Huffington Post: Feel-Good (and Feel-Bad) Moments, Brought to You by Facebook
GAP Executive Director Bea Edwards penned this Huffington Post column criticizing a secret experiment performed by Facebook, in which the company manipulated user news feeds to test emotional response. Edwards contends Facebook’s research, and its response to criticism, is problematic for three reasons: the experiment was performed in secret, no one at the company with authority seems to realize the ethical breaches of subjecting users to experiments without their understanding, and that study organizers presumed personal data belongs to the company, when most users think it belongs to them.
Deutsche Welle: Whistleblower Law Expands Protection to US Intelligence Agents
Earlier this week, President Obama signed into law statutory protections for intelligence agency employees who report wrongdoing. For the first time, intelligence community employees can use whistleblowing as an affirmative defense if they suffer retaliation. The new law does not cover intelligence agency contractors such as Edward Snowden. GAP Legislative Director Shanna Devine is quoted.
Key Quote: “It’s a significant precedent,” Shanna Devine, the Government Accountability Project‘s legislative director, told DW. “No time before in history have there been enforceable statutory protections for intelligence community government employees.”
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“From 2007-2012, through the stimulus law and the National Defense Authorization Act, contractors at select intelligence agencies did have very strong whistleblower rights, including access to due process and an independent hearing.”
“Those rights were removed in 2012, really just months before Snowden made his disclosures.”
ProPublica: Here’s One Way to Land on the NSA’s Watch List
According to German journalists, the NSA targeted individuals for surveillance based on whether they utilized the anonymizing software Tor. The agency’s targeting list corresponds with the list of directory servers used by Tor between December 2010 and February 2012. It is unclear how many users have been affected.
In a lawsuit filed July 8, GAP coalition partner Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) alleges that a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service director oversaw whistleblower retaliation by agency managers and has refused to provide relevant documents on scientific misconduct. Some of the allegations involve interference with endangered species in relation to the Keystone XL pipeline.
Dylan Blaylock is Communications Director for the Government Accountability Project, the nation’s leading whistleblower protection and advocacy organization.