http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/39849-is-the-vault-7-source-a-whistleblower
[links in on-line article]
The Content of the "Vault 7" CIA Leaks Matters More Than the Source
Wednesday, March 15, 2017
By Jesselyn Radack, ExposeFacts | News Analysis
It is the leakiest of times in the Executive Branch. Last week,
Wikileaks published a massive and, by all accounts genuine, trove of
documents revealing that the CIA has been stockpiling, and lost control
of, hacking tools it uses against targets. Particularly noteworthy were
the revelations that the CIA developed a tool to hack Samsung TVs and
turn them into recording devices and that the CIA worked to infiltrate
both Apple and Google smart phone operating systems since it could not
break encryption. No one in government has challenged the authenticity
of the documents disclosed.
We do not know the identity of the source or sources, nor can we be 100%
certain of his or her motivations. Wikileaks writes that the source sent
a statement that policy questions "urgently need to be debated in
public, including whether the CIA's hacking capabilities exceed its
mandated powers and the problem of public oversight of the agency" and
that the source "wishes to initiate a public debate about the security,
creation, use, proliferation and democratic control of cyber-weapons."
The FBI has already begun hunting down the source as part of a criminal
leak investigation. Historically, the criminal justice system has been a
particularly inept judge of who is a whistleblower. Moreover, it has
allowed the use of the pernicious Espionage Act -- an arcane law meant
to go after spies -- to go after whistleblowers who reveal information
the public interest. My client, former NSA senior official Thomas Drake,
was prosecuted under the Espionage Act, only to later be widely
recognized as a whistleblower. There is no public interest defense to
Espionage Act charges, and courts have ruled that a whistleblower's
motive, however salutary, is irrelevant to determining guilt.
The Intelligence Community is an equally bad judge of who is a
whistleblower, and has a vested interest in giving no positive
reinforcement to those who air its dirty laundry. The Intelligence
Community reflexively claims that anyone who makes public secret
information is not a whistleblower. Former NSA and CIA Director General
Michael V. Hayden speculated that the recent leaks are to be blamed on
young millennials harboring some disrespect for the venerable
intelligence agencies responsible for mass surveillance and torture. Not
only is his speculation speculative, but it's proven wrong by the fact
that whistleblowers who go to the press span the generational spectrum
from Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg to mid-career and
senior level public servants like CIA torture whistleblower John
Kiriakou and NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake to early-career millennials
like Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning and NSA whistleblower Edward
Snowden. The lawbreaker does not get to decide who is a whistleblower.
Not all leaks of information are whistleblowing, and the word
"whistleblower" is a loaded term, so whether or not the Vault 7 source
conceives of him or herself as a whistleblower is not a particularly
pertinent inquiry. The label "whistleblower" does not convey some
mythical power or goodness, or some "moral narcissism," a term used to
describe me when I blew the whistle. Rather, whether an action is
whistleblowing depends on whether or not the information disclosed is in
the public interest and reveals fraud, waste, abuse, illegality or
dangers to public health and safety. Even if some of the information
revealed does not qualify, it should be remembered that whistleblowers
are often faulted with being over- or under-inclusive with their
disclosures. Again, it is the quality of the information, not the
quantity, nor the character of the source.
Already, the information in the Vault 7 documents revealed that the
Intelligence Community has misled the American people. In the wake of
Snowden's revelations, the Intelligence Community committed to avoid the
stockpiling of technological vulnerabilities, publicly claiming that its
bias was toward "disclosing them" so as to better protect everyone's
privacy. However, the Vault 7 documents reveal just the opposite: not
only has the CIA been stockpiling exploits, it has been aggressively
working to undermine our Internet security. Even assuming the CIA is
using its hacking tools against the right targets, a pause-worthy
presumption given the agency's checkered history, the CIA has empowered
the rest of the hacker world and foreign adversaries by hoarding
vulnerabilities, and thereby undermined the privacy rights of all
Americans and millions of innocent people around the world. Democracy
depends on an informed citizenry, and journalistic sources -- whether
they call themselves whistleblowers or not -- are a critical component
when the government uses national security as justification to keep so
much of its activities hidden from public view.
As we learn more about the Vault 7 source and the disclosures, our focus
should be on the substance of the disclosures. Historically, the
government's reflexive instinct is to shoot the messenger, pathologize
the whistleblower, and drill down on his or her motives, while the
transparency community holds its breath that he or she will turn out to
be pure as the driven snow. But that's all deflection from plumbing the
much more difficult questions, which are: Should the CIA be allowed to
conduct these activities, and should it be doing so in secret without
any public oversight?
These are questions we would not even be asking without the Vault 7 source.