Categories
Author: admin
In the summer of 2013, many wondered why journalists in the UK, one of the countries most implicated in mass surveillance, didn’t pursue Edward Snowden’s revelations more aggressively. Even when the British government began to directly intimidate those who were reporting on the Snowden documents – by detaining David Miranda under anti-terrorism legislation and insisting that they should be able to destroy computer equipment within the Guardian offices – protest against these actions in the UK media was muted, with a significant section of the UK press deciding to stand up for the rights of the UK state rather than the freedom to report.
That may now, belatedly, be changing. A new scandal has demonstrated that journalists have a real interest in fighting surveillance – and that current UK practices put source protection right in the firing line. This month, London’s Metropolitan Police published a report that confirmed they had used surveillance powers to obtain the phone records of Sun journalist Tom Newton Dunn without his knowledge in order to find out who his source was.
This direct threat to journalists’ interests has focused attention on just how routine communications data (metadata) orders are in the UK. Unlike ‘live’ intercepts of data or content, which require a court order, British public bodies can obtain historical metadata simply by making a request to a telecommunications provider for any data they hold. There is no judicial involvement in these orders, about half a million of which are made in the UK every year. Even the official charged with overseeing these orders has admitted that the 514,608 requests made in the UK in 2013 “seems to me to be a very large number. It has the feel of being too many.”
There are few safeguards on the use of these orders under the UK’s Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA). In particular, RIPA makes no provision for the protection of information that might relate to journalists’ communication with sources, or indeed communications with lawyers. The ability of police to effectively obtain metadata at will means that many, if not most, journalists in the UK are no longer able to offer their sources an assurance of confidentiality. Recent changes to UK surveillance laws suggest that journalists and lawyers should now treat online services and webmail with a similar degree of caution.
Journalists have responded to the Metropolitan Police’s report with op-eds and a Save our Sources campaign. The absence of safeguards in the law is now also the subject of a legal challenge launched in the European Court of Human Rights by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the third such challenge to be made to the UK’s surveillance practices since the start of reporting on Edward Snowden’s revelations.
Gavin Millar QC, who is aiding the Bureau of Investigative Journalism with the case, has said that police “routinely” use RIPA powers to obtain journalists’ metadata and identify their sources:
This circumvents the rights of a journalist to protect a source and to a hearing before a judge before any order is made to disclose such information.
The sheer volume of data being harvested by GCHQ under RIPA means that confidential journalistic material is also being covertly accessed and analysed by security and intelligence all the time. Again sources are being identified â but on a much larger scale.
Yet there is no word in RIPA or the governmentâs code of practice under it about these key journalistic rights. The UK simply flouts the Convention.
- New fund will be the first to aid suspected sources before they face charges
- An alleged source under investigation by the US government has already reached out to Courage for assistance
- Courage Advisory Board members Daniel Ellsberg and Thomas Drake underline the importance of the new fund
- Donations can be made online at https://staging.couragefound.org/known-unknowns-fund/#donate
Courage, the international organisation dedicated to the protection of truthtellers, today announces the launch of the Known Unknowns Fund to support suspected sources under investigation. The Fund is the first specifically designed to assist individuals who are alleged to have disclosed information of significant public value but do not yet face formal charges. The name of the fund, a play on former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s notorious defence of inadequate sourcing, acknowledges that many who find themselves in this situation will not be in a position to confirm their identity to the public.
Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon Papers whistleblower and a member of Courage’s Advisory Board said:
In the US, the administration of injustice against whistleblowers under President Obama serves to intimidate potential truth-tellers by the prospect of ruinous legal costs defending themselves under investigation, even if no indictment follows. The Known Unknowns Fund will benefit not only those who may earn suspicion of telling wrongly-withheld truths; it also serves the public interest in being so informed.
By providing support at the pre-indictment stage, Courage hopes to limit the number of cases that proceed to prosecution. The organisation has already received a request for assistance for an alleged source who is currently under investigation by the US government.
Courage’s Acting Director Sarah Harrison explained:
Courage has decided to launch the Known Unknowns Fund because there is a real and pressing need that no one else is in a position to fulfill. We have already received a request regarding someone who needs our help, as they are under investigation by the US government for being the alleged source of some important stories in the US media regarding botched counter-terrorism programmes. Up to this point, Courage has advocated for whistleblowers the public already knows about and who have been wrongly retaliated against. Alleged sources who haven’t yet been charged are in a different situation and a really difficult one – they are often in desperate need of financial and other support, but requesting it publicly can harm their legal situation. Even speaking about an investigation in public can put an individual at risk of additional prosecution. Courage’s Known Unknowns Fund aims to help those who can’t ask openly. We want to make sure that the public has an opportunity to support and protect alleged sources ahead of time, so they can get legal advice and prepare a legal team before potential charges are brought.
The experience of whistleblowers shows a clear need for this new initiative. NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake was charged under the 1917 Espionage Act and faced 35 years in prison. By the time the US government’s case fell apart, Drake had spent several years under investigation and another awaiting trial. At the sentencing hearing Judge Richard D. Bennett said that the conduct of the investigation against Drake had been “unconscionable”, likening the experience to “four years of hell.”
Thomas Drake, who is also a member of the Courage Advisory Board, said:
During my pre-trial criminal proceedings, I was advised by private counsel that my criminal defense prior to public trial would cost at least a million dollars and perhaps as much as three million. I had to prepare a legal defense from my own resources against a government criminal investigation and prosecution which had no such limitations. I went virtually bankrupt, emptied all my liquid assets, took out a second mortgage on my residence and went into severe debt paying for my private attorney over two years. I ended up declared indigent before the Court and represented for criminal defense by public defenders and by attorney Jesselyn Radack, who represented me in the court of pubic opinion as well as whistleblower advocacy and media outreach. She was my voice when I had none. If something like the Known Unknowns Fund had existed before I was indicted, I’d have been in a much better position to defend myself.
Donations to the Known Unknowns Fund can be made at https://staging.couragefound.org/known-unknowns-fund/#donate
___
The following people are available for interview and comment by emailing courage.press@couragefound.org
Daniel Ellsberg, Courage Advisory Board Member and whistleblower
Thomas Drake, Courage Advisory Board Member and whistleblower
Ray McGovern, Courage Advisory Board Member, veteran intelligence analyst and whistleblower champion
Sarah Harrison, Courage Acting Director
A new report on the state of whistleblower protection in some of the world’s richest countries has found that Germany ranks alongside Argentina, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Italy, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Turkey as one of the countries that does the least to ensure that whistleblowers can speak out without fear of retribution.
The report, which was co-authored by researchers from Australian NGO Blueprint for Free Speech, Transparency International Australia, Griffith University and Melbourne University, compares G20 countries’ legal frameworks with the commitments they signed up to in the G20’s 2013-14 Anti-Corruption Action Plan, where they agreed:
to ensure that those reporting on corruption, including journalists, can exercise their function without fear of any harassment or threat or of private or government legal action for reporting in good faith
The report sets out 14 separate criteria based on the G20 agreement, other international agreements on whistleblower protection and best practice documents drawn up by intergovernmental organisations and NGOs.
What the report found
The report found that, while there had been real improvement over the past decade, serious shortcomings remained in the legal systems of most G20 countries – and those shortcomings affected most of the areas potential whistleblowers would be concerned about. Provisions for whistleblowers to remain anonymous when using internal channels to express their concerns were identified as a particular weakness across the G20, as were the rules around disclosure to third parties – including, where appropriate, the media.
The provision of independent bodies and mechanisms to deal with whistleblower complaints and to report on how legal protections were being used were also seen as poor across the countries surveyed. In addition, the authors note that where regulations exist, they tend to apply to the public sector only – governments have been much less active in ensuring that private sector whistleblowers can speak out in confidence.
Legal regimes, of course, only tell part of the story. As the report’s authors point out, the formal presence of adequate whistleblower protection laws does not in itself tell you whether they are implemented consistently, or whether “cultural or other norms [in a particular country] indirectly assist in practical protection of whistleblowers.”
As we’ve noted previously, legal frameworks are a particularly poor guide to what might happen in difficult cases, especially those where disclosures have a national security dimension. Some G20 countries, like the UK and Canada, explicitly exclude military and intelligence personnel from their ‘whistleblower’ definition and all the protections in law that derive from that (the report calls this “a glaring gap”). Others, like the United States, have a legislative framework that is well rated – and in theory extends to its intelligence agencies – but in practice apply very different rules, and extreme anti-whistleblower measures, when classified information is involved.
Why did Germany score so badly?
Germany’s poor score in the report might come as a surprise to some, given the country’s renowned worker representation laws and positive reaction to Edward Snowden’s revelations. But in July 2011, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Germany’s protection of its own whistleblowers was inadequate.
The case was brought by Brigitte Heinisch, a nurse who brought the systematic mistreatment of elderly patients to the attention of the healthcare company she worked for. When appeals to management proved ineffective, Heinisch brought legal action against her employers and wrote a leaflet to explain what was happening in the case. The European Court ruled that the public interest in Heinisch’s disclosures outweighed her employers’ right to protect their business reputation and that her summary dismissal had been “disproportionately severe.” She was later awarded compensation by a German court.
In fact, the German legal code only offers limited protection for public officials who are reporting suspicions of corruption – and this came only after a change of the law in 2009. Germany’s employment courts offer limited redress to those who report wrongdoing in good faith, but there remains a strong bias against anonymous reporting and public disclosure. None of the legislative proposals made since the 2011 judgment have attracted the support necessary to secure a change in the law.
Read the full report here
- Imprisoned hacktivist media source Jeremy Hammond becomes Courage’s second beneficiary, in addition to Edward Snowden
- Tax deductible donations to Jeremy’s defence fund can now be made throughout the EU, via the Wau Holland Foundation
- Jeremy Hammond’s official support site will be relaunched at freejeremy.net, with the current support team still fully involved
Courage, the international organisation dedicated to the protection of truthtellers, has announced that its new beneficiary will be Jeremy Hammond.
Jeremy was sentenced to ten years in prison for being the alleged media source for documents from the private US intelligence firm Strategic Forecasting, Inc. (Stratfor), which included revelations that they had been spying on human rights defenders, for example Bhopal activists and members of PETA, at the behest of corporations and governments. WikiLeaks published these documents in partnership with 29 media organisations worldwide as the Global Intelligence Files, which are still being used for news stories around the world. Despite hundreds of pleas, including a letter submitted by WikiLeaks from itself and its media partners – “newspapers, TV networks, and magazines with a combined audience of 500 million” – asking for leniency for Jeremy, the maximum possible sentence was given.
Jeremy Hammond, a political dissident and former member of the hacktivist network Anonymous, was sentenced to a decade in prison after he refused to inform on others and defended his actions in service of the truth and the public’s right to know. The judge in his case refused to recuse herself despite a glaring conflict of interest: her husband was a former Stratfor client and had his information revealed in the Global Intelligence Files.
Since March 2012, Jeremy has been cut off from his friends and family, and punished with extensive stays in solitary confinement. By hosting his defence fund, Courage will raise donations to enable Jeremy’s defence team to continue advocating on his behalf, monitoring his condition and fighting for his rights while in prison.
Sarah Harrison, Acting Director of Courage and WikiLeaks Investigations Editor, said:
Courage supports and defends truthtellers who take risks and need our help, wherever they are. We traditionally think of whistleblowers as insiders disclosing their employers’ abuses, but those on the outside who work to make public the secret wrongdoing of the powerful are just as vital in the effort to hold them accountable. Thanks to Jeremy, we now know the inner workings of the private intelligence sector which runs much of US intelligence activities including more than 80% of the NSA’s operations. Jeremy has found himself at the sharp end of the US government’s crackdown on the media so it’s important that he knows he has our support.
Grace North, who has been coordinating support efforts for Jeremy Hammond since June 2013, said:
This is an exciting new partnership for those of us who have worked so tirelessly to support Jeremy through this journey. Jeremy believes that one of the most important things a person can do to combat the injustices of the world is to educate themselves and others. Joining with the Courage Foundation is the next step in getting information and education to as wide an audience as possible. The more people we can reach with Jeremy’s message, and with the information Jeremy so bravely sacrificed his freedom to disclose, the more people we can have fighting on the front lines for not only Jeremy’s freedom, but the freedom of humanity.
In addition to hosting the defence fund, Courage will publicly advocate for Jeremy Hammond and build his network of support. A relaunched website at freejeremy.net will keep the public updated on Jeremy’s case, raising awareness about the importance of his revelations and publishing Jeremy’s writing from prison.
Donations to Jeremy’s defence fund can be made at freejeremy.net/donate.
Tax-free donations can be made throughout the EU via the Wau Holland Foundation at http://www.wauland.de/en/projects/07.html#JH
Courage originally began in August 2013 as The Journalistic Source Protection Defence Fund and has run Edward Snowden’s official defence fund since that time. Jeremy Hammond is Courage’s next beneficiary; his official support site is located at https://www.freejeremy.net and the related twitter account at @FreeJeremyNet
—-
For the Courage launch of Jeremy Hammond becoming a beneficiary, the following people are available for interviews and comment by emailing courage.press@couragefound.org:
Sarah Harrison, Courage’s Acting Director
Renata Avila, Courage Advisory Board Member and human rights lawyer
Kevin Zeese, Courage Advisory Board Member and cofounder of popularresistance.org
Bernd Fix, of the Wau Holland Foundation who now collect EU wide tax deductible donations for Jeremy Hammond
Margaret Ratner Kuntsler, Attorney for Jeremy Hammond
Grace North, Support network coordinator for Jeremy Hammond
âIf you blow the whistle, you should be thanked. You should be protected for doing the right thing. You shouldnât be ignored and you certainly shouldnât be punished.â
These were the surprising words of President Obama on 7 August 2014, as he signed a $16 billion bill to improve veterans’ access to medical care. The bill followed a report from the Department for Veteransâ Affairs, which confirmed many of the complaints whistleblowers had been making â waiting lists were indeed being manipulated to hide how long veterans were having to wait for medical appointments.
The White House again praised whistleblowers this week, responding to a letter sent by the Society of Professional Journalists and 37 other journalism and open government groups urging the Obama Administration to be more transparent. The letter from White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest claims that the Administration has âmade important progressâ in âprotecting whistleblowersâ and âdisclosing previously classified information.â Earnest cites the 2012 Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act as evidence that the Administration has âfought for and won better protections for whistleblowers.â
But the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act that the White House claims offers better protections for whistleblowers is limited. While the Act was recognised as a step forward by whistleblower organisations like the Government Accountability Project (GAP) and the National Whistleblowers Centre, GAP also recognised its limitations. Blowing the whistle within official channels does not guarantee public disclosure of the information and does little to facilitate what Yochai Benkler has called “accountability leaks… that challenge systemic practices.”
At any rate, it is not the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act for which this Presidency is likely to be remembered but the intelligence whistleblowers who have faced severe reprisals on its watch. The Obama Administration, famously, has initiated eight prosecutions under the Espionage Act –Â more uses of the 1917 Act than all previous US presidents combined. Former NSA employees Thomas Drake and Edward Snowden, who blew the whistle on mass surveillance; former US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, who blew the whistle on US torture and war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan; and former CIA official John Kiriakou, who blew the whistle on US torture, are among the intelligence whistleblowers who have been charged with the Espionage Act during Obamaâs Administration.
Ray McGovern, a former CIA senior analyst, founder of whistleblower group Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence and co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), responded to Obamaâs comments saying, âPresident Obama is giving hypocrisy a bad name.â
McGovern, who is also a member of Courage’s advisory board, said:
Obamaâs record speaks for itself; he has prosecuted more than twice as many whistleblowers – for espionage, no less – than all former presidents combined. As for those whose crimes have been whistle-blown upon, like those who did the torture, Obama continues to call them âpatriotsâ. Former CIA operative John Kiriakou, who opposed torture, sits in a Pennsylvania prison because he revealed the name of one of the torturers.
Too bad Kafka is dead.
One of the UKâs most important parliamentary committees, the cross-party Public Accounts Committee, published a report on 1 August 2014, that found whistleblowers are a âcrucial source of intelligence to help government identify wrongdoing.â While identifying the retaliation that UK government whistleblowers face, the Committee failed to mention one significant category of truthtellers altogether.
The Public Accounts Committee investigation was prompted by a separate report, Making a Whistleblowing Policy Work published by the UKâs National Audit Office in March 2014. Since the Public Accounts Committee scrutinises the efficiency of public spending, their hearing on 24 March and this monthâs report focused on whistleblowing in the public sector and extended to discuss private and voluntary sectors where public services are outsourced.
The Committee found that the treatment of whistleblowers is often âshockingâ and âappallingâ and recommended that legal and counselling services be offered. The report acknowledges the bullying, harassment and victimisation many whistleblowers endure, and recognised that it takes âremarkable courageâ for employees to come forward and raise concerns.
Furthermore, the report found there had been a âstartling disconnectâ between policies within government purporting to encourage whistleblowers and what happens in practice, where victimisation of whistleblowers is rarely punished. The Chair of the Committee, Margaret Hodge MP, noted that in a survey of Ministry of Defence employees, âonly 40 per cent of respondents felt they would not suffer reprisals if they raised a concern.â
However, the disconnect between whistleblower protections in theory and reality goes even further than the Public Accounts Committee admits as their report overlooks the specific problems with intelligence whistleblowing. As such, its recommendations do little to protect some the most prominent and threatened whistleblowers today.
What protections do whistleblowers have in the UK?
In the UK, employees may blow the whistle outside the workplace and to a prescribed official body if their employer does not have a whistleblowing procedure; if they feel their employer would cover up their disclosure; if they expect unfair retaliation; or if the employer has not taken action after a disclosure has already been made.
The Public Interest Disclosure Act (PIDA, 1998) is designed to protect workers from employer retaliation when an employee blows the whistle in the public interest. However, it does not commit employers to respond effectively to whistleblowersâ disclosures and it does not prevent employers from âblacklistingâ the whistleblower, harming future employment prospects. Moreover, this Act does not apply to those who are self-employed or volunteers, or to individuals who work under the Official Secrets Act (1989) in the government, military and intelligence communities.
In the UK, the Official Secrets Act protects official information and state secrets from public disclosure. The Act was revised in 1989 to remove whistleblowersâ right to a public interest defence for unauthorised disclosures. That is, any unauthorised disclosure of information is now automatically a punishable criminal act with no defence – even if the information released is deemed to be of significant public value.
In 2002, former MI5 officer and whistleblower, David Shayler, was prosecuted for informing media of the misconduct and several alleged crimes of the security services, including evidence of complicity in an illegal plot to assassinate Colonel Gaddafi, which failed but resulted in the death of innocent civilians. While it was acknowledged in court that Mr Shayler had no viable âofficialâ avenues to pursue his concerns, that his disclosures were made in the public interest and had put no lives at risk, he was found guilty and imprisoned nonetheless.
As a result of the 1989 Act, there are effectively no whistleblowing protections for employees of the UKâs security services. At present, they even lack freedom of speech within parliament. The parliamentary committee charged with oversight of the intelligence services – the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) – exempts witnesses from the âabsolute privilegeâ of being able to give evidence in parliament without incrimination that applies to other parliamentary committees.
âThe public interest defence should be reintroducedâ
Annie Machon, a former intelligence officer who helped her ex-partner Mr Shayler in blowing the whistle on MI5, and a member of the Courage advisory board, told Courage the report was âwelcome, if belated.â
Machon said:
The report doesnât help whistleblowers who emerge from the military, central government or the intelligence services. These are the very people who are most likely to witness the most heinous state crimes, yet these are also the very people who are automatically criminalised under the draconian terms of the OSA 1989. The Official Secrets Act (1989) in the UK is drafted to stifle whistleblowers rather than protect real secrets.
At the very least the public interest defence should be reintroduced to British secrecy legislation. That is not ideal, as the whistleblower would still have to prove their case in court.
Ideally, there would be a powerful body that such whistleblowers could address their concerns to, in which they had a well-founded expectation that disclosures of criminality would be properly investigated, crimes punished and meaningful reform instituted.â
Courage, which runs Edward Snowden’s official defence fund and his associated asylum campaign, welcomes today’s announcement that Russia will continue its protection of Edward Snowden.
Courage’s Acting Director Sarah Harrison, who facilitated Edward Snowdenâs exit from Hong Kong and spent four months in Russia, including 40 days in Moscowâs Sheremetyevo airport, securing his initial asylum said:
I’m relieved to hear that Edward Snowden will continue to be protected, keeping him safe from American prosecution. Courage congratulates the Russian people and the dedicated international team of lawyers, campaigners and supporters who have made this happen. Although the US government has lost this round, let us not forget the stakes – last year whistleblower Chelsea Manning was sentenced to 35 years in a US military prison and the Grand Jury against both WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden continues. By hosting Edward Snowden’s defence fund and keeping the public aware of his case, Courage has helped keep Edward Snowden safe for the past year, but his fund will need continued public support to ensure he stays protected for years to come.
Courage originally began in August 2013 as The Journalistic Source Protection Defence Fund and has run Edward Snowdenâs defence fund since that time. Courageâs official Edward Snowden support site is located at http://edwardsnowden.com and the related twitter account at @CourageSnowden.
Last month Edward Snowden applied for an extension to his one year temporary asylum that ended on July 31st 2014. Courage has been campaigning for that application to be accepted; hand delivering letters calling for his protection and asylum application not to be blocked to the UK, US and German governments, writing to the Russian embassy in Washington, DC last week asking for his application to be accepted and launching an ad campaign that has been seen by over a million users of Russian social network Vkontakte.
- Parliamentarians to hand letters to US, German and UK governments asking for Edward Snowden’s protection
- Letter addressed to President Putin asks Russia to re-grant Edward Snowden asylum
- Amnesty joins the call for Edward Snowden to be able to seek asylum in a country of his choice
This week, letters will be handed to the governments of the UK, US and Germany calling on them to protect NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and allow him the right to asylum. Edward Snowden’s legal status is once again that of an asylum-seeker with temporary leave to remain in Russia, pending the result of an asylum application made this month, after his initial one year of temporary asylum ended.
Courage – the organisation that has been running Snowden’s official defence fund for the past year – sets out in the letters significant revelations from Edward Snowden, the persecution he faces and the reasons he should be protected. The letters are being handed out by elected representatives (Senator Ron Wyden in the US, Hans Christian StrĂśbele MP in Germany and Caroline Lucas MP in the UK) that they were hand-delivered to on Friday.
As Mr Snowden is currently without assured asylum, Courage’s letters encourage support for his safe protection and for his asylum application to be granted by Russia, without blockage from foreign governments. In addition, Courage has delivered a letter to the Russian embassy in Washington, DC, asking President Putin to grant Snowden’s renewed asylum application.
On Friday, Amnesty International called on governments around the world to “facilitate [Mr Snowden’s] travel and process any asylum application he should file”, a call reiterated by the representatives delivering Courage’s letters.
In the US, the letter being delivered calls on the US to drop “the Espionage Act charges against him and to formally acknowledge his invaluable contributions to Americans’ understanding of their government” as doing so “would both save Edward Snowden from persecution but also show future Snowdens that exposing wrongdoing is conscientious and appreciated.”
In Germany, where public reaction to the revelations has been one of the strongest worldwide, prompting a Parliamentary inquiry, the letter Member of Parliament Hans-Christian StrĂśbele will deliver asks the German government to not only support asylum for Snowden, but “to afford safe passage to speak to the ongoing Bundestag inquiry, and to encourage other countries to take similar measures.” StrĂśbele, a member of the Parliamentary Control Council that oversees Germany’s intelligence servces, said:
I hope this initiative will help us to bring Snowden to Germany as a witness in our committee but also, and this is more important, to give him in Germany a better, normal and free life.
In a press release, StrĂśbele said he would be passing on the letter to Germany’s federal government.
Caroline Lucas MP, who will deliver Courage’s letter in the UK, said on Friday at her constituency office in Brighton:
Edward Snowden has been criminalised for demonstrating the courage of his convictions.
I urge the Government to offer Mr Snowden the safe haven he deserves. To do otherwise is to perpetuate his unjustified persecution.
His leaks raised fundamental questions regarding the balance between security and privacy. I, and many others, believe we have that balance wrong. It is crucial we are able to hold our government to account â and that national security laws are not illegitimately used in order to undermine freedom of speech in the public interest.
Courage’s letter delivered to the Russian embassy in Washington, DC, asks President Putin to grant Edward Snowden permanent asylum status:
Looking favorably on Mr Snowden’s new application would show that the Russian government respects the right to asylum. It would send a strong signal about the need for decisive action to defend european privacy and associational rights from interference by other states. We ask that the Russian government do whatever is in its power to ensure that Edward Snowden remain safe in the face of real and significant threats.
Full text of the letters is available (US, UK, Germany [English translation], Russia).
Swiss banks’ history of absolute confidentiality for their clients has led to the small country becoming the world’s largest centre for private banking. That secrecy is backed up by national laws: if Swiss bank employees disclose details they come across professionally, they don’t just risk losing their job — they face prison.
International initiatives to combat money laundering and tax evasion have put increasing pressure on Switzerland to break with the past and adopt greater transparency and better reporting standards. The Swiss resistance to surrendering their competitive advantage is reflected by the treatment meted out to whistleblowers from the banking sector, who – as the Economist reports this week –Â have been fiercely persecuted.
Last summer Pierre Condamin-Gerbier, a former Geneva-based private banker, revealed that French budget minister and tax tsar, JĂŠrĂ´me Cahuzac, had hidden âŹ600,000 in a Swiss bank account for over 20 years, despite repeatedly denying ever holding a bank account abroad. The revelation led to Cahuzacâs resignation and expulsion from France’s Socialist Party. Whistleblower Gerbier was arrested on his return to Switzerland, released on bail in September last year and has recently appeared before a Swiss prosecutor.
This follows an extraordinary decade of retaliation against whistleblower Rudolf Elmer, a former executive with Bank Julius Baer based in the Cayman Islands, who raised concerns internally before turning to authorities and finally WikiLeaks to expose alleged complicity with tax avoidance and money laundering. Elmer and his family suffered extended close surveillance, intimidation and harassment (for which Julius Baer has already paid an undisclosed out of court settlement). Elmer has been imprisoned twice without charge, once for 187 days and once for 30 days, with periods in solitary confinement.
Swiss disclosure to international tax authorities is gradually inching forward. In October last year, Switzerland signed the OECD Multilateral Convention – an agreement to exchange information about taxpayers between tax authorities on request. But while the Swiss government has signed on to the Convention, it has failed to do anything to improve the situation of the whistleblowing bankers who have done so much do demonstrate why international agreements were needed. Secrecy laws remain in place and, as the case of Pierre Condamin-Gerbier shows, drawn out criminal proceedings and pre-trial detention for whistleblowers continue.
Whistleblower protections in Switzerland would serve the public interest more effectively than the decade-long trial Rudolf Elmer has had to suffer.