Whistleblowers do more to hold governments to account than parliaments

Whistle, photo by Richard WheelerWhistle-blowers are worth their weight in gold, though governments certainly don’t think so. Some of the most important things we’ve learnt about the nature of the societies we live in have come exclusively from whistle-blowers, without whose help the democratic holding of governments to account in critical areas of policy would have been impossible.

The Wikileaks release of classified diplomatic and military data, mass surveillance of Western populations, systemic tax evasion via establishment banks, the MPs’ expenses scam, and now the leaking of hundreds of dossiers and cables from the world’s major intelligence services – let alone dozens of smaller leaks by principled individuals scandalised by the behaviour of superiors – have all exposed a shocking misconduct by State institutions which would have gone unaddressed but for the bravery of a few honest persons who are then rewarded for their pains by being hounded out of a job, threatened, and even prosecuted. Continue reading

Snowden fugitive saga distracts attention from real unanswered issues

Of course the issue in mass surveillance is the balance between intrusiveness and the destruction of privacy on the one hand and the overriding need to protect a country from real and serious threats to its security. After both Hague and Obama initially gave po-faced defences of the spies as subject to all necessary supervision, the story has dropped out of the news without any deep probing of the balance of interests so casually dismissed with such deceptive assurance by governments. This is a big mistake. Neither the US nor the UK have remotely the level of oversight of the spooks that any proper democracy would demand. Continue reading

Who will spy on the spies, regulate the regulators and police the police?

Magnifying glass, photo by PenarcThe last few weeks have thrown up example after example how those with power have run rings round those who are supposed to call them to account. Yesterday we learnt that the police, shortly after the murder of Stephen Lawrence, tried to ‘smear’ his family, his friend who witnessed the murder, and campaigners protesting at the failure to bring the killers to justice. This is a disgusting and disreputable abuse of police power: who gave the order for this? Will this person be identified, and then prosecuted and driven from office? Continue reading