Whistleblower: A referee or coach? Definitely not... more like a person who reveals government secrets in order to inform the public about government conspiracies and lies. Whistleblowers have been an issue for the government for decades and have played a large part in creating the mistrust between the government and its citizens, especially in the United States.
There are many famous whistleblowers such as Perry Fellwock, who revealed secrets of the ECHELON project under the disguise Winslow Peck, under The Guardian, a British newspaper. However, the 2 most famous whistleblowers in today's news are Edward Snowden and Julian Assange.
Julian Assange, the man pictured above, is currently being held captive in the highest security clad prison in Britain after living in refuge at the Ecuadoran Embassy in London for a number of years. Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, was declared a threat to US national security by President Barack Obama in 2010 and other politicians have even described him as a terrorist. This declaration was in response to Wikileaks leakage of almost half a million confidential US Army intelligence documents about tactics and plans surrounding US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. By the end of the year, Assange and his followers had leaked about 250,000 US diplomatic cables which proved US involvement to be immoral in some Middle Eastern countries. The only reason these revelations are seen as a 'threat to national security' is because they are also a 'threat to the power of the US government', so Julian Assange is being illegally tried and kept in hostage for his freedom of speech.
The US government is violating Julian Assange's First Amendment rights, going against all the values our Founding Fathers established when our country was created!
Edward Snowden, the man pictured above, is another famous, American whistleblower. As a former employee of the CIA and the NSA intelligence agencies, he gained lots of knowledge surrounding the United States security and privacy laws. When he started working for the NSA in 2009, he had access to tons of secret surveillance programs - most of which he despised; so, in 2013, Snowden traveled on Hong Kong on a 'medical leave of absence' to interview with journalists/reporters from The Guardian about his theories on the US government privacy policies. This interview revealed multiple breaches of privacy on US citizens, completed by the US government itself, including a court order for Verizon to share metadata of its consumers with the government and the existence of PRISM, a data-mining program that gives the NSA, FBI, and Britain's NSA equivalent access to Internet giants - including the Big 5 technological companies, such as Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook. On June 9th, Snowden came forward and revealed himself as the whistleblower, and on June 14th, the US government charged him with espionage (again, they legally cannot do this because that is violating Snowden's First Amendment, fundamental personal rights). Snowden fled to Moscow, Russia and is safely taken refuge there under 'temporary refuge status' thanks to Putin's not wanting to get involved in the US extradition process. Even in 2014 when his asylum contract ended, Putin awarded Snowden a three-year residence with the option to become an official Russian citizen. As of 2021, Edward Snowden is still hiding from the US government, who claim that he violated his disclosure agreement, under Russian refuge.
Sources
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Edward-Snowden
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Julian-Assange
Presentation in class by Madelyn Cooper - Group 2
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