Whistleblowers: we need the protection of public interest defence

Former employees of GCHQ, the NSA, FBI and US State Department told a briefing at the FPA that both the Blair government in the UK and Obama administration in the USA had talked about protection in law for whistleblowers, but nothing had yet been agreed. The whistleblowers were brought to London by ExposeFacts, a new Washington based campaign aimed at providing better protection for whistleblowers and to protect journalism from surveillance.Coleen Rowley, a former FBI lawyer, said the 9/11 attacks might well have been prevented had national agencies shared information with each other and - crucially - with the public. It was simply not true to think that secrecy provided protection; the exact opposite was true. Kirk Wiebe, who worked at the NSA for 36 years, said the NSA had been acting illegally for 60% of its existence; mass surveillance was the most insidious threat to global democracy. It was Goebbels who had said " If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear"; and we all know how that ended.