are. We have nothing but time, and you are running out of it. Keep looking over your shoulder. We know who you are, where you live, and who you associate with. We are all strangers in a crowd to you.”

Atkinson has been charged with violating laws governing interstate communications, which prohibit “any threat to kidnap any person or any threat to injure the person of another” and is punishable by up to five years in prison.

Whistleblowing

NSA whistleblower who leaked Russian hacking report petitions for clemency

Supporters of Reality Winner, a National Security Agency whistleblower who leaked classified information about Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election, petitioned Donald Trump on Monday for her early release from prison.

Alison Grinter, an attorney representing the former US air force intelligence specialist, announced at a press conference in Dallas that she had submitted 4,500 letters of support to the federal office of the pardon attorney, the division of the Department of Justice that advises the US president on executive clemency decisions.

Winner was sentenced to five years and three months in August 2018 after admitting breaching the espionage act by passing top secret documents to an investigative news website about the Russian hacking of voting software and its efforts to disrupt dozens of local election systems ahead of the 2016 election.

Whistleblowing

These Recent Examples Show Why We Need More Whistleblowers

One controversial topic that emerged from the recent impeachment trial of Donald Trump was the role of the whistleblower whose report initiated the investigation.

While some people have attacked the whistleblower and their motives, I believe we need more whistleblowers today; we should create a safer environment for people to sound the alarm without fear of retribution. This is the case in all facets of life, not just politics.

Recently, the Houston Astros were found to have used illicit technology to steal pitching signs from opposing teams. The Astros broke Major League Baseball (MLB) rules by signaling to their batters which type of pitches were about to be thrown, a system they used during their 2017 World Series victory.

The ensuing MLB investigation led to the firing of three MLB coaches and the suspension of multiple members of the Houston organization for the upcoming season. However, no players have been punished. Any player who participated knew they were cheating but not one was willing to speak up or blow the whistle.

Whistleblowing

Super-leaker Snowden punts free PDF* of tell-all NSA book with censored parts about China restored, underlined

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has released a free, uncensored version of his autobiography for Chinese readers – after Beijing's censors scribbled out all the parts mentioning the Great Firewall in the official version.

Snowden's bestseller Permanent Record is now available as a free download in Chinese after Communist Party censors cut out all the parts of the former IT admin's memoir referring to China's Great Firewall censorship system. The Great Firewall is one of the main means, in the digital era, by which the party maintains its iron grip on the world's most populous nation's internet viewing.

Thumbing his nose at the communists, Snowden has today released a 400-page PDF of the entire book – complete with the deleted sections restored and underlined so ordinary Chinese can see precisely what their ruling class doesn't want them to read about.

Whistleblowing

Edward Snowden, NSA leaker, seeking extension of Russian residence permit: Reports

Edward Snowden is preparing to ask the Russian government to extend his residence permit, a lawyer for the fugitive former U.S. intelligence contractor reportedly said Friday.

Anatoly Kucherena, a Russian lawyer representing Mr. Snowden, discussed his client’s residency status during an event in Moscow, multiple regional media outlets reported.

“His residence permit will expire in April 2020, and we are working to extend it for several years,” said Mr. Kucherena, the state-run TASS agency reported in English.

“At the request of Edward, I am preparing documents for the migration service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation for the extension,” added Mr. Kucherena, the privately owned Interfax outlet reported in Russian.

Mr. Snowden, 36, has been criminally charged in the U.S. in connection with admittedly leaking a trove of classified National Security Agency material to media outlets in 2013.

Whistleblowing

Will alleged CIA misbehavior set Julian Assange free?

A few days before Christmas, Julian Assange testified to a Spanish court that a Spanish security company, UC Global S.L., acting in coordination with the CIA, illegally recorded all his actions and conversations, including with his lawyers, and streamed them back in real time to the CIA. He will, at the end of February, make a similar complaint to a British extradition court about the CIA’s alleged misbehavior.

Will such misbehavior, if proven, set Assange free?

The Daniel Ellsberg case may be instructive. You may recall that after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the “Pentagon Papers” case, Ellsberg was indicted under the Espionage Act for leaking Pentagon documents to The New York Times and The Washington Post.

After the trial commenced in San Francisco, it was brought to the judge’s attention that the “White House plumbers” broke into the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist. Based on that information and other complaints of government misbehavior, including the FBI’s interception of Ellsberg’s telephone conversations with a government official, Judge William Matthew Byrne decided that the case should be dismissed with prejudice because the government acted outrageously.

Whistleblowing

SCOTT RITTER: The ‘Whistleblower’ and the Politicization of Intelligence

The whistleblower. A figure of great controversy, whose actions, manifested in an 11-page report submitted to the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) on August 12 alleging wrongdoing on the part of the president of the United States, jump-started an ongoing impeachment process targeting Donald Trump that has divided the American body politic as no other issue in contemporary time.

His identity has been cloaked in a shroud of anonymity which has proven farcical, given that his name is common knowledge throughout the Washington-based national security establishment in whose ranks he continues to serve. While Trump publicly calls for the identity of the whistleblower to be revealed, the mainstream media has played along with the charade of confidentiality, and Congress continues to pretend his persona is a legitimate national security secret, even as several on-line publications have printed it, along with an extensive document trail sufficient to corroborate that the named man is, in fact, the elusive whistleblower.

There is no legitimate reason for the whistleblower’s identity to remain a secret. The Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Adam Schiff, (D-CA) has cited statutory protections that simply do not exist while using his authority as chairman to prohibit any probe by his Republican colleagues designed to illicit information about the whistleblower’s identity. “The whistleblower has a right, a statutory right, to anonymity,” Schiff recently opined during recent impeachment-related testimony. And yet The Washington Post, no friend of Trump, was compelled to assign Schiff’s statement three “Pinocchios”, out of a scale of four, in rejecting the claim as baseless.

Whistleblowing

Mollie Hemingway names alleged whistleblower Eric Ciaramella on-air despite Fox News ban

Fox News contributor Mollie Hemingway named alleged whistleblower Eric Ciaramella on-air following a network ban on hosts and personalities doing so.

Appearing on Sunday's Media Buzz, Hemingway, who is also a senior editor for the Federalist, discussed whether or not the press should identify the whistleblower at the center of impeachment proceedings against President Trump. Despite Fox News banning employees from doing so, she said his name.

...Ciaramella, 33, a career CIA analyst, was named as the potential whistleblower by RealClearInvestigations. He was the Ukraine director on the National Security Council during the end of the Obama administration and remained there during the early months of the Trump administration while briefly acting senior director for European and Russian affairs.

On Oct. 7, the Washington Examiner reported that Ciaramella is now a deputy national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia on the National Intelligence Council under the director of national intelligence.

Earlier this week, Fox News barred hosts from naming the alleged whistleblower on the network. Likewise, production staffers were told to "not fulfill any video or graphic requests" in connection to the whistleblower's identity. However, a guest on the network mentioned Ciaramella just days later.

Whistleblowing

Understanding the two types of whistleblowers

...While “whistleblowing” — calling attention to hidden offenses — is generally seen as a good thing, it actually refers to two fairly different actions. In the words of Tom Devine, legal director of the non-partisan Government Accountability Project (GAP) in Washington, there are “legal” whistleblowers and “civil disobedience” whistleblowers. “We respect both,” he said in a phone interview.

Legal whistleblowers work within the system seeking to make the government work better. Civil disobedience whistleblowers go outside the system (and the law) seeking to change or disrupt government policy. With their very different perspectives on power, the two tribes of whistleblowers aren’t necessarily all that friendly.

Kiriakou, who spent 30 months in jail for talking to a reporter about the CIA torture regime, told Tucker Carlson he doesn’t think the White House whistleblower merits the name. “Actual whistleblowers go on to have their whole lives upended,” he said, and Trump promptly quoted him in a tweet.

In return, the defenders of legal whistleblowing are often outspoken in their belief that civil disobedience whistleblowers do not deserve legal protection. Mark Zaid, attorney for the White House whistleblower, wrote in a Washington Post op-ed in 2017 that, “As a matter of law, no one who leaks classified information to the media (instead of to an appropriate governmental authority) is a whistleblower entitled to legal protection. That applies to Winner, Snowden and Chelsea Manning, no matter what one thinks of their actions. The law appropriately protects only those who follow it. Anyone who acts contrary does so at their own peril.”

Whistleblowing

Agency eyes big revamp of Wall Street whistleblower program

A federal agency is moving with little fanfare to revamp one of the most successful whistleblower programs in the government, alarming advocates who warn the changes will set back efforts to police Wall Street and punish corporate fraud.

Much like the whistleblower system for intelligence agencies that triggered the impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump, the program grants anonymity to people who come forward with allegations of wrongdoing. But unlike that system, it deals with the private sector, offering cash payouts to people who provide information that helps the Securities and Exchange Commission identify fraud and wrongdoing.

The program was created in 2010 by the Democrats’ Wall Street oversight law. Tips, and substantial cash payouts, have flowed since it started in 2011.

The SEC has collected some 26,000 tips and complaints, resulting in more than $2 billion in penalties and restitution.

More than $300 million has been distributed in roughly 50 awards to people who provided actionable information. And taxpayers don’t foot the bill because the award money comes directly from funds the SEC collects in settlements.

Whistleblowing

Whistleblowers and the Real Deep State

House Democrats are plowing ahead with an impeachment effort inspired by accusations from an anonymous “whistleblower.” The lawmakers may allow the witness to testify anonymously, sources who themselves remained anonymous told the Washington Post this week. It’s as if the whole effort is designed to confirm President Trump’s complaint that the “deep state” is determined to sabotage his presidency.

By “deep state,” Mr. Trump seems to mean any current or former federal employee who works to undermine him. I find that definition too broad, and it misses an important distinction. Officials like James Comey and John Brennan, respectively former directors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency, were appointed by politicians and are subject to some public scrutiny and political accountability.

The “deep state”—if we are to use the term—is better defined as consisting of career civil servants, who have growing power in the administrative state but work in the shadows. As government grows, so do the challenges of supervising a bureaucracy swelling in both size and power. Emboldened by employment rules that make it all but impossible to fire career employees, this internal civil “resistance” has proved willing to take ever more outrageous actions against the president and his policies, using the tools of both traditional and social media.

Whistleblowing

CIA 'Whistleblower' Assisted By James Clapper Associate

A CIA officer who worked with former Vice President Joe Biden, flipped out when he found out Trump wanted Biden investigated, and submitted an embellished whistleblower complaint with the help of Democratic operative attorneys was assisted by former Inspector General for the Intelligence Community, Charles McCullough - who worked for President Obama's Director of National Intelligence and current CNN talking head, James Clapper. 

McCullough, is a partnered attorney at Compass Rose Legal Group, and assisted Andrew Bakaj, a former staffer of both Sen. Chuck Schumer and Sec. of State Hillary Clinton. -Gregg Jarrett

 According to reporting by The Federalist and retweeted by President Trump via Gregg Jarrett: "McCullough, is a partnered attorney at Compass Rose Legal Group, and assisted Andrew Bakaj, a former staffer of both Sen. Chuck Schumer and Sec. of State Hillary Clinton." 

Whistleblowing

Tom Cotton: Intel IG Obstructing Congress on Backdated ‘Whistleblower’ Form Changes

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) sent a scathing letter Wednesday to the Intelligence Community’s Inspector General, calling Michael Atkinson’s recent testimony before Congress “insolent and obstructive” regarding his alleged backdating of federal “whistleblower” guidelines.

Cotton accused Atkinson of stonewalling the Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee while giving more details to the House Intelligence Committee — chaired by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who has been a central player in the “whistleblower” complaint and his party’s impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump.

The Federalist’s Sean Davis explains the ongoing scandal over the complaint — including claims that Atkinson’s office eliminated the requirement for “whistleblowers” to have a first-hand account of any wrongdoing and “backdated,” or falsely documented, the change occurring earlier than it actually did:

Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community inspector general, told HPSCI lawmakers during a committee oversight hearing on Friday that the whistleblower forms and rules changes were made in September, even though the new forms and guidance, which were not uploaded to the ICIG’s website until September 24, state that they were changed in August.

Whistleblowing

At Great Personal Risk, Whistleblowers Have Helped Shape History

If it weren’t for the whistleblower who spoke out about President Donald Trump’s dealings with the Ukranian government, House Democrats may never have started an impeachment inquiry against the president. 

Whistleblowers have a long history both in the United States and abroad. They have played central roles in bringing some of the most important and historic stories of all time into the public sphere. But they often face harsh criticism and grave retribution for speaking out against the corruption and misconduct of the powerful.

What is a Whistleblower?

“A whistleblower is someone who comes across wrongdoing or a probable threat to the public interest in the context of their work and they want to report that information,” Whistleblowing Program Coordinator at Transparency International Marie Terracol told The Globe Post. “It can be just within an organization, your company or a public institution.”

Terracol explained that ideally, the whistleblower would report wrongdoing internally and the company or institution they work for would address the problem. But that’s not always what happens and at times it’s necessary to go to the public in order to hold wrongdoers accountable.

Whistleblowing

Intel Community IG Stonewalling Congress On Backdated Whistleblower Rule Changes

In tense testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) on Friday, the inspector general for federal spy agencies refused to disclose why his office backdated secret changes to key whistleblower forms and rules in the wake of an anti-Trump whistleblower complaint filed in August, sources told The Federalist.

As The Federalist reported and the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) confirmed, the spy watchdog secretly changed its whistleblower forms and internal rules in September to eliminate a requirement that whistleblowers provide first-hand evidence to support any allegations of wrongdoing. In a press release last week, the ICIG confessed that it changed its rules in response to an anti-Trump complaint filed on August 12. That complaint, which was declassified and released by President Donald Trump in September, was based entirely on second-hand information, much of which was shown to be false following the declassification and release of a telephone conversation between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.