eoto #3 response blog

Whistleblowers

What’s a Whistleblower?

Defined by the National Whistleblower Center, a whistleblower is “someone who reports waste, fraud, abuse, corruption, or dangers to public health and safety to someone who is in the position to rectify the wrongdoing.” A whistleblower is not always someone who is outside of the industry that is being caught for wrong-doing, though. Quite often, the whistleblower in a situation is someone who works for the same company as the person at fault. They are seeing within operations that something is not right and they take a stand to make sure it does not continue in their workplace. 

Examples of Whistleblowers

There are incredible amounts of cases of whistleblowers, but there are a few that are absolute standouts. One of those examples took place in 2002. Colleen Rowley, FBI Special Agent, found new details around the 9/11 tragedy. She was able to uncover information that showed FBI's D.C. Headquarters was given evidence and insight about the bombers’ real intentions that day. Actually, there was evidence given approximately 30 days before the tragedy occurred. This was plenty of time to change the course of action, but instead it was covered up. Rowley spoke in court on multiple occasions with her story and evidence to back it up, and in the end, change was made because of her. The FBI took the steps to change their protocol on the “intelligence agencies” of their group. 

Another example took place in 1996. Linda Tripp was the whistleblower in this case. She had previously worked with the government and while working would keep her phone recording each conversation she had with intern, Monica Lewinsky. In these phone conversations, it was revealed by Lewinsky that she was having relations with the president at the time, Bill Clinton. Lewinsky was a very young lady and there were many different layers of problems in this case. The evidence brought by this whistleblower led to the impeachment of president Clinton. 

Conclusion

Whistleblowers are very important for getting information that is undercover. The term, at first, comes across as if it would be a negative meaning, but the reality is there are so many cases that never would have been uncovered without them. 

The Chilling Effect

 The “Chilling Effect”

Overview 

This “chilling effect” is a concept used to censor publishers. The direct definition of the chilling effect defined by thefire.org is “The chilling effect refers to a phenomenon where individuals or groups refrain from engaging in expression for fear of running afoul of a law or regulation. Chilling effects generally occur when a law is either too broad or too vague. Individuals steer far clear from the reaches of the law for fear of retaliation, prosecution, or punitive governmental action.” Many vague laws will use the chilling effect because people are unsure of where their speech will cross a line. This does fall under a huge misconception about the chilling effect, though. It is not used in all vague laws, just select ones to ensure that the first amendment is not being broken. This effect often leads to court cases due to the matter of people not fully understanding what they can say or how much, which we will dive into a bit deeper later in this post. 

The chilling effect began in the mid 1900’s by Shauer. Shauer believed that the “chilling” was due to imperfections in the law. The way that this plays out is that people have a fear of their words being punished, though they should not legally be punished for their words under the first amendment freedom of speech. 

Overbreadth Doctrine

When speaking on the chilling effect, it is not often spoken about without its sister term “overbreadth doctrine”. The overbreadth doctrine is when "a law, regulation, or set of rules made by the government is too vague”, or overbroad. Typically, when the overbreadth doctrine is in use it is no accident. It’s usually for indirect emphasis on a topic.

In addition, it's another way that the government can practice censorship when they are unable to do anything else while also impacting protected and unprotected speech. This meaning, the “line” to be crossed with a person's freedom of speech can be difficult to depict when the broadness is a factor. Having broadness is a loophole many people attempt to use but the government still finds their own ways to stop this from being used considering they, like the chilling effect, have no way to monitor without breaking a person's freedom of speech. 

Court Cases Using the Chilling Effect

There are several cases where the chilling effect was put into place in court. The first of many important cases is the Weiman vs. Updegraff case. This was a case where voices were fighting against teachers having their own free/ fun speech in the classroom. This was something heavily fought because the only reason some students do enjoy school is because of the personality the teachers will bring to education. Without that, students are left with boring lectures about topics they have no interest in. 

Another case was the Reno vs. ACLU case. This took place in 1996-1997 and it was ruled that “the communications decency act was an unconstitutional restriction on free speech”. This was a huge issue considering there was a danger in censoring “the most participatory form of mass speech yet developed”. 

Conclusion

Learning about the chilling effect and how it impacts the government in a not-so-beneficial way is an intriguing approach to take when learning about freedom of speech. There are not many places in the law where the government does not have full control of all situations, but this is a gray area for them which will make society wonder if this is something that should be taken advantage of more in times of need or whether this should be abolished due to the danger of certain people getting away with the things they say.

Class War Blog

 War Movie Response

This movie was heartbreaking. I had never realized before how horrible this time was or that there were deliberate plans to kill people for entertainment. The press was so afraid to release the truth during the wars. Instead of in-depth explanations about the disturbing instances, they chose to glorify aspects of less importance and focus on things that mattered less. With this movie, the only way that people finally got the truth was through wikileaks. Wikileaks videos almost always begin with multiple content warnings. This is due to triggering content of course, but also because the internet believes that enough warnings may discourage people from engaging in the video, but more importantly from engaging in the truth. There is such a stigma around war and violence that people are attempting to shield the truth from the world when in reality, as sad as it is, the truth needs to be seen, heard, and understood. People need to know what is actually happening in these times and people need to know the despicable minds behind it all. 

“This wasn’t combat. This was reckless slaughter” stated an anonymous profile in the comment section of the video. This anonymous person was spot on, though. This was no real “war”, this was cruel, undeserved harm to innocent people of all ages. They had no idea this would be their last day of life, and seconds before it there were men laughing about it. It is disgusting, disgraceful, and scary that there are people like that in this world. It is just as scary as well that there are people helping to cover up these horrible people in the act.