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De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Monday, July 8, 2013

The Ethics of Whistleblowing

Mises Daily:Monday, July 08, 2013 by Ben O'Neill
[This is Part I of a two-part analysis of ethical and legal questions pertaining to whistleblowers who expose government wrongdoing. In this first part of our analysis we look at the principles of contract and confidentiality as applied to whistleblowers who expose government wrongdoing.]
Recent revelationsabout the extent and details of the massive NSA surveillance program have been made possible mostly by the actions of a single whistleblower, Edward Snowden, presently in hiding from the wrath of the US government, whose shameful and frightening secrets he has now made public knowledge. Despite repeated denials by its officials, it is now evident that the NSA runs a data-collection and spying network which collects masses of data on the private communications of non-US citizens, and some private communications on US citizens. It does so without requirement for any individual warrants for its targets, and without requirement for any probable cause with respect to any of the individuals whose communications are collected. Instead, the entire program operates under a broad procedure-based warrant system, whereby a special clandestine court hears submissions from the government in secret and then dutifully approvesgeneral procedures for mass surveillance, without any adversarial argument being raised by any other party. The warrants allow mass surveillance and storage of data at the discretion of NSA analysts, and these warrants are clearly at odds with the principle of eschewing unreasonable searches.....To Read More....
My Take - A great many of my readers aren't going to like this article, and some are probably surprised I have posted it. However, for my close friends who have never read a history book and yet adamantly disbelieve in conspiracy theories, I can only recommend reading "American Betrayal. The Secret Assault on Our Nations’Character", by Diana West.
Ever since the fall of the Soviet Union, and access to Soviet historical records became available for a short time, along with the release of the VENONA intercepts, which identified hundreds of Soviet spies, two things have become clear. McCarthy was right and the federal government under FDR was the golden years of Soviet intelligence gathering. Their spies honeycombed the government and science communities while working for Stalin, or communism. It is also clear that FDR had to know about it, supported it, and prevented exposure of those spies through his associates. We also know Truman was informed of it as was Eisenhower, both of whom vilified McCarthy and the anti-communists; although it had slowed in those years after their exposure by Whitaker Chambers and Elizabeth Bentley; important spies for the Soviet Union who turned on their former masters.
The overall problem by that time was the entire structure of government, academia, entertainment and the news media was infested and corrupted by those who had not yet been identified by VENONA (while hundreds were exposed, there were hundreds that were never identified) and their intellectual and philosophical progeny persist today. All of whom continue to sneeringly deny, decry, and deride those exposing the historical truth, and in many cases causing evidence to entirely disappear from the national archives and even newspaper archives from those years.
I posted this article and the information about spies at every level of the federal government because it bodes well this question. What communist spies decided what was to remain classified from that era and why? On the surface it seems clear that once you work for an intelligence service your job is to forever keep your mouth shut, but what if treason was afoot....and it was considered ......."classified"! 
The point I am making is that everything isn't as it appears. We have to ask; who benefits- who suffers - who's being exposed - why are they being exposed - have crimes been committed -who committed those crimes - who’s secretly deciding what constitutes a crime - if special 'secret' laws are being passed; who passed those laws - how far has it gone and how far will it go - and by what authority is all of this permitted?
Finally- How does all of this fit in with a government of the people, by the people and for the people and the U.S. Constitution which gives the U.S. federal government legitimacy, and anything done outside that authority is supposed to be illegitimate?

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