Whistleblower

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Daniel Ellsberg is one of the most famous whistleblowers in US history. He released the secret Pentagon Papers in 1971, which exposed the public deception of several US governments over the Vietnam War .

A whistleblower (in German-speaking increasingly whistleblower , whistleblower or discoverers ) is a person who is important to the public information brings out a secret or protected connection to the public. These typically include grievances or crimes such as corruption , insider trading , human rights violations , data misuse or general dangers of which the whistleblower learns at his workplace or in other contexts. In general, this applies above all to processes in politics , authorities and business enterprises .

Whistleblowers enjoy a high reputation in parts of the public because they ensure transparency and, as informants, put themselves in danger or risk other serious effects on their lives and work. Whistleblowers are often bullied and their employment relationship terminated. You are also brought to court for betrayal of secrets (see retaliation ). This shows the ambivalence in the behavior of society and the rule of law : Whistleblowers usually receive the support of the citizens and can therefore rely on a moral legitimacy , which, however, is often countered by an illegality of this action - justification and legal consequences fall apart. Especially in highly controversial topics such as arms trafficking , organized crime or government corruption, there were cases where whistleblowers contract killings fell victim to mysterious circumstances suddenly died at a relatively young age or supposedly suicide committed. In some countries, whistleblowers therefore enjoy special legal protection.

The information provided is mostly of a sensitive nature and can damage the reputation of people and institutions. There have also been cases where governments or heads of government have had to resign as a result of such publications, such as the Watergate affair in the United States . Therefore, the publishing media, organizations or disclosure platforms such as Wikileaks usually try to thoroughly check the credibility and authenticity of the information before it is published. This also protects you from later accusations of insufficient care and manipulability. Whistleblowers are often the central or sole source of investigative journalists working to uncover political affairs or economic scandals.

Origin of the term

The origin of the term “whistleblower” in this context is not clearly proven. There may be a semantic relationship to the German term “verpfeifen”. Are considered possible origin both English policemen by a whistle drew attention to a criminal other police officers, as well as referees in football who interrupt by whistling the game after violation of rules.

The Anglist Anatol Stefanowitsch believed that the word of the English to speech to blow a whistle derived, which, according to the American Heritage dictionary of idioms commonly uncovering wrongdoing or original ending an activity meant. The noun whistle-blower appeared in English for the first time in the 1970s in its usual meaning. In German, the term has been around since the mid-1980s and has been used since 1997.

Features and meaning

According to IT expert Bruce Schneier , society needs whistleblowers in order to be informed about illegal activities by governments - for example, people have a right to know who is spying on them and how.
Before his election as president, Barack Obama admiringly spoke of whistleblowers as “the most valuable source” for information about government misconduct and promised to increase the transparency of government action. Critics have noted, however, that the secrecy practices pursued by Obama are far superior to that of the Bush administration .
The filing cabinet of the psychiatrist of whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, which was broken into by CIA and FBI employees, is in the Smithsonian Museum today .
The CIA agent Valerie Plame was a reprisal for whistleblowing her husband, diplomat Joseph Wilson, by members of the government of George W. Bush revealed.

The processes of whistleblowing differ greatly. While some people achieve great fame and have to stand trial, like Bradley Manning (later Chelsea Manning | Wikileaks), others stay in the dark, also out of self-protection, and are covered by the publishing media. The whistleblower in one of the biggest data protection scandals in recent US history , Edward Snowden , decided to step out of anonymity and, after publishing his digitally copied secret documents via the PRISM surveillance program, to reveal his identity himself through the press. He said he did so because he hoped that his fame would give him greater protection from possible penalties by the US government.

A typical case of whistleblowing in everyday life took place in Great Britain between 2011 and 2013: In the National Health Service (NHS) there were a striking number of neglected or abused patients and an increase in deaths in some facilities. The government then set up a Quality Assurance Commission (CQC). However, because many of the CQC staff were not trained to evaluate care facilities, some reported the situation to the CQC management, including Amanda Pollard . She only went to the press with her internal knowledge (and thus became a whistleblower) when she noticed that her superiors not only did not react, but presented their criticism as trivialities and defamations. This made the scandal public, and the CQC leadership now openly encouraged employees to report grievances and set up their own telephone number for whistleblowers.

A certain protection of the whistleblower can result if the disclosure attracts a lot of attention and therefore z. For example, in order not to risk further damage to the company's image, management does not openly take action against the revealing employee (however, undercover denunciation is also possible here). In many cases, however, this attention does not occur, leaving whistleblowers exposed to persecution without major support. Proponents of whistleblowing therefore consider whistleblower protection laws to be urgently needed in order to curb corruption and responsibly ensure social peace. The protection laws, it is also objected, are often insufficient because of the possibilities of modern technology in powerful organizations (companies, governments), so that whistleblowers are dependent on reliably functioning anonymity and data protection mechanisms.

If the published material is highly explosive, for example if it relates to misconduct or crimes at the government level, the persons or institutions exposed as a result may make considerable efforts to prevent further publication. When the New York Times began reprinting the secret Pentagon papers supplied by Daniel Ellsberg on June 13, 1971 - which exposed years of deliberate public deception about essential aspects of the Vietnam War - the US government under President Richard Nixon tried at all costs to prevent further publication. Among other things, Nixon said of his advisor Henry Kissinger :

"Let's get the son-of-a-bitch in jail!"

"Let's put this son of a bitch [note: Ellsberg is meant] behind bars!"

After three episodes of the "Papers" were published in the New York Times , Nixon had further newspaper reports banned - a hitherto unique case of censorship in US history. Ellsberg gave the documents to 18 other newspapers. Publication was also prohibited for these. The dispute went up before the Supreme Court ( Supreme Court ), the publication by landmark ruling allowing the end. Ellsberg was nevertheless charged as a spy under the Espionage Act of 1917. He faced 115 years imprisonment. However, the process burst when it was discovered that Nixon had had Ellsberg spied on and consented to a break into the practice of Ellsberg's psychiatrist - it was hoped that Ellsberg's patient file would contain incriminating information about him that could have been used to discredit him. This illegal operation was entrusted to the same team of former and active FBI and CIA agents that broke into the Watergate complex a year later and triggered the scandal of the same name that cost Nixon the office in 1974. This political affair was also brought to the public by a whistleblower, FBI employee Mark Felt , whose identity the Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein kept secret until 2005.

In the relevant landmark ruling by the Supreme Court, the judges stipulated that the state's interest in secrecy in secret government documents supplied by whistleblowers must, in cases of doubt, take second place to the interests of the public and freedom of the press . One of the judges wrote:

“Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell. "

“Only a free, unhindered press can efficiently expose government deceptions. And above all responsibilities of a free press there is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving people and sending them to distant lands to die of foreign diseases and foreign bullets and grenades . "

Risk of abuse

Whistleblowing can also be used by interested parties (e.g. by secret services) to spread false information and thus lead, for example, to unjustified defamation of individual persons or institutions. Whistleblowing portals such as Wikileaks acknowledge this ambivalence about the truthfulness of the leaks and endeavor to check the truthfulness of the information before publication. The media that disseminate information from whistleblowers also usually check them carefully.

Another danger is that incriminating but inaccurate information is leaked to the press. Such false information, which gives the appearance of whistleblowing, can cause great damage to institutions, companies and people. Legally, such actions are not whistleblowing, but rather reputational behavior that is prosecuted (see gossip ).

Europe

Council of Europe

With its recommendation CM / Rec (2014) 7 of April 2014, the Council of Europe proposes to its member states the statutory national regulations for the protection of whistleblowers. For this, the German gave Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection of the European Committee for legal cooperation (English European Committee on Legal Co-operation (CDCJ) ) is an explanatory memorandum .

European Union

In the case of aviation personnel, the EU data protection officer promotes anonymous and sanction-free communications.

In April 2018, the European Parliament submitted a proposal to the member states for more protection for whistleblowers who can go public after going through an internal complaint procedure. In the negotiations with the EU states on this proposal in February 2019, the governments of Germany , Austria , France , Italy and the Netherlands insisted that protection should only be given to those who first went through a three-stage notification procedure before applying turn the public.

Germany

Support rally for the US whistleblower Chelsea Manning (then Bradley Manning ) in Frankfurt on January 21, 2012.

The Anglo-American legal term has not yet found an exact equivalent in German. Nonetheless, scientific and administrative ethics , for example, are increasingly reflecting the phenomenon of “whistleblowing”. The terms whistleblower or scandal uncoverer are spreading, albeit hesitantly .

In Germany, three federal ministries have a bill imposing a § 612a n. F. BGB presented for whistleblower protection for workers, the subject of a 2008 public hearing in the Bundestag on June 4.

On April 1, 2009 the Civil Service Status Act came into force for the federal states and municipalities; it is the successor law to the civil service framework law . A breach of the principle of confidentiality is codified in Section 37 (2) No. 3 BeamtStG. As a result, in addition to the catalog offenses under Section 138 of the Criminal Code (which regulates the reporting obligation) , civil servants may also report corruption offenses under Sections 331 - 337 StGB (but only these) directly to the public prosecutor.

The § 67 , para. 2 # 3. Federal officials Law n. F. includes an analog scheme, which applies to officials in the region of the collar.

The Lower Saxony State Criminal Police Office and the State Criminal Police Office Baden-Württemberg have put an electronic whistleblowing system into operation for anonymous information on corruption. The Business Keeper Monitoring System is also used with different focuses by special investigative units in companies, authorities and governments.

In a judgment of July 21, 2011, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the publication of grievances by an employee can be covered by the freedom of expression guaranteed in the European Convention on Human Rights . In the case to be decided, the Human Court of Justice was of the opinion that the German State Labor Court had not sufficiently taken into account the freedom of expression of a geriatric nurse who had been dismissed without notice after her employer reported a criminal offense due to deficiencies in care. The termination was therefore unjustified.

The Federal Government is of the opinion that employees who point out abuses in their company (whistleblowers) are already adequately protected by the existing labor law and the general dismissal regulations. That emerges from your answer to a small question from the Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen parliamentary group . The group had pointed out that there is often a great deal of public interest in this information, but that whistleblowers are often threatened with consequences under labor and service law.

A motion by the states of Berlin and Hamburg in the Bundesrat to pass a resolution of the Bundesrat on the legal anchoring of the protection of informants for employees in the German Civil Code (BR-DRs. 534/11) was passed in the 888th session of the Bundesrat on October 14th Rejected in 2011. With the motion for a resolution, the applicants wanted to call on the federal government to present a corresponding draft law. This should protect employees from disproportionate sanctions by employers who draw the attention of third parties to the breach of legal obligations through their own advice or support activities. For this purpose, clear and unambiguous regulations in the area of ​​informant protection are necessary. The previously existing loophole and the sometimes diverging decisions of the courts are currently leading to considerable legal uncertainty for employees.

The SPD parliamentary group in the German Bundestag published a draft of a whistleblower protection law in February 2012. This was the first time that an independent law was proposed with regard to the whistleblower problem. After the SPD, the parliamentary group of Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen has now introduced the draft of a whistleblower protection law to the Bundestag. Unlike the above-mentioned draft of the SPD parliamentary group based on the General Equal Treatment Act (AGG), the draft law of the Greens from May 2012 does not provide for the creation of an independent whistleblower protection law, but is content with amending and supplementing existing laws.

As of January 1, 2014, credit institutions in Germany are obliged to set up a whistleblower process as a result of stricter supervisory regulations . The legal basis is Section 25a Paragraph 1 Clause 6 No. 3 of the Banking Act (KWG) new version, which was reformed by the CRD IV Implementation Act.

Switzerland

In 1984 Rudolf Hafner , at that time auditor in the financial control of the canton of Bern , revealed , among other things, the misappropriation of lottery money and the support of secret voting committees with public funds by the Bern government council . Hafner triggered a political earthquake that became known as the Bern financial affair and led to a change in the political majorities in the subsequent election.

At the beginning of 2012, an employee of the Basler Bank Sarasin caused a sensation who violated Swiss banking secrecy . He told the National Council Christoph Blocher with that in August 2011 from the account of the Board President of the Swiss National Bank , Philipp Hildebrand , 504'000 US dollars had been purchased. This gave the impression of insider trading . Hildebrand resigned shortly afterwards; the informant reported himself to the police in early January 2012. He was then dismissed from his bank without notice, and criminal proceedings were initiated against him.

Hervé Falciani , a former computer scientist at HSBC bank in Geneva, has provided the French, UK and German tax authorities with data on thousands of tax evaders. In 2015, Switzerland sentenced him to prison for “industrial espionage” and is demanding his extradition from Spain. In April 2018, Falciani was arrested in Madrid. The whistleblower must fear being extradited to the Swiss authorities. He was released under strict conditions after 24 hours.

The Federal Competition Commission WEKO also describes voluntary disclosure as whistleblowing and operates the whistleblowing information page on the Internet to support it. and publishes the notification form, leaflet and bonus regulation form ( voluntary disclosure). The observer also has a notification office at sichermelden.ch .

Vatican state

Monsignor Renato Dardozzi , who died in 2003, left his secret archive in Switzerland made up of files from the Vatican State Secretariat and papers from the Vatican Bank Istituto per le Opere di Religione (IOR) to the journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi . The documents justified the suspicion of money laundering in the service of the Mafia , the blockade of corruption investigations, of bribery affairs and secret numbered accounts , which contained the money of the seven-time Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti from the then Catholic People's Party Democrazia Cristiana . In 2009, Nuzzi caused a sensation with his book Vatikan AG - A Secret Archive Reveals the Truth About the Church's Financial and Political Scandals about the Financial Conduct of the Vatican Bank. The bank president, Angelo Caloia, had to resign after 20 years at the helm of the Vatican Bank.

In 2011 internal documents of the Holy See reached the media repeatedly . In 2012, Nuzzi published the Sua Santita (His Holiness: The Secret Letters from Pope Benedict XVI's Desk). In May 2012, Paolo Gabriele , a valet of the Pope, was arrested for distributing papers to the media on allegations of corruption, mismanagement and favoritism in the Vatican . In 2013 the Vatican Bank IOR was in a serious crisis due to money laundering, blocking of corruption investigations, bribery affairs and secret numbered accounts.

The newspaper La Repubblica announced that it had leaked further secret papers even after Gabriele's arrest.

India

In India the law protects whistleblowers increasingly (see Whistleblower Protection Act, German  law for the protection of whistleblowers ).

United States of America

US President Richard Nixon had to resign in 1974 because of the Watergate affair , which was largely made public due to the information provided by the whistleblower Mark Felt ( alias Deep Throat ).

In the USA , the law also protects whistleblowers (see Whistleblower Protection Act, German  law for the protection of whistleblowers ). Whistleblowers who report fraud against the government are entitled to a share of the damages brought in ( False Claims Act , see qui tam ).

Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX)

In addition, the US Congress passed the SOX in 2002 following several financial scandals. According to this, US stock corporations and their business units in the European Union as well as non-US companies that are listed on a US stock exchange must implement procedures within their audit committee for receiving, storing and processing complaints that the issuer has in relation to receives accounting, internal accounting controls and auditing issues; and for the confidential, anonymous filing of complaints by employees of the issuer in relation to questionable accounting or auditing matters. In addition, Section 806 of the SOX contains provisions to protect employees of publicly traded companies who present evidence of fraud from retaliation against them for using the reporting process.

Whistleblower during the Obama administration

Before his first election as President , Barack Obama , US President from 2009 to 2017, admired whistleblowers as “the most valuable source” of information about government misconduct and promised to work to increase the transparency of government actions. Critics have noted that during his presidency by 2011, five US intelligence whistleblowers had been indicted under the Espionage Act, which also provides for the death penalty . That is more cases than all the US presidents before him put together. He had completely broken his election promises in this regard. Former NSA employee Thomas Drake , who had already gone public in 2003 about unlawful surveillance measures and a waste of money by the secret service he had discovered, said that he had voted for Obama himself and that he had high hopes for him at the time. But they were very disappointed; Obama has brought the state's secrecy to a level that even George W. Bush "did not even intend" to do. Obama is "worse than Bush" in this regard, the Americans have been deceived by him ("hoodwinked"). Drake had been charged with whistleblowing under the Espionage Act and faced a 35-year prison sentence; however, the indictment collapsed in 2011 on all counts. Drake was sentenced to one year probation for "misappropriating" an NSA computer, helping himself to find the charge so the state could " save face ".

Despite the repression that whistleblowers risk and some of them suffer, according to a US study (Don Soeken) 84% of whistleblowers would behave in the same or similar way again in the same situation. In 2002, three whistleblowers were named Person of the Year by Time Magazine .

2014, the US Securities and Exchange Commission paid SEC a whistleblower from US $ 30 million. In 2016, she paid a former senior finance manager at US agrochemical company Monsanto nearly $ 22.5 million for his reports of irregular bookkeeping.

Whistleblower during Trump's administration

In the first five months of Donald Trump's presidency , a lot of information was given to the media, including the Washington Post and New York Times . Leaked information caused Michael T. Flynn to resign on February 13, 2017. Trump called Leaker a criminal on February 15, 2017.

International Whistleblower Award

An international whistleblower prize has been awarded in Germany every two years since 1999 (see web links). The award was donated by the Association of German Scientists (VDW) and the German section of the International Association of Lawyers against Nuclear Arms (IALANA) . Also Transparency International participates in the award ceremony. The aim of the award is to raise public awareness of whistleblowing and to support the award winners - who are often affected or threatened by dismissal and measures. The previous winners are:

  • 1999: Alexander Nikitin - former Soviet naval captain who drew attention to unsafe nuclear waste storage facilities and dangerous practices in the Russian Northern Fleet ;
  • 2001: Margrit Herbst - German veterinarian who informed the public about the cover-up of the first BSE cases in 1994;
  • 2003: Daniel Ellsberg - senior US Department of Defense official who released the Pentagon Papers to the press in 1971;
  • 2005: Theodore A. Postol - MIT physicist who criticized the US missile defense program GMD, accusing the Lincoln Laboratory of MIT scientific fraud and MIT itself of covering up;
  • 2005: Árpád Pusztai - biochemist at the Rowett Institute in Aberdeen , who found damage to the immune system and growth disorders of organs in rat feeding experiments with gene potatoes and published this;
  • 2007: Liv Bode - German scientist who tried to clarify the suspicion of contamination of plasma donations with infectious components with the Bornash disease virus in the field of infection research at the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin;
  • 2007: Brigitte Heinisch - geriatric nurse in a Vivantes facility in Berlin , who made public the inadequate care and support of elderly and needy people by filing a criminal complaint for fraud. She was then terminated without notice. The termination was confirmed by the German labor courts. The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, however, saw this as a human rights violation because the German courts had not sufficiently taken into account the freedom of expression of the employee and the public interest in information when assessing the whistleblowing. He awarded the person concerned compensation for the loss of their jobs. In the restitution suit brought against the employer on May 24, 2012, the parties reached a settlement at the Berlin-Brandenburg State Labor Court , according to which Heinisch received a high five-digit severance payment and the employment relationship ended on March 31, 2005 after the regular notice period had expired.
  • 2009: Rudolf Schmenger and Frank Wehrheim - for uncovering tax evasion by Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank of EUR 500 million and for their commitment to maintaining effective working methods in the Frankfurt tax investigation in the fight against tax evasion - also against the resistance of the tax authorities. (See tax investigator affair .)
  • 2011: Rainer Moormann - nuclear scientist at the Research Center Jülich , who revealed that the 1988 decommissioned pebble -Versuchsreaktor AVR in Jülich had been operated under normal operation for years with dangerously excessive core temperatures.
  • 2011: Anonymus - for the publication of the documentary video known under the title Collateral Murder about an air strike carried out by US soldiers in Iraq, which the lending associations consider a serious war crime . The award should be handed over to the whistleblower as soon as his identity has been established. Today it is known that the whistleblower was former US soldier Bradley Manning, now Chelsea Manning . However, since Manning was in American custody, the award ceremony could not take place in the usual way.
  • 2013: Edward Snowden - former technical employee of the US-American secret services NSA and CIA , who with the help of thousands of copied documents made public the existence of programs of American and British secret services, which serve the total surveillance of the worldwide Internet traffic, including PRISM , Tempora and Boundless Informant . The award was given to him in absentia. In a message conveyed by Jacob Appelbaum , Snowden thanked “ everyone who took part in the debate ” and added: “ Governments are accountable to us for their decisions. "(See also: Surveillance and espionage affair 2013 )
  • 2015: Brandon Bryant - for statements about its use as a pilot of combat drones of the United States Air Force ; Gilles-Éric Séralini - for investigations into the dangers of the herbicide Roundup ( Séralini affair ) and posthumously Léon Gruenbaum (1934-2004) - for uncovering the role of the former managing director of the Karlsruhe Nuclear Research Center Rudolf Greifeld during World War II as a war administrator in Paris.
  • 2017: Martin Porwoll and Marie Klein - commercial directors and pharmaceutical-technical assistant of the "Alte Apotheke" in Bottrop , who revealed the suspicion that illegal bullshit with anti-cancer drugs ( cytostatics ) had been practiced there for years , making several thousand difficult and often terminally ill cancer patients were harmed. Martin Porwoll had compared the numbers between the actually delivered and billed active ingredients and reported the matter. Marie Klein had seized an IV bag, which should actually have been destroyed, and handed it over to the investigators.
  • 2017: Can Dündar for his revelations at the beginning of 2014 of a delivery of weapons and military equipment to terrorist jihadists in Syria in breach of international law by the secret service MIT of the NATO member state Turkey .

Another whistleblower prize is the Ridenhour Truth-Telling Prize , which has been awarded annually since 2004 .

Other well-known whistleblowers

Grave of the Austrian diplomat and Middle East expert Herbert Amry in Vienna. He died suddenly at the age of 46, shortly after he had repeatedly informed the Austrian government about illegal arms deals by the state-owned company Noricum .
US soldier Chelsea Manning (then Bradley Manning ) made secret documents public about US operations in Iraq and Afghanistan because she wanted to draw the public's attention to what she believed to be "immoral acts" by her government, such as torture of suspects . In August 2013, she was sentenced to 35 years in prison and fined US $ 100,000. Their conditions of detention and treatment by US authorities have been severely criticized on several occasions, including by the UN .
In the 1970s and 1980s, the Bavarian tax officer Wilhelm Schlötterer publicized the influence of CSU politicians on tax matters of friends and celebrities, which brought him considerable professional disadvantages and problems.
  • 1934: Herbert von Bose - Press Chief of the Conservative Vice Chancellor in the early phase of the Adolf Hitler government , Franz von Papen . Bose secretly secret information and documents were over by the Nazis committed atrocities against the British journalist Claud Cockburn on and other foreign press corps for publication in their home countries; After the Nazis became aware that the disclosures in The Week, published by Cockburn, and in other foreign newspapers were based on materials that had to come from the Vice Chancellor's press office, which was headed by Bose, Hitler ordered that office be included in the political cleansing of June 30, 1934 . During the occupation of his office by members of the Leibstandarte SS, von Bose shot Adolf Hitler from behind.
  • 1960: William Hamilton Martin and Bernon F. Mitchell 1960
  • 1963: Werner Pätsch , an employee of the constitution protection, who uncovered the violation of postal and telecommunications secrecy by German, American and British secret services as well as the employment of former Nazis
  • 1967: Meier 19 , a police officer with the Zurich City Police, who in 1967 brought a police and judicial affair to the public and was then persecuted; there is a book and a film about his case.
  • 1972/1973: William Mark Felt Sr., former US FBI agent; on May 31, 2005, after 33 years of secrecy by reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the Washington Post announced that he was the main informant in the Watergate affair under the pseudonym Deep Throat ; Felt's information ultimately led to the resignation of US President Richard Nixon .
  • Kathryn Bolkovac , an American police investigator who was deployed to the UN in the IPTF through the private military service provider DynCorp . They identified with the help of Madeleine Rees in post-war Bosnia against traffickers and pimps and noted that members of different UN organizations for prostitutes paid and participated in the sexual exploitation of women. After she discovered this and various, even higher ranks of the UN organizations were asked to vacate her posts, she was fired by DynCorp. Her story was filmed in Whistleblower .
  • 1985: Herbert Amry , an Austrian diplomat and Middle East expert. In 1985 he persistently drew the Austrian government's attention to illegal arms deals between a state-owned armaments company and Iran, which was then at war . Shortly afterwards, he suddenly died of heart failure at the age of 46. A few years later, his revelations sparked a state affair in Austria, the Noricum scandal .
  • 1985: Roger Boisjoly , an American aerospace engineer, who had warned in vain since July 1985 of a fatal defect in the sealing rings of the space shuttle , which ultimately led to the Challenger catastrophe on January 28, 1986, exactly as he predicted .
  • 1986: Mordechai Vanunu , an Israeli nuclear engineer who revealed to western media in 1986 that Israel had the atomic bomb ; he was abducted from Italy to Israel by the Israeli secret service and sentenced by an Israeli court to an 18-year prison term for betrayal of secrets.
  • 1997: Christoph Meili , former security guard at a private security company that worked for the major Swiss bank UBS ; smuggled alleged Holocaust documents out of the bank in 1997 and saved them from being shredded .
  • 1998: Paul van Buitenen , EU control officer, who in 1998 publicly opposed the fraudulent activities of some members of the European Commission ; as a result of his action the whole commission had to resign; Another consequence was that Paul van Buitenen was given a four-month leave of absence (with his salary halved) and then transferred to a “safe” position; from 2004 to 2009 he was a member of the European Parliament for the small Dutch party Europa Transparant ; today he is working again as an official of the European Commission.
  • 2001: Habib Souaïdia, an officer in an Algerian anti-terrorist unit , accused the Algerian government of state terrorism in 2001 . During the civil war of the 1990s , in which, according to Amnesty International estimates, up to 200,000 people died, she waged a "dirty war" against her own population in the strictest of secrecy . The government officially waged war against Islamist terrorist groups who carried out terrorist attacks against soldiers and civilians. According to Souaïdia, however, military personnel were at least involved in numerous massacres of the civilian population, and he himself witnessed state secret agents carrying out terrorist attacks against civilians in disguise , for which the Islamist terrorists were then officially and falsely held responsible. According to other whistleblowers from the secret services, the leadership of the largest terrorist group Groupe Islamique Armé (GIA - translated: “Armed Islamic Group”) was infiltrated by agents of the Algerian secret services, and the secret services themselves formed new terrorist groups, which were then “completely out of control advised ”. The Algerian government had Souaidia, who had gone into exile in France, sentenced in 2002 to 20 years in prison for his statements in absentia. His allegations, which were also confirmed in a similar form by other witnesses, were never officially investigated. Instead, a general amnesty for the crimes of all conflicting parties was presented to the people in 2005 , which denied any responsibility of the state organs for serious human rights violations and prevented the judicial investigation of the violent " disappearance " of thousands of people.
  • Katharine Gun , translator at the British secret service GCHQ , revealed to the public that UN authorities and delegates were bugged by the British secret service; she could not reconcile her participation in the preparations for the Iraq war with her conscience; she was acquitted by the court.
  • Joseph C. Wilson , spouse of illegally exposed CIA secret agent Valerie Plame . Before the Iraq war, Wilson had publicly disseminated the fact that he had uncovered that, contrary to the statements of the US government , Saddam Hussein had not bought any nuclear weapons raw material from Niger . As an act of revenge, this triggered the disclosure of his wife's activity as an agent by US government circles. Lewis Libby , an adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney , was later sentenced to prison for treason but was immediately pardoned by President George W. Bush .
  • 2004: Hans-Peter Martin , Member of the European Parliament, tried to prove fraudulent daily allowance in 2004.
  • 2005: Matthew Diaz , former Lieutenant Commander and United States Navy lawyer , sent the list of Guantanamo Bay prisoners to the Center for Constitutional Rights, a non-profit organization that advocates for fundamental and human rights and their advancement.
  • 2010: Bradley Manning , presumably passed a video withheld by the US military on the air strikes in Baghdad on July 12, 2007 and numerous other documents to the WikiLeaks platform in 2010 . The video shows civilians being shot from a US attack helicopter, including reporters from Reuters , accompanied by cynical comments from the helicopter crew. In addition, Manning is said to have passed on cables from US embassies to WikiLeaks, which were published and caused considerable attention worldwide. Manning was on trial in the United States, facing life imprisonment for betrayal of secrets and possibly “cooperation with the enemy”. He was found guilty on 19 of 21 counts on July 30, 2013 and sentenced to 35 years in prison and a fine of US $ 100,000 on August 21, 2013. Manning, now Chelsea Manning , was released on May 17, 2017 .
  • Rudolf Elmer , a former Swiss bank employee, passed on customer and business data from alleged tax evaders to tax authorities, the media and WikiLeaks.
  • Sean Hoare , a former reporter for the discontinued tabloid News of the World, was the first to incriminate British government spokesman Andy Coulson in 2010 and unpacked about the newspaper's illegal research practices. He died in July 2011.
  • David Kelly , a British microbiologist, bioweapons expert and advisor to the UK Ministry of Defense. He was, according to later statements by the BBC, the main source of a BBC report in which the British government was accused of exaggerating intelligence reports on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction prior to the Iraq war . Kelly allegedly committed suicide in 2003, two days after being questioned by a British Parliament investigative committee.
  • Miroslaw Strecker , truck driver who contributed significantly to the discovery of a meat scandal in Germany. Strecker has received several awards for his commitment.
  • During his work in the Bavarian financial administration in the 1970s, Wilhelm Schlötterer tried to take action against the influence of top politicians in favor of wealthy friends and celebrities in tax matters. He also made the grievances public, which brought him considerable professional disadvantages. In a book in 2009 he wrote, among other things, that Franz Josef Strauss had left a fortune of 400 million D-Marks , which brought him a complaint from the Strauss family. In June 2012, testimony emerged that appears to support his version.
  • Klaus Förster , the head of the tax investigation office in Sankt Augustin , uncovered the money laundering system with the monastery of the Steyler missionaries and other "washing facilities", disguised as supposedly non-profit associations such as the " Citizens' Associations ". The investigations that he had started and was not allowed to finish himself led to the most important party donation scandals in the Federal Republic of Germany , such as the Flick party donation scandal and the party donation process against the CDU federal treasurer Walther Leisler Kiep and his authorized representative Uwe Lüthje .
  • Inge Hannemann , who has been employed in the Hamburg-Altona job center since 2005, publicly brings up grievances in the placement of unemployed people within the Hartz IV system ; In June 2013 there was a hearing at the Hamburg Labor Court .
  • William Binney , who was with the US secret service NSA for 32 years and then turned into a whistleblower in 2001 when the domestic surveillance program Stellar Wind was launched after 9/11 . Stellar Wind, originally developed for international espionage, has been modified for surveillance within the United States.
  • Joseph Darby , an American sergeant in the US military police , who in 2004 brought the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib to light by handing over a CD with photographs and an anonymous brief description to Special Agent Tyler Pieron of the US Army Criminal Investigation Command bring to. It triggered an avalanche of research and media reports on these serious violations of the Geneva Conventions .
  • Anders Kærgaard , a Danish intelligence officer who in 2012 disclosed the torture of civilians during the Iraq war with the tolerance of the Danish military .
  • Sibel Edmonds , who uncovered inconsistencies in 9/11 investigations, US politicians' involvement in drug deliveries, and corruption in the Pentagon.
  • From 1975 onwards, as an employee of the Technical University of Braunschweig, Hans-Helge Jürgens uncovered the ailing condition of the Asse test repository .

Organizations and services

Whistleblower Network e. V. has been campaigning for whistleblower protection since 2006. His fields of work are legal policy, advising companies, authorities and organizations, supporting whistleblowers, educating the public as well as international cooperation and networking. That of Hans-Joachim Selenz founded Clean State e. V. sees itself as a Germany-wide contact point for whistleblowers.

The WikiLeaks website offers whistleblowers the opportunity to publish previously secret documents anonymously on the World Wide Web . At the end of July 2012, the weekly newspaper Die Zeit opened a “digital mailbox” where whistleblowers can anonymously upload documents. The data is not published immediately, but is further evaluated by editors.

literature

Movies

  • Sebastian Bellwinkel: Whistleblower - The loneliness of the brave . Germany, 2016, ARD documentation, 45 min. (Missing legal protection based on three well-known examples A. Deltour (Luxembourg tax reduction), M. Herbst (BSE in Germany), S. Ennullat (prosecution of right-wing extremist crimes in Saxony-Anhalt); Table of contents in tagesspiegel.de from November 20, 2016)
  • I give up on my company - civil courage in my job , Germany, documentation, 1997, 45 min., A film by V. Thurn, summary .
  • The upright gait and its price. France, Documentary, 2007, 53 min. Director: Jean Robert Viallet, Mathieu Verboud, production: arte , Summary of arte
  • Fictional representation of the risks whistleblowers take: The Insider with Al Pacino and Russell Crowe using the example of: Jeffrey Wigand .
  • Whistleblower - On a dangerous mission , Canada / Germany 2010, 112 min., Director: Larysa Kondracki
  • Jeboja , South Korea, 114 min., Director: Lin Soon-rye

Broadcast reports

See also

Web links

Wiktionary: whistle-blower  - explanations of meanings, word origins , synonyms, translations
Commons : Whistleblowers  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Marc Pitzke: "Pentagon Papers": Washington confesses last Vietnam lies. on: Spiegel Online. June 9, 2011.
  2. ^ Dietmar Ostermann: War and Lies . In: Berliner Zeitung , June 18, 2011
  3. ↑ From English whistleblower, from English to blow the whistle (on) 'let it fly up', 'stop', 'whistle', from originally 'blow the whistle'.
  4. ↑ Julian Dörr, Verena Diersch: On the justification of whistleblowing: a legal ethical and legitimacy-theoretical perspective of the whistleblower cases Carl von Ossietzky and Edward Snowden . In: Journal of Politics . tape 64 , no. 4 , December 5, 2017, ISSN  0044-3360 , p. 468–492 , doi : 10.5771 / 0044-3360-2017-4-468 ( nomos-elibrary.de [accessed on January 22, 2018]).
  5. ↑ Winters v. Houston Chronicle Pub. Co., 795 SW2d 723, 727 (Tex. 1990) (Doggett, J., concurring).
  6. ↑ Marcia P. Miceli, Janet P. Near: Blowing the whistle: The organizational and legal implications for companies and employees. Issues in organization and management series. Lexington Books, New York 1992, ISBN 0-669-19599-5 , p. 8.
  7. ↑ to blow the whistle on. In: Christine Ammer (Ed.): The American Heritage dictionary of idioms . Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1997, ISBN 0-395-72774-X , p. 68.
  8. ^ Anatol Stefanowitsch: Whistleblower . Sprachlog, January 15, 2011, accessed January 15, 2011.
  9. ↑ Bruce Schneier: What We Don't Know About Spying on Citizens: Scarier Than What We Know. In: The Atlantic. June 6, 2013, accessed September 13, 2013 .
  10. ↑ Kai Biermann : We need more whistleblowers. In: golem.de . June 8, 2013, accessed June 17, 2013 .
  11. ↑ a b Matthew Harwood: NSA whistle-blower: Obama “worse than Bush” interview with whistleblower Thomas Drake, Salon.com, March 7, 2012. Quoting from interview: “ Worse than Bush. [...] He's expanding the secrecy regime far beyond what the Bush even intended, interestingly enough. I think Bush is probably like, 'Whoa.' ”
  12. ↑ Bush pardons Cheney's ex-chief of staff Libby. ( Memento from December 24, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Stern.de, July 3, 2007.
  13. ↑ Care Quality Commission's leaders 'lack the necessary skills' . The Guardian, Nov. 29, 2011.
  14. ↑ CQC - we'll listen to whistleblowers more . ( Memento of February 22, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Public Service Bulletin, August 7, 2012
  15. ↑ Anyone who reveals mistakes will be punished. In: Frankfurter Rundschau. January 23, 2011. (Interview with EU lawyer Strack)
  16. ↑ Markus Mandalka: Dangers for journalistic source protection, protection of informants and whistleblowers through information technology and data traces
  17. ^ Documentary film: The Most Dangerous Man in America - Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers (USA 2009, 91 min.), Directed by Judith Ehrlich, Rick Goldsmith
  18. ↑ a b New York Times Co. v. United States 403 US 713 (1971).
  19. ^ Egil Kroh: The Break-In That History Forgot. On: The New York Times. June 30, 2007.
  20. ↑ Jonathan Haidt: The New Synthesis in Moral Psychology . In: Science . 316, No. 5827, May 18, 2007, pp. 998-1002. doi : 10.1126 / science.1137651 .
  21. ↑ European Committee on Legal Co-operation (CDCJ): Recommendation CM / Rec (2014) 7 of the Committee of Ministers to the member states on the protection of whistleblowers. (PDF 95 kB) (adopted by the Committee of Ministers on April 30, 2014 at the 1198th meeting of the Deputy Ministers). (No longer available online.) In: Human Rights and Rule of Law. Council of Europe (German: Euro Europe ), April 30, 2014 filed by the original on July 26, 2014 ; Retrieved July 28, 2014 .
  22. ^ Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection, Germany: Council of Europe. The protection of whistleblowers explanatory report on the recommendation. (PDF 574 kB) (No longer available online.) Council of Europe, July 21, 2014, archived from the original on July 26, 2014 ; Retrieved July 28, 2014 . Based on information from coe.int/CDCJ: news as of July 28, 2014.
  23. ↑ Summary of the opinion of the European Data Protection Supervisor on the Commission's proposal for a regulation on the reporting of incidents in civil aviation to repeal Directive 2003/42 / EC, Regulation (EC) No. 1321/2007 of the Commission, Regulation (EC) No. 1330/2007 of the Commission and Article 19 of Regulation (EU) No. 996/2010 . In: The European Data Protection Supervisor (Ed.): Official Journal of the European Union . December 7, 2013 ( 2013 / C 358/11 [PDF; 716 kB ; accessed on January 14, 2014]): “Among other changes, the proposal has the following objectives: […] To promote reporting through harmonized protection against punishment by superiors and against the prosecution of those who report the incidents. (Note: extract) "
  24. ↑ Austria slows down the protection of whistleblowers www.orf.at, March 1, 2019
  25. ↑ Germany opposes better protection against whistleblowers. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . February 27, 2019, accessed February 28, 2019 .
  26. ^ Draft law to introduce a § 612a new version of the BGB on whistleblower protection
  27. ↑ public hearing in the Bundestag
  28. ↑ EMRG, judgment of July 21, 2011, Heinisch v Germany, Az. 28274/08; published in German translation a. a. in NJW , 2011, 3501.
  29. ↑ Decision text (English)
  30. ↑ European Court of Human Rights allows whistleblowing
  31. ↑ BT-Drs. 17/7053 .
  32. ↑ BT-Drs. 17/6902 .
  33. ↑ Quotation from the Bundestag communication published by Juris on October 7, 2011
  34. ↑ Overview of the 888th session of the Federal Council on October 14, 2011, item 15 there ( Memento from December 31, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  35. ↑ Explanation of agenda item 15 of the 888th session of the Federal Council ( Memento of February 6, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF)
  36. ↑ Page no longer available , search in web archives: Legislative report of the labor law advisor@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.arbrb.de
  37. ↑ BT-Drs. 17/8567 .
  38. ↑ Notification from the BT-Drs draft law prepared by the portal arbeitsrecht.de. 17/9782 of May 23, 2012. Draft law. ( Memento of August 21, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF)
  39. ↑ CRD IV Implementation Act of August 28, 2013 ( Federal Law Gazette I p. 3395 ).
  40. ↑ Christof Forster, Lorenz Honegger, Werner De Schepper : This is how Christoph Blocher came to Hildebrand's account data. In: Aargauer Zeitung . January 7, 2012.
  41. ↑ Violation of bank client confidentiality by an employee of Bank Sarasin. ( Memento from August 20, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 40 kB) Press release from January 3, 2012
  42. ↑ Whistleblower Falciani arrested in Spain April 7, 2018
  43. ^ Whistleblowing. Competition Commission, accessed on July 23, 2018 .
  44. ↑ Registration forms. Competition Commission, accessed on July 23, 2018 .
  45. ↑ https://sichermelden.ch/
  46. ^ Head of the Vatican Bank in the sights of the investigators In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , September 21, 2010.
  47. ↑ New secret documents from the Vatican emerged , spiegel.de
  48. ↑ cf. Wikipedia in English: Whistleblower , Whistle Blowers Protection Act, 2011 (India)
  49. ↑ cf. Wikipedia in English Whistleblower Protection Act (USA)
  50. ↑ Jane Mayer: The Secret Sharer. Is Thomas Drake an enemy of the state? In: The New Yorker. May 23, 2011. Quote: “ Including the Drake case, it has been using the Espionage Act to press criminal charges in five alleged instances of national-security leaks — more such prosecutions than have occurred in all previous administrations combined. ”
  51. ↑ Karel L. Soeken: A survey of whistleblowers. (PDF; 5 MB) whistleblower-net.de
  52. ↑ spiegel.de August 31, 2016
  53. ↑ leakers in the Trump administration may have trouble invoking Obama's whistleblower protections
  54. ↑ usnews.com
  55. ^ Judgment of the Court of Justice of July 21, 2011 Heinisch v Germany, 28274/08 (English)
  56. ↑ Termination due to criticism of the employer is unjustified. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , July 21, 2011.
  57. ↑ Press release of the LAG Berlin-Brandenburg from May 24, 2012
  58. ↑ 123recht.net accessed on June 16, 2012
  59. ↑ Whistleblower Prize: Tax investigators fired for good work. In: Frankfurter Rundschau via Social Forum Dortmund , May 9, 2009.
  60. ^ Jury statement: Whistleblower Award 2009. In: whistleblower-net.de , May 3, 2009.
  61. ↑ a b Awarding of the Whistleblower Prize 2011. In: Hintergrund.de , June 6, 2011.
  62. ↑ a b Whistleblower Award 2011 goes to nuclear researcher. In: heise online . July 23, 2013, accessed June 7, 2011 .
  63. ↑ Detlef Borchers: Whistleblower Prize for Edward Snowden. In: heise online . July 23, 2013. Retrieved July 23, 2013 .
  64. ↑ Swantje Dake: Honor in absentia. In: Stern . August 30, 2013, accessed August 31, 2013 .
  65. ^ Awarding of the Whistleblower Prize in Karlsruhe . SWR Landesschau aktuell Baden-Württemberg , October 16, 2015
  66. ↑ Tobias Knaack: Posthumously, Léon Gruenbaum receives the 2015 Whistleblower Prize. In: Südwest Presse , October 15, 2015.
  67. ^ Whistleblower award for former employees of the Alte Apotheke and Can Dündar . In: CORRECTIV, October 30, 2017
  68. ↑ Whistleblowers in the pharmacist scandal are recognized. In: Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung , October 30, 2017
  69. ↑ Can Dündar receives “Whistleblower Award 2017” . In: Die Welt , October 30, 2017
  70. ↑ Rights denied. UN criticizes Bradley Manning's detention conditions in the United States. In: Junge Welt. July 15, 2011
  71. ↑ Office of the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, July 12, 2011: USA: Unmonitored access to detainees is essential to any credible inquiry into torture or cruel inhuman and degrading treatment, says UN torture expert. Retrieved July 15, 2011 .
  72. ↑ US government denies UN commissioner a confidential meeting with suspected Wikileaks informant. Heise.de, April 12, 2011, accessed on April 13, 2011 .
  73. ^ Claud Cockburn: In Time of Trouble. An Autobiography , 1956, pp. 235f; Heinz Höhne: Mordsache Röhm, 1984, p. 248; Article about the week at Spartacus Educational . Hitler announced the blow against Bose's press office to Alfred Rosenberg on June 27, 1934, when he presented him with foreign newspaper reports on National Socialist crimes. Hitler: "Yes, everything comes from here, I'll have the whole office excavated".
  74. ^ Habib Souaïdia: Dirty War in Algeria. Report by an ex-officer in the Army Special Forces (1992–2000) . Translation from French. Chronos-Verlag, Zurich 2001, OCLC 313813982 , pp. 199-201.
  75. ↑ a b Amnesty International Algeria
  76. ↑ a b "When the men of the DRS grew their beards, I knew they were preparing for a 'dirty job' in which they pretended to be terrorists." Habib Souaïdia: Dirty war in Algeria. Report by an ex-officer in the Army Special Forces (1992–2000). Translation from French. Chronos-Verlag, Zurich 2001, p. 113.
  77. ↑ a b c Algeria's dirty war. Secret service agents unpack. (No longer available online.) In: Le Monde Diplomatique. March 17, 2004, archived from the original on June 4, 2008 ; Retrieved December 16, 2008 .
  78. ↑ a b Ali Al-Nasani: The everyday massacre. In: Zeit Online . October 2002, accessed December 16, 2009 .
  79. ↑ "News of the World" whistleblower found dead
  80. ↑ Sean Hoare knew how destructive the News of the World could be. The Guardian, July 18, 2011, accessed July 19, 2011 .
  81. ↑ Seehofer honors courageous rotten meat drivers. In: Der Tagesspiegel , October 5, 2007.
  82. ↑ Egmont R. Koch : Witness reports on Strauss's three-digit million fortune ( memento from June 29, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) , Stern, June 27, 2012.
  83. ↑ Job center employee refuses to punish the unemployed. In: Hamburger Abendblatt. April 6, 2013, accessed April 21, 2013 .
  84. ↑ "We are abolishing Hartz IV". In: the daily newspaper . April 5, 2013, accessed April 21, 2013 .
  85. ↑ Fabian Lambeck: "Nothing is humiliating" In: Neues Deutschland , March 22, 2013, accessed on April 21, 2013.
  86. ^ Resistance from room 105. In: Der Spiegel , edition 17/2013, April 22, 2013, p. 30 f.
  87. ↑ Hartz IV rebel will soon be unemployed herself? In: Neues Deutschland , June 7, 2013.
  88. ^ Laura Poitras : The Program. In: The New York Times , August 22, 2012.
  89. ↑ publik-forum.de public forum, October 8th 2018th
  90. ↑ chap. 10.7.1 in the Asse final report, special vote by the Greens, fraktion.gruene-niedersachsen.de (2012)
  91. ↑ Presentation of the Whistleblower Network e. V.
  92. ^ Hans-Joachim Selenz: CleanState . March 21, 2006, p. 2.
  93. ↑ Anonymous mailbox. In: Zeit Online . Retrieved August 12, 2012 .
  94. ^ The Whistleblower. Internet Movie Database , accessed May 22, 2015 .