How a Government Censored an NSA Whistleblower
By Thomas Drake, Reader Supported News
15 December 19
It was the head of the Australian Cyber Security Centre who finally admitted
before an Australian Parliament committee that she had unilaterally directed
and pressured the CyberCon conference to drop me and an academic research
professor (an Australian citizen) from the University of Melbourne as
speakers.
As an already-accepted speaker, I viewed the extraordinary pressure to block
me - a week before the start of a high visibility public interest conference
on cybersecurity - as a most alarming and Orwellian development and a
distinct form of brazen censorship for the express purpose of outright
silencing me.
The head of the ACSC misled the committee when she said she wanted my talk
canned because of a proposal for me to participate on a panel with Edward
Snowden that never went forward.
It appears she dissembled and used the apparent floating of the idea of a
proposed Edward Snowden panel (for which I had NO prior knowledge
whatsoever) as a convenient cover to justify barring me as a speaker from
CyberCon with the heavy hand of her "higher authority" as the head of the
ACSC over the conference organizers (Australian Information Security
Association).
In addition, the reason she gave before the committee is not the reason
given to me when I formally followed up with the AISA organizers.
In a phone call from the AISA Board director, I was told that I was no
longer a speaker on the conference agenda but could still attend the
conference as a delegate, and that they (AISA) would honor the flight and
accommodations arranged for me many months earlier.
I followed up formally and asked for the specific reason I was dropped as a
speaker from CyberCon. I was informed on October 7, in an e-mail from the
Board director, that "AISA works with a conference partner in respect of
CyberCon. Our conference partner has determined your presentation is
incongruent with the conference."
Furthermore, this egregious canning of me as a speaker fed right into the
current debate in Australia about press freedom and whistleblowing laws
because their public interest disclosure process (their legal way for public
servants to blow the whistle) has been described as "impenetrable" by their
Federal Court.
The current debate in Australia regarding press freedom and whistleblowing
laws strikes at the heart of any country claiming it is a democracy.
The recent raids by the Australian government against major media outlets
and whistleblowers have exposed the tension between openness and
transparency versus secrecy and closed-door government too often hiding
itself (and its actions) from accountability and the public interest.
Something has to give. The debate centers on the public knowing what the
government is doing behind closed doors and often in secret in the name of -
and under the veil and banner of - national security.
The dramatic Right to Know campaign on October 21 - with the redacted front
pages on all major newspapers in Australia as I woke up in Melbourne before
returning to the United States that very day - demonstrates beyond the
shadows of secrecy, censorship, and press suppression that sunshine is the
best antidote when a healthy and robust democracy is increasingly held
hostage by the national security state.
Efforts from on high seek to justify the actions of that national security
state under the color of public safety for more and more autocratic powers -
while stoking fear and hyping the danger to society - while going after
whistleblowers who disclose actions that clearly rise to the level of
wrongdoing, violations of law, coverup and endangering public safety,
health, and the general welfare.
What is happening in Australia is most concerning to me as fundamental
democratic values and principles are increasingly under direct attack around
the world from the rise of autocratic tendencies and raw executive
authorities bypassing, ignoring, and even undermining the rule of law under
the exception of national security and government fiat.
Australian public interest disclosure laws are also a mixed bag - a
conflicted patchwork with huge carve-outs for national security and
immigration. Nor do they adequately protect a whistleblower from reprisal,
retaliation, or retribution.
It is quite clear that not all disclosures (even when done in the public
interest) are protected by law in Australia, and the whistleblower is in
danger of exposure as a result.
At the federal level, whistleblowers face career suicide for public interest
disclosures. And if deemed by the government to be unauthorized disclosures,
those disclosures are even considered criminal.
As it happened, my removal as a speaker from CyberCon is the first time I
was ever censored anywhere.
The trend lines of increased secrecy around the world by governments does
not bode well for societies at large. History is not kind.
What I do see improving is public concern regarding just how far government
can or should go. People are discussing what society sacrifices in the name
of secrecy and national security when too often the mantra is that the ends
justify the means - and when government says to just trust us, while secret
power is too often unaccountable, even to itself.
The price I paid as a whistleblower was very high. I just about lost it all
and came close to losing my liberty and freedom. I was declared indigent by
the court, am still in severe debt, and have no pension. My career and
personal life were turned inside-out and upside-down because the government
treated me as a traitor for my whistleblowing on the mass domestic
surveillance program that violated the U.S. Constitution. I also exposed
9/11 intelligence failures and subsequent coverups plus massive
multibillion-dollar fraud, waste, and abuse. The government then turned me
into an insider threat and Enemy of the State and prosecuted me as a
criminal for allegedly violating the U.S. Espionage Act.
If it is left up to the government to determine what are state secrets, then
the government is perversely incentivized to declare as state secrets any
disclosures made in the press it does not like. This thinking can only lead
to more prosecutions of publishers to protect the state. In the absence of
meaningful oversight of the secret side of government, how can the public
trust its own government to operate and function in the public interest and
not for special or private interests?
But then again, if the press is not doing its job holding government and the
public sector to account, why should they be surprised when the public holds
even the media in lower regard?
Government should earn the public's trust and not take it for granted or
abuse that trust. The heart of democracy rests on a civil society that is
not undermined by the very government that represents it.
Once the pillars of democracy are eroded away, it is quite difficult to
restore them. The misuse of the concept of national security - as the
primary grounds to suppress democracy, the press, and the voices of
whistleblowers speaking truth to and about power - increases authoritarian
tendencies in even democratic governments.
The real danger to civil society in Australia is that these same tendencies
give rise to extralegal autocratic behavior and state control over the
institutions of democratic governance under the blanket of national security
with the excuse of protecting the state.
Thomas Drake is a former senior executive at the National Security Agency,
where he blew the whistle on massive multibillion-dollar fraud, the
widespread violations of the rights of citizens through secret mass
surveillance programs after 9/11, critical 9/11 intelligence failures and
coverups hiding behind veil of secrecy and national security. In 2010, he
was charged by the Obama administration as their signature case under the
draconian Espionage Act for his oath to support and defend the U.S.
Constitution. In 2011, the government's case against him collapsed and he
went free in a plea deal. He is featured in the documentary "Silenced" as
well as the U.S. PBS Frontline special "The United States of Secrets." In
2017, Drake received his PhD in public policy and administration. His
dissertation, "Eyewitness to History in Devolution of Democracy and
Constitutional Rights Following 9/11," focused on the centrality of the
post-9/11 security-driven world and the price paid by those who speak truth
about the abuse of power and the erosion of our rights and freedoms. He
speaks widely on privacy and security issues and the critical need to
protect our inalienable human rights. Drake has a varied career background
that includes teaching, information technology, systems and software
engineering, code analysis, and military and intelligence experience. He is
now dedicated to the defense of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
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