Essay On Whistleblower Protection Act

Is the price of safety worth the loss of privacy? In June of 2013 civil rights lawyer and journalist Glenn Greenwald published on The Guardian the first of numerous articles containing files he’d received from former NSA sub contractor Edward Snowden. These files revealed unbeknownst to the American public details about multiple global surveillance programs currently being used by the United States NSA to collect their private data. Greenwald’s speech on “Why Privacy Matters,” during the TEDGlobal 2014 conference was compelling & deeply insightful. By providing the audience with credible knowledge of his research in addition to the use persuasive emotional and logical reasoning, Glenn Greenwald effectively argues the importance of privacy.

Snowden’s leaked information prompted debates all over and it brought major concerns about personal privacy and the security of citizens. His actions to risk his personal freedom to bring controversial information to the public domain is an act of great patriotism, it upholds the virtues contained in the US constitution. (Gurnow, 2014) Nonetheless, ever since the events of terrorism in 2001, the NSA has given spy agencies mandates to carry out surveillance on suspicious persons, thus reducing acts of

Throughout the world, deviant acts and social controls are committed everyday. An incredibly significant one that is often unreported is sexual assault within the military. Sexual assault is already determined as an extremely deviant act throughout the world. All acts of rape and other abusive acts should never be dismissed or ignored, but rape within the military is often not reported or recognized. If it is brought to light, the victims are generally in fear of losing their positions, rankings, homes, relationships with their spouses and families, etc…. This is not to state that men are not also victims of sexual assault, but women are much more prone and vulnerable to being attacked and harassed. I will be focusing on the female victims of military assault in this paper.

Edward Snowden. This is a name that will be in the history books for ages. He will be branded a traitor or a whistleblower depending on where you look. Many Americans feel that Edward Snowden is a traitor who sold the United States’ secrets aiming to harm the nation. Others believe that he was simply a citizen of the United States who exercised his right to expose the government for their unconstitutional actions. It is important to not only know the two sides to the argument of friend or foe, but to also know the facts as well. My goal in this paper is to present the facts without bias and to adequately portray the two sides of the argument.

“The most shocking cover up in the United States Military is not what you would expect (The Invisible War),” reports of sexual assaults over all branches of the military have tremendously increase every since women have been allow to take part of the military. According to the Secretary of Defense, over 500,000 male and female soldiers have suffered of sexual abuse from senior peers and commanders. During the past years, many women reported a variety of cases of sexual abuse. Sadly, the victims were only ignored, blamed and punished for the events. Sexual assaults are considered a scandalous subject which our military has decided to avoid, but by doing so, the number of rapes has increase even faster. Rape is a repetitive criminal;

President George W. Bush signed into law on October 26, 2001 The USA PATRIOT Act. The title of the Act is a letter acronym: Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001 (PUBLIC LAW 107–56—OCT. 26, 2001) This Act was written to prevent and punish terrorist acts here in the United States as well as around the world, to help law officers, and to strengthen U.S. measures.

Congress has for a long time has tried in various ways to oversee the intelligence community which have shown to be sometime controversial, and a very difficult responsibility. What make this task so hard is the secrecy and sensitivity intelligence information finding, the sources, and the methods in which the information is obtain. Congressional oversight has evolved since the mid-1970s and a lot more since the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. The critics about Congressional oversight by some as being inadequate, ineffective, or worse, while at the same time proposal that was made in the 9/11 commission report was met with challenges from within the Legislature Branch and from the Executive Branch

Lately, in the United States, the controversial topic of privacy has been rekindled by several occurrences, including the recent NSA surveillance scandal. When government actions are questioned, the

J.D Student, Stella Cernak, in her excerpt in the Michigan Journal of Gender & Law, discusses recent media attention of intra-military sexual assault and rape in the United States Armed Forces. Cernak’s purpose is to bring awareness of the nature of gender crimes in the military. Not only in the U.S but all armed forces worldwide. She adopts an informative tone to bring clarity and awareness to the audience reading. She uses real life examples and cases that will trigger the readers to see that she understands what they are going through in hopes of victims to continue their fight for a change.

A letter from the American Civil Liberties Union to the Supreme Judicial Court reflects on the constitutionality of the NSA along with the vulnerability of our national and cyber security. Within this letter lies a plethora of rational reasons on why we should further improve encryptions, have strong back-door access, and not allow any mandates that would require technology companies to retain private information. Surveillance acts such as the Communication

Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency (N.S.A) subcontractor turned whistle-blower is nothing short of a hero. His controversial decision to release information detailing the highly illegal ‘data mining’ practices of the N.S.A have caused shockwaves throughout the world and have raised important questions concerning how much the government actually monitors its people without their consent or knowledge. Comparable to Mark Felt in the Watergate scandals, Daniel Ellsberg with the Pentagon Papers, Edward Snowden joins the rank of infamous whistleblowers who gave up their jobs, livelihood, and forever will live under scrutiny of the public all in the service to the American people. Edward Snowden released information detailing the

Jackson and Raftos (1997) referred to whistle blowing as an avenue of last resort. Employees find themselves in these situations when the authorities at their organisations have failed to take actions on reported issues affecting that organisation. Wimot (2000) likened whistleblowing to a spectrum. At one end of this spectrum whistleblowing would only cause minimal pain and scars on the stakeholders and organisation while on the other end is the worst scenario where the whistleblowing effects are turbulent and often experienced to be negative to all those involved (ibid).

Privacy has endured throughout human history as the pillar upon which our authentic nature rests. Yet, in an age darkened by the looming shadow of terrorism, another force threatens to dominate the skyline and obscure the light of liberty behind promises of safety and security: government surveillance. As an employee of the NSA, Edward Snowden broke his vow of secrecy to inform the public of our government’s furtive surveillance acts, but does this render him traitorous? To answer this, we must first ask ourselves, traitorous to whom? When the very institution established to protect our fundamental liberties intrudes on our privacy from behind a veil of secrecy, should such informed individuals resign from judicious autonomy and

In early 2013 a man by the name of Edward Joseph Snowden began leaking classified National Security Agency (NSA) documents to media outlets, which in turn ended up in public ears. These documents, mainly involving intelligence Snowden acquired while working as an NSA contractor, are mostly related to global surveillance programs run by the NSA. This has raised multiple ethical issues ranging from national security, information privacy and the ethics behind whistleblowing in general. The reach and impact of these leaks have gone global and have put in question the very government that protects us as well as the extent of the public’s rights on privacy. Various foreign

Unfortunately, during most of this century many people equated whistleblowers with tattle tales. For instance, until the early 1980s, legal indices often listed the law of whistleblowing under the word "snitch" or "informant." During the Nixon era, much of that negative attitude changed. With the advent of Watergate, the public began to recognize the service whistleblowers were providing to taxpayers at great risk to themselves.