Nobody likes whistleblowers

In grade school, you're a "narc", and ostracized. As an adolescent, you're a "rat" and, depending on where you live, probably in fear for your life.

And in the adult world, you're a criminal. You might've heard about this guy, Thomas Drake, who leaked some info to the Baltimore Sun about illegal warantless wiretapping gong on at the NSA. Well, President Obama (unlike Candidate Obama, who used to faint and fall out of open windows whenever you brought up warantless wiretapping) is pretty hopping mad, and charged Drake with the only law on the books that can hold him: the Espionage Act, usually reserved for spies.

Leaking to the press was not Drake's first option - more like his fiftieth. He went through the proper channels and reported widespread abuse and waste, but no one paid attention.

Then again, even the saintly Jed Bartlett hit the roof when an aide leaked news of his weaponized space platform or whatever.

We as a species have such a low intolerance for whistleblowers, even when the transparency is in our interests.

edited 17th May '11 6:07:57 PM by johnnyfog

There's a difference between informing the public about the inner working of a corrupt corporation, and telling the teacher that Joe and his buddies cut class to smoke.

How the hell do grade schoolers know what a narc is?

Dont you mean "tattle tale? "

Nope, narc was what I always heard as a kid.

Most likely adopting a term they heard used in a similar way.

Hm, I'd assume that it might have something to do with the fact that releasing information like that to the public can have unprecedented widescale effect or some complicated crap like that, but I'm not sure. Anyway, people tend to get angry about this sort of thing in their personal lives because, as long as they aren't hurting anyone, the person "telling" on them just made their situation worse when it was likely not affecting them at all.

If you whistleblow the government, you have technically committed treason, and by some definitions, become a spy as well. It's all in black and white print.

Corporations would do the same thing if they had such power.

edited 18th May '11 12:07:33 AM by victorinox243

Toooooooooot.

Everybody actually likes whistleblowers.
However, the inital condition for liking whistleblowers is that everyone is one.
We call a person who does not call the cops when somebody is robbing their house for "stupid".

People hate whistleblowers when its THEM getting in trouble.

This.

They also don't like whistle blowers when they are doing it for selfish reasons or out of petty grievances.

What bugs me is that when people in political favor do stupid things with secret information they get a slap on the wrist at most, yet in this case the guy is being charged over giving out things never classified as secret "because he should have known they should be classified".

That Obama completely went over to the "unchecked state power is great as long as I'm in charge!" position with remarkable speed is one of my biggest disappointments in his Presidency, by the way. Worst is that it makes Bush and Cheney feel completely and utterly justified in everything they did while in power.

Never heard "narc" before. I thought that was a drug addict?

I used to tell on people. They hated me. Of course, I did it for that reason. I was the type to assume any rule is still a rule, and thus it should be reported. I mean, I told on someone who was cutting in the gym line. I was a bit overly worried. Of course, that didn't stop the girl from holding a grudge against me for the rest of the year.

edited 18th May '11 3:17:43 AM by MrAHR

I narc is somebody who informs on drug-users/dealers.

I wanna see a president who uses his powers of presidential pardon on anyone who comes clean with allegations of large scale white collar crime, like tax fraud in the scale of billions of dollars and stuff like that.

It'd be interesting to see.