Name that tune

                                         

WHISTLE-BLOWING , 

LEAKING , 

AND THE PUBLIC’S NEED TO KNOW THE DIFFERENCE : WHAT’S IN A NAME?

Before the entire world gets all warm and fuzzy with the term “whistleblower”, they need to have some idea of just what a “whistleblower” is, both figuratively and literally. We tend to jump to the Figurative definition when we hear of anyone telling secrets, or uncovering wrong doings, no matter the situation and no matter the accusations. With so much leaking of secrets, governmental, industrial and corporate, the lines between “leaking” and “whistleblowing” are getting blurred. Literally speaking, the act of “whistleblowing” is initiated by an individual who feels he/she has been told to do something that he/she feels is, at best, not legal, or injurious to others. It really is no more complicated than that.

With this literal definition in mind, a number of folks in the News are exempt from this category. This would include Bradley Manning, Ed Snowden, Mark Klein, Samy Kamkar, Russ Tice, and Babak Pasdar. These are but a few of the people who had daily access to very sensitive documents the Government would rather you and I not see. In neither instance were any one of these people asked to do anything that was harmful, or illegal, to themselves, or anyone else. They have absconded with information entrusted, or available, to them by their employers and have chosen to share said information to the general public much to the dismay of their employers.

When it comes to the inner operations of the U.S. Intelligence Agencies, there appears to be a heightened degree ego protracted across the breadth of management in these Agencies. This sense of entitlement to self-importance is usually spurred on by zealots and hawks in the Legislative and Executive Branches of the U.S. Federal bureaucratic maze. With regard to the egos involved, one needs simply to watch C-Span to get a feeling of the total arrogance not only of the leadership, but also the “Assistant, Deputy, Under-Secretary, Pro-Tem’s”, especially of the Intelligence community. I only point this out because of the apparent direction of deception our Federal Government is going. Think about it. We have so many “wars” on so many subjects and issues that the American Public is being driven into accepting secrecy as the normal way we conduct every day government. Take a moment, and try to make a list of the “wars” the United States is currently waging. I did, and came up with over fifty of them before my head started to hurt and I had to stop. To wit; war on drugs, war on women, war on guns (whaaat?), war on obesity, war on abortion, war on voters rights, and on and on and on and on!

So, we are left with the task of coming up with a new name for the folks who leak “Classified, Top-Secret, Sensitive” government documentation to a democratic public who has paid good money for an open form of said government. Calling them “Leakers” seems so plebeian and mundane. The terms “Outers” may confuse them with the LGBT Community (certainly not a parallel worthy of making). Something along the lines of “UDL – Ultimate Down Loader” may be an apt moniker.

Bradley Manning – DoD UDL

Ed Snowden – NSA UDL

Russ Tice – NSA UDL

Samy Kamkar – TELECOM UDL

Babak Pasdar - TELECOM UDL

Mark Klein - TELECOM UDL

So let’s hear it! Send in your own suggestions. Keep those cards and letters coming.

The ones you didn’t hear much about:

 Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_whistleblowers

2003	Babak Pasdar	United States Government	Computer security consultant performing contract work for a major telecom carrier, revealed that a U.S. government office in Quantico, Virginia had direct, high-speed access to a major wireless carrier's systems, exposing customers' voice-calls, data packets and physical movements to uncontrolled surveillance. Pasdar executed a seven-page affidavit for the nonprofit Government Accountability Project in Washington.
2007	Mark Klein	National Security Agency	retired communications technician for AT&T, revealed the details of his personal knowledge of the secret 2003 construction of a monitoring facility in Room 641A of 611 Folsom Street in San Francisco, the site of a large SBC phone building, three floors of which are occupied by AT&T. The facility is alleged to be one of several operated by the National Security Agency as part of the warrantless surveillance undertaken by the Bush administration in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
2005	Russ Tice	US Government	Former intelligence analyst for the National Security Agency (NSA), the U.S. Air Force, Office of Naval Intelligence, and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). Most recently he is one of the sources used by the New York Times in reporting on the NSA wiretapping controversy. He had earlier been known for reporting suspicions that a DIA colleague of his might be a Chinese spy.[citation needed]
2010-2011	Samy Kamkar	Apple, Microsoft, and Google	Computer hacker who exposed the illicit, global mobile phone tracking of all users, regardless of GPS or Location Services settings, on the Apple iPhone, Google Android and Microsoft Windows Phone mobile devices, and their transmission of GPS and Wi-Fi information to their parent companies, which led to a series of class-action lawsuits and a privacy hearing on Capitol Hill.