Bill Binney was an NSA analyst whose work was so effective it was shut down. It threatened to derail the gravy train fueled by the kinds of problems he might have solved — including preventing potential terrorist attacks. The contractors and executives riding that train had a motto: “keep the problem going, so the money keeps flowing.”
As the nightmare of George Orwell’s 1984 becomes reality in slow motion, there may be a silver lining. It turns out that the people have some powerful surveillance tools of their own.
Coded messages on social media site by the exiled whistleblower bring frantic speculation.
What effect does the awareness of surveillance have on the behavior of people? WhoWhatWhy looked at the available results of research being conducted, and found that we may be reaching the tipping point — when awareness of being watched starts to affect behavior.
An NSA specialist who became an expert at hacking automobiles now works at Uber, the ride-sharing service. Is this something we ought to take interest in?
In a $100 million lawsuit that has garnered virtually no public attention, five National Security Agency whistleblowers are accusing the federal government of illegally retaliating against them for alerting the NSA and Congress to a waste of taxpayer funds that benefitted a well-connected contractor.
In his work on leadership for both government and corporations, Ira Chaleff has become something of an expert on followers. What he’s found—and what he argues in his book Intelligent Disobedience and in his conversation with WhoWhatWhy’s Jeff Schechtman—is that we have to learn not to be so quick to follow orders and accept authority.
Chaleff explores how a remarkable range of wrongdoing of all magnitudes—from financial fraud to war crimes, and even, surprisingly, sexual misconduct—can to some degree trace back to the compromised moral compass of those too quick to comply with orders. While we may not all have it in us to become whistleblowers, says Chaleff, we can all stand to be a bit more disobedient—when it is warranted.
As NATO allies’ focus shifted from the Cold War to their own economic interests, the lack of a common enemy caused them to turn on each other.
A past presidential administration official weighs in on the complicated view of the NSA whistleblower… or traitor.
With the Patriot Act debate raging in Congress, there has perhaps never been a better time to consider what’s at stake. And what is that? Most of us never really knew. But this documentary, from Executive Producer Robert Greenwald and Earl Katz, directed by Nonny de la Peña, whose work has been funded by a MacArthur grant and shown at TriBeCa Film Festival, spelled it all out a decade ago, and is as relevant as ever.
In his essay in this new collection, a law professor warns about the creep of the security state, from catching criminals to trying to anticipate who might commit a crime.