
The Personal Toll of Whistle-Blowing - gringoDan
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/02/04/the-personal-toll-of-whistle-blowing
======
dhh2106
>One interviewee, in response to a question about what advice he would give a
potential whistle-blower, wrote, “[Can they] afford 5 years of their life in
turmoil?” Another said, “Part of your ability to do anything about this is
keeping yourself together,” and suggested that whistle-blowers find someone
“like a minister or a shrink who’s confidentiality-protected,” because “this
could go on for a while.” A high proportion of whistle-blowers reported
divorces or other marital strain, family conflicts, and stress-related health
issues including shingles, autoimmune disorders, panic attacks, insomnia, and
migraines. Several of them said that the financial consequences were
devastating.

More than anything, I didn't realize how long these cases seem to take. But I
wonder: if there was a way to reduce the duration of the cases, would that
reduce the impact on whistleblowers? Is that possible somehow? Retaliation is
also a big concern, of course, as the article makes clear.

Also, I found this interesting: >the first documented whistle-blowing case in
the United States took place in 1777, not long after the signing of the
Declaration of Independence, when a group of naval officers, including Samuel
Shaw and Richard Marven, witnessed their commanding officer torturing British
prisoners of war. When they reported the misconduct to Congress, the
commanding officer charged Shaw and Marven with libel, and both men were
jailed. The following year, Congress passed a law protecting whistle-blowers,
and Shaw and Marven were acquitted by a jury.

~~~
samcday

       But I wonder: if there was a way to reduce the duration of the cases, would that reduce the impact on whistleblowers?
    

I remember reading somewhere recently about the standard M.O for federal
cases. They take a long time in order to build an extremely solid case. That's
why federal conviction rates are so high.

Intuitively it makes sense. If you're gonna go after some naughty people for
doing naughty things, you _really_ don't want to rush the investigation and
have the findings fall apart at trial.

~~~
ramblerouser
This is totally incorrect. The high conviction rate is a result of extremely
high maximum sentences. People who are 100% innocent often plead guilty after
being threatened with a 30-year prison sentence that would be only 1 or 2
years under local law.

Many federal crimes are unconstitutional and deliberately vague, like "lying
(not volunteering incriminating evidence) to an investigator" and "mail fraud"
which is just a way to charge you in federal court where the odds are stacked
against you.

The US federal judicialry is a kangaroo court. 99% of federal crimes should be
repealed and maximum sentences reduced to be in line with state laws.

Federal jury selection is also suspect, especially in cases involving
"national security".

~~~
chrisbennet
I assume whomever downvoted You has forgotten what happened to Aaron Schwartz.

~~~
tzs
He's probably being down-voted for saying erroneous things like

> The high conviction rate is a result of extremely high maximum sentences.
> People who are 100% innocent often plead guilty after being threatened with
> a 30-year prison sentence that would be only 1 or 2 years under local law.

That's erroneous because very few federal defendants actually face such long
sentences, so those that do so pleading guilty is not a plausible explanation
for high conviction rates.

Federal sentences for a particular instance of a crime are based on the class
of the crime and on the details of the particular instance. The class sets an
upper limit, which often is long, up to 20 years, but it is the details that
determine how much you can actually get. To actually get anywhere near that 20
years you have to have a lot of the details against you. Typically this means
you caused a lot of damages or harm, had multiple prior convictions for
similar crimes, where doing it as part of organized crime, and similar things.

Swartz is a good example. A lot of reporting said he faced 30 years or 50
years or similar big numbers. Actually, he was looking at maybe 6 or 7 years
if things went as favorably as possible for prosecutors.

The DOJ bears a lot of the blame for that bad reporting. They make no attempt
in the press releases announcing indictments to actually compute the maximum
sentence for the particular instance of the crime. They just give the maximum
that it is possible for the worst possible instance of that crime committed by
the worst possible defendant.

Here's a good article on federal sentence length [1].

[1] [https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-
sentenc...](https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentence-
eleventy-million-years/)

~~~
towelr34dy
When you say "he was looking at maybe 6 or 7 years if things went as favorably
as possible for prosecutors"

Do you know this for a fact?

Because the way I understand it is, he was facing multiple decades in prison
IF all charges stuck. And once you got to trial, all charges can stick. It has
happened. So he was facing 35 years. So saying he wasn't is just wrong.

Your 6-7 years is 'probably'.

I think what your saying is: The federal government doesn't threaten you with
35 years, they threaten you with 10x3.5 years, and since it is possible that
not all 10 will stick... it's not really a 35 year threat?

I mean, if I threaten to punch you 10 times but I might stop at 1,2,3 or any
number and I probably won't get to 10, but we can negotiate before I start, is
it not a 10 punch threat?

To me it seems like you are splitting hairs in order to defend the
indefensible. The practice of tacking on as many charges to get people to plea
bargain is unethical and fascist.

~~~
secabeen
There's no way to know it as a fact because the judge is legally allowed to
apply any sentence up to that maximum. His link shows that most judges follow
the guidelines, and vary rarely go over them. Intelligent decisions are ones
that are made after understanding probabilities. Unfortunately Aaron decided
to take the guaranteed outcome of suicide over the small chance that he'd
serve multiple decades. I think we all can agree that that was not the right
choice.

We see this sort of "up to" crap all the time in our culture. It's still
misleading. Accurate, but fundamentally misleading and wrong.

~~~
towelr34dy
So you are saying: Judges never convict people to the maximum sentence? I'm
sorry, your point isn't very clear. It's a bit muddled.

Or are you saying that his probably of being sentenced to the maximum was low?
If so, how low? And when does it stop being 'intelligent' to consider a small
probability with a horribly outcome? I mean, in your intelligent opinion.

~~~
Rebelgecko
I don't think they're saying _never_. If you look at the recommended
guidelines[1], for a crime like Schwartz's the maximum could theoretically be
many years, but the guidelines would suggest a sentence between 0 and a few
years (he'd be in the first column assuming he didn't have any criminal
history. Depending on what modifiers come into play his "offense level" could
be as low as 6[2]. Maybe it would be more than that, but he certainly wouldn't
hit level 40, which is what it would take to get a 30+ years sentence. Even
though a judge can technically give a higher sentence than the guidelines,
it's fairly rare— it happened less than 3% of the time in 2017.[3]

depending [1]: [https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/guidelines-
manu...](https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/guidelines-
manual/2018/Sentencing_Table.pdf) [2]: See §2B1.1 at
[https://www.ussc.gov/guidelines/2018-guidelines-
manual/2018-...](https://www.ussc.gov/guidelines/2018-guidelines-
manual/2018-chapter-2-c) [3]: Table 8 at
[https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-
pu...](https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-
publications/federal-sentencing-statistics/quarterly-sentencing-
updates/USSC-2017_Quarterly_Report_Final.pdf)

~~~
towelr34dy
Remember the original comment only said that people plea because of the big
threat. It is a big threat. And given the fact that you probably wouldn't take
a 1:33 chance on Russian roulette, it seem it is a big threat to you.

But not when it is on others. Then it's fine 'because low probability'. In
fact, many of the apologists for what happened go as far as to conflate in a
single post low probability with no probability.

The double think is amazing.

~~~
tzs
The 3% who were sentenced above the guideline amount were not chosen at
random. They were people who had specific factors in their cases that allowed
for an above guideline sentence.

These are factors such as causing a death, causing significant physical
injury, causing extreme psychological harm to your victims beyond that one
would expect from the crime, abducting people, causing property damage beyond
what is taken into account by the guidelines, using weapons during the crime,
or torture.

Swartz did not have any of the factors that could end one up in the 3%.

~~~
towelr34dy
Ah tzs again. Let me quote you:

"lot of reporting said he faced 30 years... Actually, he was looking at maybe
6 or 7 years if things went as favorably as possible for prosecutors."

So let me ask again, last time you didn't answer: Is the chance of a 35 year
sentence for Aaron 0%?

No? Then do the intellectually honest thing and admit you are wrong. Your
correcting somebody by saying wrong things. And then doubling down on it.

Low probability is not 0%. Whatever the probability was, it was real that they
could have given him 30 years. Unlikely? Yeah. But I'll bet you wouldn't play
Russian roulette at those odds; whatever they may be.

~~~
secabeen
>Low probability is not 0%. Whatever the probability was, it was real that
they could have given him 30 years. Unlikely? Yeah. But I'll bet you wouldn't
play Russian roulette at those odds; whatever they may be.

But that's the question. The probability is not 0%. It may be %0.01, or
%0.001. Can either of us find any existing cases where a defendant with
Aaron's background received a 33-level sentence increase? I would propose that
that has never happened in cases with similar circumstances to Aaron's. If you
can find one, I'd be interested in the citation.

In the absence of any examples, my argument is that the chance of a 35 year
sentence is not functionally different from 0%, and Aaron (and any other
defendant in this situation) should have made decisions based on the 99% of
sentences they were actually likely to receive.

One last note: you mentioned playing Russian Roulette at those odds. Russian
Roulette normally has a 16% chance of death. I wouldn't play RR at 16% odds.
Would I play it a 0.001% odds? Probably, presuming the benefits of playing RR
were of significant value to me.

Aaron's chance of a 35 year sentence was not 16%. It was also not 0.0%. It's
somewhere in-between, and unless you have evidence that shows otherwise, I'd
personally guess it was below 0.01%, and his choice of suicide remains a
tragic one. YMMV.

~~~
towelr34dy
Read the other apologists. They quote a 3% deviation from sentencing
guidelines.

Sentencing guidelines for Aaron were 6-7 years. A single wire charge on max
penalty could be 20. All you need is one judge who saw WarGames to want to
make an example out of the kid.

I don't know what the probability is. You don't either. Likely no one did. But
that probably has weight.

It's disturbing: the callous indifference to that weight by those who question
the exact kilos from an arm chair expert point of view.

This whole thing has parallels to other situations:

A Powerful Group is responsible for a system that perpetrated an injustice.

Members of the powerful group are confronted with the injustice. Members have
the following reactions:

Denial (high dissonance)

Disgust

Apologists

Apologists do the same thing: They minimize, deny, question and speculate.

What apologists of all kinds don't realize is that even if they are right,
they are wrong.

The callous indifference shown, instead of the guttural understanding of
something wrong being needed to be made right... is what is so hard to
understand. Even if your argument that the official numbers are overblown by
x%.

~~~
tzs
> Read the other apologists. They quote a 3% deviation from sentencing
> guidelines

In any given year, around 4% of women in the US will get pregnant. Suppose
Alice is a sexually active woman in the US who uses the pill religiously, and
who requires her sex partners to wear condoms.

Do you think that because 4% of women will get pregnant this year, and Alice
is a women, Alice has a 4% chance of getting pregnant?

That's the kind of reasoning you are using with the 3% figure for upward
deviations in sentencing. You are assuming that because 3% of sentences are
above guidelines, everyone who is sentenced is equally at risk for an above
guideline sentence.

> Sentencing guidelines for Aaron were 6-7 years. A single wire charge on max
> penalty could be 20. All you need is one judge who saw WarGames to want to
> make an example out of the kid.

A judge cannot just arbitrarily exceed the guidelines like that. There are
specific factors and considerations that a judge must cite to justify an
upward deviation, and they are not applicable in Swartz's case. A judge who
just arbitrarily decided to apply his own criteria to come up with 20 years
would have that quickly overturned on appeal as an abuse of discretion.

You want to know what happens to someone in Swartz's situation if he gets a
judge that wants to throw the book at him? He gets 7 years. That's the result
of a hard line judge accepting an exaggerated damages claim and not applying
any of the factors that would allow lowering the sentence. That's why his
lawyers, the prosecutors, and outside lawyers all said he would probably
actually get at most a few months--the 7 year number _is_ the "judge who saw
WarGames to want to make an example out of the kid" number.

------
edoo
This reads like an advertisement for the FBI. A bigger story is how Obama
removed protections and actively attacked whistle blowers after promising the
most transparent government ever. That had true toll.

~~~
iheartpotatoes
You mean like when Obama got legislation passed to protect them?

[https://www.whistleblowers.org/news/obama-signs-
whistleblowe...](https://www.whistleblowers.org/news/obama-signs-
whistleblower-protection-bill-into-law/)

~~~
Dirlewanger
Didn't help Snowden much.

~~~
iheartpotatoes
He was never charged, hence could not be pardoned. However, it is duly noted
that I'm trying to reconcile being objective about Obama's own nuanced
position, while also supporting whistleblowers like Snowden, Manning and
Winner.

------
refurb
An interesting story of turning whistleblowing into a business is Ven-a-care
pharmacy in the Florida Keys.[1]

They started out as a small pharmacy, but now have a team of lawyers. They’ve
gotten over $600M in whistleblower rewards as of the early 2010’s. Not sure
what the total is now.

[1][https://www.cnbc.com/id/41491563](https://www.cnbc.com/id/41491563)

~~~
goldenkey
Did they have lawyers to begin with? How did they get awarded these funds if
it was not their case to begin with?

~~~
howard941
The legal doctrine arose from the common law Qui Tam writ, modified by statute
for use stateside. The wiki page is pretty good.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qui_tam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qui_tam)

------
ilaksh
For me there is a related issue that is just as problematic or worse. There
are certain things that are critical of the US government that are simply not
allowed to be spoken in most US centric places. The public effectively censors
itself. I could mention some specific things but that would trigger it and
then no one would see my comment. In general you can get away with mentioning
things from the distant past but nothing particularly heinous or recent. I
think that this is because people want to believe that their side has a moral
high ground.

~~~
Red_Pill_Phil
Ive noticed this too alot lately and I've actually started to question if our
ideals are really moral.

I think we have a very serious conversation ahead of us as a culture.

Are we the bad guys?

~~~
ilaksh
Well that's interesting but its a little bit different from what I am talking
about because I personally don't question most of the supposed American ideals
(at least as I see them). Really I'm talking about actions rather than ideals.

~~~
toufiqbarhamov
Is there anything more “bad guy” than espousing high ideals which run contrary
to centuries of actions? Still at some point you’d hope that people notice the
disconnect and feel disturbed.

“Hans... are we the baddies?”

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU)

------
Aeolun
This wasn’t so much about the personal toll of whistleblowing as the fucked up
system and the apparent impossibility to do wrong as a US corporation.

This was a really depressing story on multiple levels.

~~~
rebuilder
It seems like the biggest problem outlined in the article was the inability to
get a job as a known whistleblower. I think that would happen in pretty much
any system, unfortunately.

It takes a lot of courage to rat on an employer. Your career is probably over
if you do.

------
mywacaday
Ireland is still recovering from the Maurice McCabe case
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garda_whistleblower_scandal#Ma...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garda_whistleblower_scandal#Maurice_McCabe)
He was ostracized by his colleagues and even painted as a pedophile by Senior
Gardai(Police) trying to discredit him. An absolute horror of a story when you
get into the details, spent nearly a decade proving his life fighting the case
and clearing his name. Can't imagine any Gardai whistleblowers in Ireland for
a long time.

------
PaulHoule
I hate the last few months of the year, when ads for car dealerships get
pushed away by ads for "Medicare Advantage" plans which sound like something
you need to get Grandma away from.

It's kind of thing that seems like a scam to normal people, but politicians
seem to think is a way to save money. Go figure. I don't see how you can save
money when you start out by adding 13% extra at the beginning to give the
private sector some profit to work with.

------
gwern
> A few days later, in early September, 2014, Sewell was rushed to the
> hospital with a serious head injury after an accidental fall inside his
> house. Medical personnel found a clot in his brain. After three days in the
> hospital, Sewell died, at the age of thirty-nine.

Head injuries are no joke, people. Even if you recover from them, the
epidemiology suggests there are life-long consequences for mental health,
intelligence, income, impulse control...

------
lifeisstillgood
For me, Mark Felt sets the right template - get other people to do the
publicising, leak anonymously and keep heavily in the shadows. Sometimes
literally.

Just do not put your head above the parapet.

~~~
jonathanstrange
Some whistleblowers might have dismissed this option out of fear for their
live. Being under public scrutiny can provide a lot of safety.

------
snarf21
I keep thinking that in cases of any real size that these people should be put
into witness relocation programs. Additionally, continue to pay them their
current salary but not require them to work. We need people who know to speak
out and therefore need to protect them.

~~~
Buttons840
Or give them a small percentage of what they save tax payers. A whistle-blower
who saves tax payers billions should be set for life.

Guess not all whistle-blowing is about stealing money, but I best most of it
is.

~~~
macintux
> Or give them a small percentage of what they save tax payers

That's exactly what the law encourages.

------
platz
So Freedom only got a slap on the wrist, basically

~~~
readhn
pretty typical. look at Snowden. The guy ruined his own life and nobody still
gives a damn. Was it worth it? i dont think so. He definitely should have kept
quiet even if it was against his own personal beliefs. It sucks but it is what
it is.

HSBC got slapped on the wrist for laundering cartel money.

"If you’re suspected of drug involvement, America takes your house; HSBC
admits to laundering cartel billions, loses five weeks’ income and execs have
to partially defer bonuses"

[https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-
news/outrageo...](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-
news/outrageous-hsbc-settlement-proves-the-drug-war-is-a-joke-230696/)

happens all the time with corporations.

~~~
whatshisface
> _He definitely should have kept quiet even if it was against his own
> personal beliefs._

That argument for moral complacency is largely self-fulfilling, because if
nobody thinks that one person defecting will change anything, you'll never get
more than one defector at once, and nothing will ever change. In that way
everyone will march in lockstep to hell and deserve every bit of the torture
that's waiting for them.

The foremost thing that Snowden achieved was that he quit doing the bad thing.
There is some value in not being an active contributor to the suffering in the
world. Sure, if you quit littering that won't clean up the parks, but at least
you won't be a litterer anymore. The first thing Snowden did to improve the
state of the world was reducing the number of NSA employees by one; and he
improved himself by switching from NSA employee to unemployed. Too many people
overlook this, thinking that all that matters is whether or not the world is
good on average, while ignoring whether or not they themselves are good.

Secondly, Snowden hasn't been forgotten. It might take a few more to follow in
his footsteps before the lesson sinks in to the public, but the things he
revealed are still out there.

Finally, there actually have been some changes because of his actions (I saved
the most concrete point for last). Nobody on HN discounts the reality of
malicious state attackers anymore - it used to be that nobody expected to be
on the receiving end of a state level attack (and we never secured
appropriately), but now it's common knowledge that Public Enemy Number One is
actually the public itself. Snowden definitely helped push forward HTTPS
rollouts, for example.

~~~
Aeolun
You can stop littering without being fucked over by it very easily.

~~~
whatshisface
If you stop littering you'll have to carry trash around for longer, which is a
personal cost. Littering is a miniature analogy, with and smaller table
stakes. The hedonistic difference between making a good salary selling out
your countrymen and hiding from your government in Russia is pretty big, a lot
bigger than carrying a chip bag around, but the moral difference scales in
proportion.

A common fallacy is thinking that you only have to be a good person for
matters less than $100. I can't explain it or present an argument in its favor
but it is a very common sentiment.

~~~
Aeolun
I don’t think that’s a fallacy so much as survival instinct. Doing the ‘right’
thing becomes disproportionally harder when the matter goes over $100.

Good is relative to average, and is a concept that society determines the
baseline of.

~~~
whatshisface
The problem with recourse to the survival instinct is that survival actually
turns around and becomes bad past a certain point. For example, consider the
survival of a brutal regime: they might say "we have to be brutal or else the
people would stop us." A lighter analogy would be a vampire that drinks blood
to say alive: yes, he has to do it to stay alive, but the thing that's being
kept alive is a vampire. More realistically, someone might say, "I am
embezzling from my company because if I didn't I would default on my house."
Of course, that is a silly objection, because the person they're keeping
housed is an embezzler.

So, Snowden's choice was between giving a traitor the easy life and facing
hardship and uncertainty as a good person. Granted, he had to suffer a lot,
but the alternative to suffering was providing comforts to a criminal that
happened to be him.

------
gadders
This guy did OK out of being a whistleblower (barring the prison sentence):
[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-tax-
birkenfeld/whistl...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-tax-
birkenfeld/whistleblower-in-ubs-tax-case-gets-record-104-million-
idUSBRE88A0TE20120911)

~~~
readhn
you cant put a price on time behind prison bars and away from your family.

what if during that time his father died? was 100million "worth it"?

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
Two points: of course you can put a price on being away from your family. It's
called a job, a millions of people do it all the time, often for long,
extended periods (e.g. the military, expeditions, etc.) Being in prison is
obviously extreme, but if getting out with several lifetimes of wealth means
you never have to work again, could easily be a fair trade off.

Second, he went to jail because he committed crimes from which he expected to
gain, personally. He was at risk for a longer, more severe sentence had he
been discovered and not cooperated with the government.

~~~
Gibbon1
> Two points: of course you can put a price on being away from your family.
> It's called a job

In all due respect this is an opinion born of a sheltered life.

~~~
magduf
No, it sounds like your opinion is born of a sheltered life. You're probably
thinking something along the lines of a job being enriching, fulfilling, etc.
Sorry, but that's a minority of workers; for most people, a job is just daily
drudgery they do to pay the rent, nothing more. It really is just a
transaction where you trade your time for money.

~~~
Gibbon1
I think you're making the mistake of assuming that everyone else has your work
ethic.

~~~
magduf
Sounds like you're making the exact same mistake.

In reality, where I live, different people have different work ethics. Some
people get fulfillment from work, some people have really interesting jobs,
while lots of others only work to put food on the table. You really think a
hotel maid gets some fulfillment from her job?

------
samstave
There is an insidious aspect with respect to Tech Workers.

You don't need to be a whistle-blower to have a toll on your life/career.

Talk too much shit about a company in Silicon Valley and you're fucked,
regardless of the merits of your claims against them.

#TeflonUnicorn

~~~
maze-le
Any data to back up that claim?

------
sleepybrett
Should whistleblowers be entitled to some portion of the fine levied against
the offender to offset their losses (and encourage whistleblowing)?

~~~
munificent
...did you read the article? This is literally one of the main subjects of the
article.

------
crb002
He should have moved to Iowa. Under Iowa Code 730, blacklisting has Civil and
criminal penalties.

~~~
mjevans
How could an average person actually prove this? Particularly with opaque
and/or feeling based decisions?

------
agumonkey
Maybe we need more patient and stealth activism.

------
deogeo
I'd be very grateful for a summary - I'm no fan of these long-form articles.

~~~
samcday
For me, New Yorker articles are often about the journey, not the destination
:)

