Ethical Whistleblowing
You might imagine blowing an ordinary whistle. But this whistleblowing is an act of reporting wrongdoing of an organization to society.
This has become a buzz word among the society since 19s.
Who is whistleblower
A whistleblower is a person who is working within an organization who reports that organization’s corruption or misconduct to society.
In here society may be within the organization(Internal whistleblowing) or outside parties like media, journalists(External whistleblowing).
Federal Whistleblowers
Government employees who reveal misconduct committed by their employers, or can also be private-sector employees who inform about the misconduct of their employers that is committed in relation to the federal government.
Whistleblowing and challenges
When people working in the corporate world, they might experience wrongdoings done by their colleagues, employers, etc. They might feel this is not right and I should stand against this.
But in the real world, if you are facing such a moment you might be having the following issues, challenges with your self.
- What if anyone does not believe in you
- What if authorities try to charge on you since it looks like traitory
- What if you are fired or demoted from your position
Whistleblower Protection
There are supporting organizations and communities for whistleblowers. And also there are protection laws for whistleblowers(USA).
- Whistle-blower Protection Act of 1989
- No Fear Act of 2002
- Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002
From the Whistleblower Protection Act, the government cannot fire, demote, suspend, threaten, harras, or discriminate against the whistleblower.
Edward Snowden — NSA Surveillance Program
This is one of the famous whistleblowing cases in the world. A couple of films were released about the story behind this act. Edward Snowden, who was a system engineer in the National Security Agency(USA) had exposed to sensitive data which was collected from citizen damaging their privacy. He determined that process is growing up and one day it could not be stopped. He had the courage to stand up and speak against it.
In 2013, he release highly classified data to media and spoke about what were they doing in the NSA Surveillance Program. He was able to open eyes of the internet users about the threat.
However, he is still living in Russia and the USA government had issued charges on him for exposing classified data. But because of his act, everyone in the internet has tended to use security layers and think about more in privacy issues.
