Motives and Whistleblowers

By Grant Davies

Recently there have been two cases of people blowing the whistle on the US government for wrongdoing. Both cases exposed significant violations of the public trust, not to mention the rights of the citizens.

Both people who exposed the wrongdoing deserve credit for helping the American people. All the citizens are better off knowing what is really going on and how the government deceived them.

One, Edward Snowden, seems to have had the intention of doing so for what he thought of as his duty as an American. The other, Jonathan Gruber, seems to have done so inadvertently and for all the wrong reasons, even if those reasons are not very clear to me. I could speculate about what motivated him, but I’m not sure that would be helpful or enlightening. When it comes to whistleblowing, I’m also not sure motives matter.

Meanwhile, in both cases the government is scrambling to respond. Below is a video that shows some of what the response to the Gruber truth telling has been.
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1 comment:

  1. I don't believe Professor Gruber intended to be a whistleblower. He accidentally blew the whistle on himself because of his hubris.
    (And he'll laugh all the way to the bank!)

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