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Why the world needs more whistleblowers

This article was first published here by the EFF, with whom we’re collaborating for their week of action around the Necessary and Appropriate Principles

by Sana Saleem, Courage Foundation Advisory Board

During the Stockholm Internet Forum this year, a State Department representative was quick to flaunt reforms put in place by the US Government to ‘counter US mass surveillance programmes.’ However, he was unwilling to respond when faced with the simple question “If you are willing to reform laws and mend things, why not honor the man who triggered it, why not bring Edward Snowden home?”

Too often, whistleblowers aren’t valued for the reforms they instigate. Even as government worldwide are considering new ways to limit mass surveillance, there is scant discussion about the need to honor and protect whisteblowers.

The world needs more whistleblowers because those in positions of power are often expert at hiding corruption from the public. People with integrity and a desire for truth and justice within the political system are often our best hope for bringing light to this corruption.

But as much of the world’s press extensively reports on Wikileaks and the Snowden revelations, we must not dismiss the trepidation that comes with reporting the truth and exposing misuse of power. This trepidation will not dissipate unless there is a collective effort to protect and defend whistleblowers, and reform laws that allow for prosecuting them.

There’s also the pressing need to keep using the information provided by whistleblowers to push for necessary reforms and protections. Today is Day 4 of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) ‘Necessary and Proportionate’ week of action. The EFF is calling on governments to ensure surveillance law reform is guided by key principles. Today we focus on principle 4: the ‘Integrity of Communications and Systems, Safeguards Against Illegitimate Access, Protection on Whistleblowers, and Right to An Effective Remedy’.

What is meant by the ‘Integrity of Communications and Systems’ in practice? The NSA, or any other government for that matter, should not be able to compel service providers or hardware or software vendors to build surveillance or backdoors into their systems. These companies also should not collect or retain particular information purely for state surveillance purposes.

We now have confirmation that governments are going above and beyond compelling companies to build backdoors into their services. In an article posted on the Intercept this week journalist, documentary maker and Intercept co-founder Laura Poitras documents how the NSA is tapping into Germany’s largest telecommunications providers by accessing the passwords of the system administrators. This revelation was greeted with both shock and deep anger by the telco engineers. Governments need to go beyond merely not forcing companies to comply with backdoor requests, they must put an immediate stop to the accessing whole systems covertly. This point addresses the second element of principle 4, when state authorities illegitimately access personal data.

There is no possibility of protecting against this when it’s happening behind the backs of service providers and hardware and software vendors. This leaves the onus on governments, who, in democratic societies, are accountable to their citizens. The third part of this is an onus on government to protect their whistleblowers. The Obama administration, in what the Nieman Reports has labeled the “Big Chill”, is operating amid unprecedented secrecy—while attacking journalists trying to tell the public what they need to know

Former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson:

Several reporters who have covered national security in Washington for decades tell me that the environment has never been tougher or information harder to dislodge,

Abramson said

One Times reporter told me the environment in Washington has never been more hostile to reporting.

Protection of whistleblowers is critically important for the protection of a just society. But it’s not just whistleblowers under attack: it is also increasingly difficult to advocate for whistleblowers given the government and the media’s treatment of those who seek to protect whistleblowers.

The Courage Foundation was set up to provide legal and policy support for those who have made a decision to stand up to the abuse of power, risk their career and, in some cases, family life, so that our liberties are protected. It is for this reason that the need to provide stronger protections for whistleblowers, in such a difficult climate, is incredibly important.

Finally, what happens when the state conducts illegal and warrantless surveillance against its citizens? Snowden’s revelations have revealed state intrusion into the lives of hundreds of millions of Americans and citizens around the world, without proof for suspicion. Does the legal system allow us to challenge such surveillance in court? If it does, what would happen to the US government if they were found guilty of illegally surveilling you or me? The Necessary and Proportionate principles argue for civil and criminal penalties imposed on any party responsible for illegal electronic surveillance and those affected by surveillance must have access to legal mechanisms necessary for effective redress.

Tomorrow is Friday, day 5, in which the EFF and its supporters around the world will call on governments to improve safeguards for International Cooperation and Extraterritorial Application of Human Rights Law. The Courage Foundation stands beside the EFF’s campaign and calls on all rights groups and activists seeking to preserve an Internet free from surveillance to support this campaign.

It was little over a year ago when Edward Snowden performed an act of remarkable conscience. Snowden’s actions have empowered a generation of us to stand up to abuses and to do the right thing, even when it’s not convenient. With the increasing power and resources of state surveillance programs, the world is in dire need of more whistleblowers to continue this fight.

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Courage News News

Courage joins ‘Necessary and Appropriate Principles’ week

np-logo-2The Courage Foundation is proud to announce our support and involvement with the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Necessary and Proportionate Week of Action, leading up to the first year anniversary of the 13 Necessary and Proportionate Principles, which were first launched at the 24th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on 20 September 2013. The full text of the principles is here.

The EFF has a series of articles and campaigns for various subcategories of the week, on secrecy, transparency, public oversight, combating surveillance and whistleblower protections. Join discussion of the week of action on Twitter with the hashtag #privacyisaright

The Courage Foundation is the predominant partner on today’s topic: ‘Integrity of Communications and Systems, Protection on Whistleblowers, Safeguards Against Illegitimate Access and Right to An Effective Remedy,’ advancing the tenet that “strong protection should be afforded to whistleblowers who expose surveillance activities that threaten human rights.” The United States government has cracked down on those who expose wrongdoing more than ever under the Obama Administration, with Chelsea Manning and Jeremy Hammond in prison, Thomas Drake fired and prosecuted under the Espionage Act, and Edward Snowden in Russian asylum, all for revealing important truths in the public interest about what their government does in secret and against our will.

Courage steps in to protect these conscientious people who deserve our support. We fund legal defense teams for truthtellers, keep their cases in the public light, and advocate for the public’s right to know and whistleblower protections generally. Stay tuned for Courage Advisory Board member Sana Saleem’s article: “Why the World Needs More Whistleblowers.”

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Journalism News Whistleblowing

New reports shed light on surveillance’s chilling effects

Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union have published a joint report highlighting the chilling effects that US surveillance instills in journalists and lawyers, concluding that “surveillance is undermining media freedom and the right to counsel, and ultimately obstructing the American people’s ability to hold their government to account.” The EFF writes that the report “adds to the growing body of evidence that the NSA’s surveillance programs are causing real harm.”

As the ACLU explains:

The report is drawn from interviews with some 50 journalists covering intelligence, national security, and law enforcement for outlets including the New York Times, the Associated Press, ABC, and NPR.

The U.S. has long held itself out as a global leader on media freedom. However, journalists interviewed for the report are finding that surveillance is harming their ability to report on matters of great public concern.

Surveillance has magnified existing concerns among journalists and their sources over the administration’s crackdown on leaks. The crackdown includes new restrictions on contact between intelligence officials and the media, an increase in leak prosecutions, and the Insider Threat Program, which requires federal officials to report one another for “suspicious” behavior that might betray an intention to leak information.

The HRW/ACLU report is part of a growing body of evidence that journalists and lawyers feel their ability to protect sources and clients is threatened. In an interview with the Guardian last month, Edward Snowden recommended that professionals start to use encryption:

An unfortunate side effect of the development of all these new surveillance technologies is that the work of journalism has become immeasurably harder than it ever has been in the past. Journalists have to be particularly conscious about any sort of network signalling, any sort of connection, any sort of licence plate reading device that they pass on their way to a meeting point, any place they use their credit card, any place they take their phone, any email contact they have with the source because that very first contact, before encrypted communications are established, is enough to give it all away.

No matter how careful you are from that point on, no matter how sophisticated your source, journalists have to be sure that they make no mistakes at all in the very beginning to the very end of a source relationship or they’re placing people actively at risk. Lawyers are in the same position. And investigators. And doctors.

While professional associations have taken part in international investigations and legal challenges resulting from the Snowden revelations, as the HRW/ACLU report describes, there is a lack of consensus about what best practice should be for journalists and lawyers in a post-Snowden world.

NFA Report on Surveillance Costs

Just a day after the HRW/ACLU report, the New America Foundation published ‘Surveillance Costs: The NSA’s Impact on the Economy, Internet Freedom & Cybersecurity,’ an attempt to “quantify and categorize the costs of the NSA surveillance programs since the initial leaks were reported in June 2013.” The NFA finds that “the NSA’s actions have already begun to, and will continue to, cause significant damage to the interests of the United States and the global Internet community,” focusing on economic costs to US businesses, the harm done to US credibility and the “serious damage to Internet security through [the NSA’s] weakening of key encryption standards.”

Series of Reports on Surveillance Impact

The reports continue a series of investigations into the many ways that US surveillance infringes on Americans’ rights and privacy. In October 2013, the Committee to Protect Journalists published ‘The Obama Administration and the Press: Leak investigations and surveillance in post-9/11 America,’ a look at how the current crackdown on whistleblowers and the journalism they enable is dissuading officials from speaking to the press.

CPJ writes:

U.S. President Barack Obama came into office pledging open government, but he has fallen short of his promise. Journalists and transparency advocates say the White House curbs routine disclosure of information and deploys its own media to evade scrutiny by the press. Aggressive prosecution of leakers of classified information and broad electronic surveillance programs deter government sources from speaking to journalists.

New York Times reporter Scott Shane told CPJ:

Most people are deterred by those leaks prosecutions. They’re scared to death. There’s a gray zone between classified and unclassified information, and most sources were in that gray zone. Sources are now afraid to enter that gray zone. It’s having a deterrent effect. If we consider aggressive press coverage of government activities being at the core of American democracy, this tips the balance heavily in favor of the government.

CPJ shows that though 9/11 was a “watershed moment” that led to the vast expansion of secrecy and surveillance, the Obama Administration has been even more closed off to the press than previous presidents.

PEN America

In November 2013, PEN America released a report on a less-discussed sector of surveillance targets: writers. PEN concludes that “freedom of expression is under threat and, as a result, freedom of information is imperiled as well.”

Recounting their findings, PEN writes:

Fully 85% of writers responding to PEN’s survey are worried about government surveillance of Americans, and 73% of writers have never been as worried about privacy rights and freedom of the press as they are today. PEN has long argued that surveillance poses risks to creativity and free expression. The results of this survey—the beginning of a broader investigation into the harms of surveillance—substantiate PEN’s concerns: writers are not only overwhelmingly worried about government surveillance, but are engaging in self-censorship as a result.

PEN says that writers showed a “reluctance to write or speak about certain subjects; reluctance to pursue research about certain subjects; and reluctance to communicate with sources, or with friends abroad, for fear that they will endanger their counterparts by doing so.”

Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board

Finally, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board published, on 2 July 2014, a ‘Report on the Surveillance Program Operated Pursuant to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.’ The NSA has broadly interpreted section 702 to sweep up massive amounts of data on both foreign citizens and Americans.

The Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents several inmates at Guantanamo Bay, criticises some aspects of PCLOB’s focus, but writes:

Deeply troubling, the report found that attorneys’ legally-privileged communications are used and shared by the NSA, CIA and FBI unless they are communications directly with a client who has already been indicted in U.S. courts, which strongly suggests that the contents of privileged attorney-client communications at Guantanamo are subject to NSA warrantless surveillance. This raises serious concerns about the fairness of the military commission system and would seem to violate court orders entered in Guantanamo habeas cases that protect attorney-client privilege.

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Edward Snowden News

Sen. Leahy introduces new USA Freedom Act to curb NSA surveillance powers

Categories
Edward Snowden News Whistleblowing

Privacy and whistleblower groups mark one year of NSA revelations

To mark the one-year anniversary of NSA revelations, several privacy and whistleblower groups have taken a look back at what we’ve learned since Edward Snowden blew the whistle on mass surveillance.

ACLU

The American Civil Liberties Union created a video, entitled, ‘The NSA knew our secrets. One year later, we know theirs.’

The ACLU also published a letter from Edward Snowden, remarking on what’s happened thus far and encouraging further action:

In the long, dark shadow cast by the security state, a free society cannot thrive.

That’s why one year ago I brought evidence of these irresponsible activities to the public — to spark the very discussion the U.S. government didn’t want the American people to have. With every revelation, more and more light coursed through a National Security Agency that had grown too comfortable operating in the dark and without public consent. Soon incredible things began occurring that would have been unimaginable years ago. A federal judge in open court called an NSA mass surveillance program likely unconstitutional and “almost Orwellian.” Congress and President Obama have called for an end to the dragnet collection of the intimate details of our lives. Today legislation to begin rolling back the surveillance state is moving in Congress after more than a decade of impasse.

Finally, the ACLU has a timeline of the revelations thus far.

EFF

The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Katitza Rodriguez recounted what we’ve learned about various NSA surveillance programs, and concludes:

…now that a year has passed it’s clear that we need to update both our global technical infrastructure and local laws, consistent with long-standing international human rights standards, in order to regain any reasonable degree of privacy. Specifically, we must end mass surveillance. Politicians in every country need to stand up to the NSA’s incursions on their territory; the United States needs to reform its laws to recognize the privacy rights of innocent foreigners, and the international community needs to set clear standards which makes any state conducting mass surveillance a pariah.

GAP

The Government Accountability Project’s Dylan Blaylock, in a piece titled, ‘On One-Year Anniversary of Snowden Disclosures, IC Contractors Lack Whistleblower Protections,’ writes:

One of the great lessons of the Snowden disclosures has been that members of Congress have not been adequately overseeing these programs. Contractors on intelligence operations must have real protection for legitimate whistleblower disclosures made to Congress, congressional staff with appropriate security clearance, or government watchdogs. Further, it is not adequate only to protect disclosures made to the intelligence committees. Such a monopoly in information needed to conduct congressional oversight does not exist in any other context in the federal government.

There cannot be any doubt about the consequences from congressional action, or inaction, on whistleblower rights. Without authentic legal protections for making disclosures to Congress and government watchdogs, enforcement of the Constitution and privacy rights will remain an honor system for agencies that have been secretly abusing their power. To identify government abuse, Congress must extend best practice whistleblower protections to IC contractor workers.