Between Aaron Swartz, Edward Snowden and, most recently, Chelsea Manning, it seems whistleblowing has become a trend.
Swartz, co-founder of Reddit, illegally downloaded academic journals as a step toward open sourcing. Snowden leaked top-secret information about American and British mass surveillance programs to The Guardian. And Manning, formerly known as Pfc. Bradley Manning, violated the Espionage Act by leaking the largest set of classified documents ever released to the public. And though the justice system will say otherwise, Swartz, Snowden and Manning did the public a favor.
In June, Time published the results of a poll it conducted about Snowden. Despite the fact that 54 percent of the respondents said Snowden did a good thing, 53 percent still said he should be prosecuted for leaking information about the National Security Agency. Twenty-eight percent said he should not.
These results are significantly different when we concentrate on the 18 to 34 age group. Seventy percent of that group believed he “did a good thing,” and only 41 percent said he should face charges. Forty-three percent said he should not face any charges.
Some people have questioned what this says about the morality of the younger generation. In The Opinion Pages of The New York Times, Peter Ludlow, a professor of philosophy at Northwestern University, argued that the younger generation has not, in fact, lost its moral compass.
“Clearly, there is a moral principle at work in the actions of the leakers, whistleblowers and hacktivists and those who support them. I would also argue that that moral principle has been clearly articulated, and it may just save us from a dystopian future,” Ludlow said.
Unfortunately, whistleblower is synonymous with words such as tattletale and rumormonger. The June issue of Time magazine, which featured Swartz, Snowden and Manning on its cover, got rid of these hostile words, instead referring to them collectively as “The Informers.” This name is more accurate, as it incites less pessimistic feelings.
Swartz, as a believer in the open source initiative, used his hacking skills to release academic journals. Restricting journal access to only those who can afford the subscription contributes to the increasing disparity between the rich and the poor. Swartz attempted to level the playing field by making this information public.
Snowden and Manning both had inside access to the information they leaked, as an NSA employee and United States soldier respectively. The information Snowden released has made more Americans wary of their security. To add to the governmental distrust, the documents and videos Manning released show the U.S. military tortured its prisoners.
The public deserved to know almost all of the information the informers shared. Unfortunately for the informers, our laws landed Manning 35 years in prison, made Snowden a fugitive and earned Swartz a 35-year sentence, which many believe contributed to his decision to commit suicide in January.
It seems the justice system is issuing these harsh sentences so as to make an example of the few people who were willing to step out of line for the betterment of others. This serves as a threat, effectively silencing people who know about governmental injustices.
We would like to think our world is far better than the dystopia in George Orwell’s 1984. In some ways, ours is worse—at least Big Brother told the people of Oceania that he was watching them.
