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Ethics Whistle Blowing
Ethics Whistle Blowing
14 April 2015
Contents
What is Whistle Blowing?...............................................................................................................3
Conflict between Honesty and Loyalty...........................................................................................3
The Loyal Agent Argument.............................................................................................................3
Criteria for Justifiable Whistle Blowing..........................................................................................4
Edward Snowden.............................................................................................................................5
Jeffery Wigand.................................................................................................................................6
Whistle Blowing and Utilitarianism................................................................................................7
Whistle Blowing and Deontological Ethics.....................................................................................8
Whistle Blowing and Islamic Ethics................................................................................................8
Public/Personal Perception of Ethics & Whistle Blowing......9
Corporate Perception of Ethics & Whistle Blowing......10
The Media..11
Conclusion..
.......12
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Edward Snowden
Edward Snowden was a former employee of
the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and a
former contractor for the National Security
Agency (NSA). He disclosed thousands
of classified documents to several media
outlets, which he had acquired while working
for the American consulting firm Booz Allen
Hamilton. Snowden's leaked documents
uncovered the existence of numerous global
surveillance programs, many of them run by the NSA and the Five
Eyes with the cooperation of telecommunication companies and European
governments. He revealed the existence of:
- Boundless informant
- PRISM
- XKeyScore
- Tempora
- MUSCULAR Access Point
- FASCIA
- Threat Research Intelligence Group
- Squeaky Dolphin
- Optic Nerve program
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Snowden's "sole motive" for leaking the documents was, in his words, "to
inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is
done against them.
Jeffery Wigand
Jeffrey S. Wigand was born on December 17, 1942 in New York City. He
was a former vice president of research and development at Brown &
Williamson in Louisville, Kentucky.
He currently lectures around the
world as an expert witness and
consultant for various tobacco
issues and on his non-profit
organization, SMOKE-FREE KIDS,
Inc. The one-time tobacco executive
who made front-page news when he
revealed that his former employer
knew exactly how addictive and
lethal cigarettes were. In 1995, he
exposed the lies we'd all been told for decades about cigarettes: about their
capacity to addict us, about their capacity to kill us. A case was brought by
the states' attorneys general against the major tobacco companies and Mr.
Wigand's disclosures played a crucial role. The case resulted in a $246
billion settlement last year for health claims paid by the states.
Being a whistle-blower has not been easy. Indeed, Mr. Wigand said he had
never become comfortable with the term ''whistle-blower.' 'I don't even like
the word,'' he said. ''To me, it has a negative connotation. And I struggle
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with what I did with what I knew; I really do.' "The word whistleblower suggests that you're a tattletale or that you're somehow disloyal," he
says. "But I wasn't disloyal in the least bit. People were dying. I was loyal to
a higher order of ethical responsibility. He simply told the truth, he says,
about what he saw and experienced as the head of R&D for (B& W), that
is how the company misled consumers about the highly addictive nature of
nicotine, how it ignored research indicating that some of the additives used
to improve flavor caused cancer, how it encoded and hid documents that
could be used against the company in lawsuits brought by sick or dying
smokers.
whistle blowing act achieve? In my opinion the only happiness that was
achieved was that the public now knows the truth about the impact of
smoking. There is no technical measurement on happiness. Jeffery
Wigand.
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true to say that individual ethics are born of a culture of ethics and no
matter what your personal take on whistleblowing in this realm, that
assertion, at least, is undeniable.
The Media
Whistleblowers and the media have enjoyed a somewhat symbiotic
relationship. Although agendas and motivations may vary, they share the
ambition of exposing wrongdoing and encouraging changes in systems that
arent working in the interests of those they are supposed to protect.
Recent high profile cases, such as the care homes scandal in the U.K., are
excellent examples of individuals reporting for altruistic reasons but if a
whistleblower appears to be seeking a soapbox for public attention or
engineering an act of retaliation, it is of paramount importance that the
investigative body in question ensure that the case is conducted in the
correct way.
CONCLUSION
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