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Whistleblower Aid

whistlebloweraid.org

175 pointsmooreds51 comments

I am a whistleblower in the UK. The issue is large enough it could get into the papers or the dismantling of an organisation. It is not a comfortable position to be in and I'm fully cognizant of the risks to my future employability. Nonetheless it has to be done. I would urge people to speak up even over little things.

Bad things happen when good men do nothing, is succinct and appropriate.

I think I speak on behalf of just about everybody except those you are blowing the whistle about: good for you, thank you for doing the right thing.

Many people say they’d do the right thing even if it’s really hard and potentially will harm their careers. Very very few actual do it. Thank you.

Disclosure: I'm an engineer working at the Guardian on investigations tools.

In your opinion, what can newspapers and their technology teams do to improve the process of whistleblowing. Any perspective is really interesting!

I appreciate the work you are doing although there is nothing in my experience that I think can assist you. I went through legal channels and it is starting to have the desired effect. The most important thing you can do as a newspaper is be a newspaper. That way I can give my story and shame them publicly as a last resort if needed. Your work will be invaluable for others I have no doubt!

I guess Julian Assange did with Wikileaks was the correct technology and process - and why the establishment has scared everyone away from replicating what he did by his most poor treatment.

So, do what Assange did.

Assange worked with Rusbridger, Guardian's editor in chief at the time, I think. So .... the guardian should go to the guardian and get their help! :-)

So it's a human courage problem, then.

It's worth noting that The Guardian's response to Assange's persecution left a lot to be desired[0-2] from a whistle-blowing perspective, especially against a powerful organization. That's not to say one should avoid a journalist publication for telling their story, just that it can backfire in its own way if (presumably) that publication starts to get heat from law man.

0: https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2016-02-05/no-fair-hearin...

1: https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2018-11-28/guardian-vilif...

2: https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2020-09-26/guardian-assan...

@dang can you show this thanks

I am a whistleblower and Whistle Blower Aid is my legal representation.

The case has been going on over 3 years now. The legal process is very slow. The reason I approached them is because an investigative reporter I have been working with recommended them.

WBA takes on cases that have social impact or financial payout. Payouts to whistle blowers come from the SEC, IRS, Treasury, and a few other agencies. Whistleblowers can get very large payouts - tens of millions of dollars - if the eventual penalty is high. WBA takes 60% of any payout.

My case has the potential for very high payout, which is mostly why I blew the whistle. The CEO is a slimy guy and it wouldn’t surprise me if he tried to use violence against my family, that is how unpredictable he is.

First you file the disclosure. Then the government has to actually be interested. It took a year from filing the disclosure to getting contacted by a government agent. Then it took 4 more months to get an in person meeting arranged. People I have worked with in the past have contacted me saying they have been subpoenaed and they don’t know I blew the whistle, so I know the government is making a case.

Keep in mind a tiny percentage of whistle blowers ever get a payout. The targets of these investigations have a lot of money and legal power. The government can only go after so many targets. They like ones that have big impact - money and or societal impact. They like going after public figures. You have to lobby the government through various forms of influence to get them to act.

Sorry, WBA takes 40% of the payout not 60%

> The targets of these investigations have a lot of money and legal power.

They have also a lot of illegal power. See NSA vs Snowden.

> The government can only go after so many targets.

The government is mostly corrupt/ indifferent.

I've felt for 20 years now that a nice system design would be to, by law, give 10% of the fine levied against a wrong-doing company to the whistleblower. This way there's always a financial incentive to whistle-blow, especially when the wrongdoing is egregious.

The SEC does this.

https://www.sec.gov/whistleblower/frequently-asked-questions

> The Whistleblower Program was created by Congress to provide monetary incentives for individuals to come forward and report possible violations of the federal securities laws to the SEC. Under the program, eligible whistleblowers are entitled to an award between 10 and 30% of the monetary sanctions collected in actions brought by the SEC and related actions brought by certain other regulatory and law enforcement authorities.

The Biogen whistleblower got $266 million (roughly 30%).

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/largest-ever-266-4-...

Its worth mentioning that how we protect and deal with whistleblowers as a society is a good indicator of how dysfunctional it has become.

Working towards corrupt kleptocracies is just not a sensible thing to do, you too have to live in the mess you create. Go watch at the video of Sadams purge if you feel smart enough to profit off such movements.

Another good organization in this space is Signals Network, which has experience working with whistleblowers outside the US.

https://thesignalsnetwork.org/

I don’t know what to make of submissions to an organization’s home page. Is it intended to tell us the organization exists or is there something of specific interest on the page at the time of submission?

Can't speak for everyone, but I submit org homepages because I think the organization and its mission are worth the attention of the HN community.

If there is any specific interest, it's usually mentioned in the title or in a comment by OP.

Since this doesn't, I'm assuming OP found it interesting, other people at /new also saw it as interesting and here we are :)

first rule of blowing the whistle: before blowing, make sure you can't be traced. your life (figuratively, most of the time...) isn't worth the consequences of being a known whistleblower.

That is true. You will be punished by your organization. And by other too: they wouldn't hire you if you are known whistleblower.

Retaliating against a whistleblower employee is bad news bears in the US

How are you going to publish a NYT Best Seller tell-all book and be a bookable conference speaker if you don't make your name public?

if you blow the whistle at the SEC, you might not need to!

https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2023-89

This is the way

Bradley Birkenfield is my favourite: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Birkenfeld

He does not look like a whistleblower. He helped american government to destroy swiss bank secrecy.

Wouldn’t someone think of the tax-evading billionaires? After all, that could have been you or me if not for a couple twists of fate /s

While people should follow the law, making the basis of the comment "these people are different from us!" is a bad idea. That mindset is the same ugly place that creates all the various -isms like racism. It is also usually a bit self defeating because it pulls attention away from finding win-win solutions that build a good world. Cultures that foster billionaires have tended to do better than cultures that don't; because billionaires are associated with vast amounts of incidental wealth creation. It doesn't matter whether any particular person is going to become one or not.

It is a lot more productive to focus on the unfairness of extremely wealthy people not following the law, the illegality of that and how therefore this is fellow is a whistleblower. And probably in dire need of some general support if he's gone up against the sort of people with Swiss bank accounts.

Could this be a honeypot operation?

I'd want at least one public known past whisleblower to contact for assurance the org is not a honeypot. The forces of corruption would do exactly this: set up a whistleblower support org and then sell their "whistleblowers" back to their corrupt overlords.

I don't know what strategy would work to guarantee any organization like this isn't founded by such bad actors, as they'd likely be legitimate for many cases, at least while gaining public credibility-legitimacy - but then if they are toeing a certain line they may then act as protector for the bad actors they are aligned with and/or employed by.

Really takes courage to whistleblow.

No idea about this particular organization but the ideas like these have been successfully tried: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch_and_kill

If you are going to blow the whistle, please use securedrop.org over Tor network.

You need to use adfitional methods. Tor was an NSA project.

That's a hell of a claim to drop without sources.

No, there is some truth to that. The Tor project was also funded by the government. Think like this, if only the glowies used it, then everybody would be able to identify them. So by making the network available for everybody, their tracks would blend in with the rest.

How do they make their money??

Billionaire donors like Pierre Omidyar: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/20/tech-billionaire-ai...

Given the donors and the list of cases WhistleblowerAid has been involved in, I wonder how politically neutral this organisation is.

Does it have to be 100% politically neutral to be useful?

Whistle-blowing in itself is already kind of political, you have to strongly disagree (morally, politically, legally or otherwise) with what the organization you're in is currently doing in order to whistle-blow.

Besides, would be wonderfully ironic if the goal of the organization would be to get people inside competitors to the "donors" to whistle-blow, but in the end someone whistle-blows on the pro-whistle-blowing organization.

You 100% want to avoid whistle blowing becoming a politically aligned action.

By the virtue of the terminal polarization in the US everything is political.

Oh no our brakes went out, guess there's nothing to do but floor it.

I think it could undermine their credibility. They then begin to look like another bunch of party hacks, of which we have too many already (on whatever side).

I don't understand your point. The very article you cite states that Haugen (the Facebook whistle-blower) was praised by politicians from both sides.

On top of that whistleblowing is inherently political because it implies an individual reporting on a (typically) much larger and powerful organisation, for moral, ethical or legal reasons.

When I read statements like yours I always wonder about the motivation. What are you trying to achieve? Is this part of a covert campaign to discredit some inconvenient organisation?

Lol. Yes, me and millions of dollars of Russian funding in a covert campaign.

>>On top of that whistleblowing is inherently political because it implies an individual reporting on a (typically) much larger and powerful organisation

Agreed, but if the organisation only supports you when you say things about a much larger and more powerful right-wing organisation then you're not for all whistleblowers.

Here's a thought experiment for you - the Democrat email leak in 2016 or Hunter Biden's laptop or the Twitter files - if that was leaked by a whistleblower, do you think an organisation like this would have supported it? Or would they think "This may harm our favoured political candidate"?

Per another comment, they provide legal representation and take 60% of the payout

Ah thanks. It didn't say that anywhere I saw on the site. Didn't expect that since it seems in at least some of the cases there is no lawsuit where they can expect to recover damages. It costs a penny to keep professionals like that engaged, so there is money behind there, just not clear whose.

Hi everyone,

My name is John Tye, and I’m the founder of Whistleblower Aid. My name is John Tye, and I’m the founder of Whistleblower Aid. You can confirm this is no spoof because I’m also linking to this comment from my LinkedIn profile; see this post linked here: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/john-tye-789394b0_hi-everyone...

I’d love to hear from you personally; however LinkedIn messaging is not secure. If you want to communicate with me securely, please follow the instructions on the Whistleblower Aid website: https://whistlebloweraid.org/become-a-whistleblower/

We are glad there is such interest in and support for our work. Several great points in this thread that I want to emphasize:

- Unquestionably, becoming a whistleblower is risky — to your career, to your relationships, and in the worst cases, to your safety. It is not a decision to be taken lightly, and whistleblowers need all the help they can get.

- Our organization helps our clients make disclosures lawfully, so that they can have impact without risking prison or lawsuits. We can help you calibrate exactly how much exposure you are comfortable with.

- In the United States, the SEC and other government agencies do have programs to pay rewards to whistleblowers for original evidence used in successful enforcement actions. But we also take cases in other countries.

There are also several comments in this thread that deserve some clarification —

- Whistleblower Aid is a 501(c)(3) public charity, and our work is supported by a range of individual donors and charitable foundations, none of which has input or control over the cases we take or how we support our clients. We are non-partisan, and our cases have implicated both Democrats and Republicans at the highest levels. We also work with officials on both sides of the aisle to achieve the most impact in the public interest.

- There are plenty of private law firms that will take fee-generating cases on contingency (meaning they only get paid a percentage of a reward if they win money for the whistleblower). Whistleblower Aid is here to fill the gap, and take cases in which there are important public interests, but often a lower probability of a financial reward or none at all.

- Still, we do often file reward claims for our clients, and we follow the industry standards in terms of contingency percentages, which can range from one-third to one-half. To date, we’ve never taken more than 40% of an award for our work.

- One commenter is right to be concerned about honeypot operations, which unfortunately can exist in various forms. In Whistleblower Aid’s case, myself and many of our staff have been whistleblowers ourselves, and you can find multiple case studies and client testimonials on our website: https://whistlebloweraid.org/about/ https://whistlebloweraid.org/case-studies/ https://youtu.be/6p2XwbcUBWk

- It’s true that Tor Browser was historically funded by the U.S. government. However, Tor is an open-source code project, which means that anyone, including yourself right now, can go review Tor’s code and propose improvements. A large global community of developers is constantly making sure that Tor is using state-of-the-art encryption architecture and that there are no “back doors” that are easily exploited. We use SecureDrop over Tor as the most secure and anonymous communication tools available.

Thank you for your interest in helping whistleblowers. If you are able to support our clients, they can use the help, please visit https://whistlebloweraid.org/donate/.

Thanks, John

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/30/herve-falciani...

> The French police arrested Falciani and seized his MacBook Pro and his iPhone. But when he was out of earshot of the Swiss prosecutor, on the way to the police station in nearby Menton, he told the gendarmes that his computer contained information of possible interest to the French state ... The Swiss prosecutor demanded that Montgolfier turn over Falciani’s laptop, but he demurred. “We’ll look at the computer,” he said. “Then we’ll decide if we return it.” ... While French authorities deliberated how to proceed, Falciani spent the night in a holding cell in Menton. But the next morning, in a gesture that indicated a shift in Falciani’s status, his guards surprised him with coffee and croissants.

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