Senate Passes Bill That Destroys Existing Whistleblower Rights
The Senate passed the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act (S. 372) on Friday, December, 10th, by unanimous consent. As the National Whistleblowers Center has repeatedly stated S. 372 is a bad deal for whistleblowers. There are two poison pills in the bill that fundamentally undermine the small advances in the bill. There is still time to fix the bill.
For the first time ever, federal employees will not be protected for blowing the whistle on a violation of law. The excuse given to justify this dangerous rollback is that it only excludes minor violations of law. The fact is there is no such thing as a minor violation of law. Either it is violation of the law or it is not. Federal managers should not be allowed to decide what laws they can violate.
In fact, this provision overturns one of few Federal Court decisions in 30 years that ordered corrective action for a whistleblower. The provision also runs counter to every major study on how to detect fraud, including the most recent study by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners. These studies have found that the best way to detect fraud is to protect whistleblowers who report even suspicious activity because it is often the suspicious activity that leads to the discovery of major fraud.
The second major rollback in the Senate bill is the increased power given to the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB). Instead of reforming the broken MSPB, for the first time in history the Senate has given the Board the ability to summarily dismiss a whistleblowers case without ever having a hearing. The House resisted efforts in 1978 to give the MSPB this tremendous authority and should continue to do so today.
These two dangerous rollbacks in existing whistleblower protections can be fixed in the House and sent back to the Senate. We cannot allow another generation of whistleblowers to suffer. Urge the House to continue to stand up for real whistleblower protections and fix the Senate bill before passing it.
Whistleblowers were promised enhanced protections. We will not stand by silently and watch Congress destroy existing whistleblowers rights so that they can say they passed something for whistleblowers. Please help us protect whistleblowers by taking action and then passing this alert on to your friends and family.
I want to know that what was the major effect that took place due to wiki-leaks... I think this matter is just fledged out now and no one is ready to talk on it... Am I right?
Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, is the sixth most used site on the Internet. On Wed the site will go dark to protest two bills facing Congress and the U.S. Senate. The bills, the Internet company claims, stop freedom of expression and could destroy websites unfairly.
The little scumbag analyst had access to what is called SIPRNET. The first letter stands for State Department, the last three letters stand for Network. I will not fill in the blanks, you will have to gain that information elsewhere. Anyhow, SIPRNET is the State Departments' encrypted email network. So, emails from everyone and anyone within the State Department can be accessed by one with access (clearance required). By compromising these secure communications between S.D. employees and providing them to the public, Pfc. Bradley Manning (afore mentioned scumbag) allowed other Heads of State to now have a glimpse of what the U.S. S.D. REALLY thinks of them. It would be like bugging an elected officials' office for years and recording everything that was said within his/her chamber. Discussions that would never have taken place had they known they would be compromised. Anything pertaining to National Defence would be non critical, most likely contracts and deployments of specific assets, nothing that would jeopardize our National Security in a grave manner. But that is National Defense. In diplomatic circles, this has caused a great deal of problems and will continue to do so at least for the next 40 to 50 years.
widestaringeyes wrote:The little scumbag analyst had access to what is called SIPRNET. The first letter stands for State Department, the last three letters stand for Network. I will not fill in the blanks, you will have to gain that information elsewhere.
SIPRNet = Secret Internet Protocol Router Network; it is used by both the US Department of Defense and the US Department of State. I unfortunately do not know where the alternative meaning of this acronym that was posted came from. Thanks anyways for the posting. —Best regards, Marc
It came from my aging brain. It has been a while. I had "State Department" on the brain at the time of that post (was winging it). Having been a user of SIPRNET and NIPRNET I just did not want to blab too much. In my defense, it has been over 10 years.
Thanks very much for the compliment, CrosstimbersOkie. I had to be on a quest to reverse the raw-wombat–eating rep of Generation-X, you kindly understand Thanks again!! —Best regards/Peace, Marc
Thanks again for sharing 
—Best regards, Marc
Thanks again!! —Best regards/Peace, Marc