{"id":83199,"date":"2016-11-21T12:00:36","date_gmt":"2016-11-21T12:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=83199"},"modified":"2016-11-19T17:56:36","modified_gmt":"2016-11-19T17:56:36","slug":"in-the-trump-era-leaking-and-whistleblowing-are-more-urgent-and-more-noble-than-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/11\/in-the-trump-era-leaking-and-whistleblowing-are-more-urgent-and-more-noble-than-ever\/","title":{"rendered":"In the Trump Era, Leaking and Whistleblowing Are More Urgent, and More Noble, Than Ever"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\u201cAnything<\/a>

\u201cAnything to Say?\u201d is a bronze sculpture and art installation by Italian sculptor Davide Dormino, representing, from left, whistleblowers Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, and Chelsea Manning next to the U.N. offices in Geneva on Sept. 15, 2015.<\/p><\/div>\n

14 Nov 2016 – <\/em>For the past 15 years, the U.S. government under both parties has invented whole new methods for hiding what it\u00a0does behind an increasingly impenetrable wall of secrecy. From radical new legal doctrines<\/a> designed to shield its\u00a0behavior from judicial review to prosecuting\u00a0sources at record rates<\/a>, more and more government action has been deliberately hidden from the public.<\/p>\n

One of the very few remaining avenues for learning what the U.S. government is doing \u2014 beyond the propaganda that it\u00a0wants Americans\u00a0to ingest\u00a0and thus deliberately disseminates through media outlets \u2014 is leaking and whistleblowing. Among the leading U.S. heroes in the war on terror have been the men and women inside various agencies of the\u00a0U.S. government who discovered serious wrongdoing being carried out in secret, and then risked their own personal welfare to ensure that the public learned of what never should have been hidden in the first place.<\/p>\n

Many of the important, consequential revelations from the last two administrations were possible only because of courageous sources who came forward in this way. It\u2019s how we learned about the abuses of Abu Ghraib<\/a>, the existence of torture-fueled CIA \u201cblack sites,\u201d<\/a> the Bush warrantless eavesdropping program<\/a>, the wanton slaughter carried out in Iraq and Afghanistan<\/a>, the recklessness and deceit at the heart of\u00a0the U.S. drone program<\/a>, the NSA\u2019s secret construction of the largest system of suspicionless, mass surveillance ever created<\/a>, and so many other scandals, frauds, and war crimes<\/a> that otherwise would have remained hidden. All of that reporting was possible only because people of conscience decided to disregard the U.S. government\u2019s corrupt decree that this information should remain secret, on the ground that concealing it\u00a0was designed to protect not national security but rather the reputations and interests of political officials.<\/p>\n

For that reason, when The Intercept was created, enabling safe and productive whistleblowing was central to our mission. We hired some of the world\u2019s most skilled technologists, experts\u00a0in information security and encryption, to provide maximum security for our journalists and our sources. We adopted the most advanced programs for enabling sources to communicate and provide information to us anonymously and without detection, such as SecureDrop. And we made an institutional commitment\u00a0to expend whatever resources are necessary to defend the right of a free press to report without threats of recrimination, and to do everything possible to protect and defend our sources\u00a0who enable that vital journalism.<\/p>\n

Over the past two years, we have published several articles<\/a> by our security experts on how sources (and others) can communicate and provide information to us<\/a> in the safest and most secure manner possible<\/a>, to minimize the chances of being detected. We\u2019ve published interviews with other experts<\/a>, such as Edward Snowden, on the most powerful tools and methods available for securing one\u2019s online communications<\/a>. As our technologist Micah Lee explained, no method is perfect, so \u201ccaution is still advised to those who want to communicate with\u00a0us without exposing their real-world identities,\u201d but tools and practices do exist to maximize anonymity, and we are committed to using those and informing the public about how to use them in the safest and most effective manner possible.<\/p>\n

\"Image:<\/a>

Image: The Intercept<\/p><\/div>\n

Donald Trump has not yet been inaugurated, but all the signs point to a presidency that will be deeply hostile to basic precepts of transparency. During the campaign, he repeatedly violated long-standing norms of disclosure, including even a refusal to make his income tax returns public, and already has broken with tradition by refusing during the transition<\/a> to provide basic information about his whereabouts or activities.<\/p>\n

Beyond that, the institutions of the executive branch are well-trained to resist transparency as much as possible and have been vested with countless tools to conceal their most important activities. Institutional inertia by itself, let alone once exacerbated by Trump\u2019s own anti-transparency impulses, all but guarantees the Trump presidency will be aggressively antagonistic\u00a0to basic public accountability.<\/p>\n

For all those reasons, The Intercept is more determined than ever to do everything possible to enable sources, leakers, and whistleblowers to work with our journalists in the safest way possible, to ensure that information that belongs in the public domain is reported rather than hidden. There will undoubtedly be all sorts of actions and information in the Trump administration that will be concealed but that should be known, and the public will need courageous whistleblowers and leakers inside the government to ensure that it sees the light of day.<\/p>\n

_________________________________<\/p>\n

\"glenn<\/a><\/p>\n

Glenn Greenwald<\/a> – \u2709glenn.greenwald@theintercept.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 theintercept.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trump has not yet been inaugurated, but all signs point to a presidency that will be deeply hostile to basic precepts of transparency. The Intercept is determined to enable sources to work with journalists in the safest way possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whistleblowing-surveillance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83199\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}