2) Institutional culture plays a large part in abuses that continue through administrations and even changes in departmental leadership. Institutional culture doesn't simply change because the head of the beast is re-appointed. (And even in the case of the current elected head of the Executive, many things have not changed though changes were promised, but that's a slight digression.)

You talk about people with different moralities, and then mention that "people are much too lazy to be putting that much effort into a government job." I read that as regardless of people's personal opinions, they're too lazy to challenge the status quo and would rather keep their heads down and receive their paychecks. Without whistleblower protections, that's exactly the environment that's fostered.

Finally, in my opinion, all this is moot. We should necessarily question those in authority, we should necessarily limit the power given to those in government, and we should necessarily suspect those in power to have anything other than our own best interests in mind.

I agree. It's an elitist culture of special agent assholes and "everyone else". Trust me, I don't like the FBI. But, people within the organization also have very little power to change it -- they're extremely reticent to any kind of change regardless of efficiency gains. It took months of planning for them to even consider using an excel macro I wrote that could save millions of dollars per year.

>2) Institutional culture plays a large part in abuses that continue through administrations and even changes in departmental leadership. Institutional culture doesn't simply change because the head of the beast is re-appointed. (And even in the case of the current elected head of the Executive, many things have not changed though changes were promised, but that's a slight digression.) You talk about people with different moralities, and then mention that "people are much too lazy to be putting that much effort into a government job." I read that as regardless of people's personal opinions, they're too lazy to challenge the status quo and would rather keep their heads down and receive their paychecks. Without whistleblower protections, that's exactly the environment that's fostered.

I agree, whistleblower protections would be a massively positive change in how governance works in the US, and would make people accountable for decisions which have significant impact on national policy, security, and economy. That being said, I don't see either Manning or Snowden as whistleblowers.

>Finally, in my opinion, all this is moot. We should necessarily question those in authority, we should necessarily limit the power given to those in government, and we should necessarily suspect those in power to have anything other than our own best interests in mind.

Definitely. I'm personally hoping that this stuff spawns a legitimate third party as a true representative of what this generation's ideals are heading towards. The smart money, though, is on incumbents commandeering the messages and subverting them a la Tea Party.

> I agree, whistleblower protections would be a massively positive change in how governance works in the US, and would make people accountable for decisions which have significant impact on national policy, security, and economy. That being said, I don't see either Manning or Snowden as whistleblowers.

What do you think disqualifies them as whistleblowers? Manning seems disqualified on some level because his leaks were large, not specific, without a specific goal, and possibly not even motivated by the content of what he leaked. Snowden's leaks seem more specific and motivated by a desire to blow the whistle on specific practices he sees as illegal or immoral. Daniel Ellsberg's leaks were rather large and non-specific in many ways but he is widely regarded as a whistleblower. What is the qualification or disqualification?

I don't see them as whistleblowers, because their actions stand in contrast to Ellsberg. For one, neither of them tried to go to a higher authority to report wrongdoing -- that is the very first thing that a potential whistleblower must do, is handle things at the lowest level possible and allow the situation to rectify itself before taking matters into their own hands. When that fails, then you escalate to higher authorities. Secondly, Ellsberg surrendered himself to the court system willingly, knowing full well that he could face life imprisonment. Manning was caught and brought to justice after having bragged on an AOL chat to someone about his "hacking", while Snowden fled the country taking with him a trove of classified documents which could be in the hands of other countries, weakening any argument (to me) that he had the US's best intentions at heart. My argument about Snowden is that he knows so little about the programs he supposedly leaked -- I watched his interview and was astonished at the blatant lies in it (see my other post on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5885846), not to mention him saying that he could wiretap any american (or even the president!) at any time. True whistleblowers are caught in the middle of something that they have solid knowledge of, but are unable to change the course of, so they go to the public in order for the public to do the course correction.

So the obvious answer is that we need an independent congressional commission, preferably headed by Ron Wyden; to provide a complete accounting of what has been happening in the past decade. Such commission would need the power to unilaterally declassify items of concern and would be tasked with coming up with a framework of oversight and accountability that would enable legal and necessary signals intelligence functions while preserving the constitutional rights of American citizens and the privacy concerns of rest of the world.

Secret laws, secret courts; wholesale and indiscriminate data collection paired with indefinite retention of all data as potentially culpable are not reflective of American values.