Above: Homeland Security logo reflected in the eyeglasses of a cybersecurity analyst at the agency’s secretive cyber defense facility in Idaho. The Government Accountability Project’s Jesselyn Raddack says that Snowden’s courage has become contagious among other NSA employee.(Mark J. Terrill/AP)
‘Courage Is Contagious’: Additional NSA Employees Said to Be Following Snowden’s Lead
Government Accountability Project says Snowden’s courage has generated influx of other whistleblowers
The “courage” of Edward Snowden is “contagious,” according to lawyer and transparency advocate Jesselyn Radack, who says that additional employees at the National Security Agency are now coming forward with what they consider objectionable practices by their employer.
In an interview with ABC News on Thursday, Raddack revealed that an influx of NSA whistleblowers, inspired by Snowden, are now knocking on the doors of her organization.
According to Radack, several more whistleblowers have approached the Government Accountability Project (GAP)—the nation’s leading whistleblower protection and advocacy organization where she is the director of National Security and Human Rights—since Snowden’s story broke earlier this year.
“There definitely could be more revelations in addition to those that Snowden has revealed and that are continuing to come out,” she told ABC News.
The Obama administration’s “war on whistleblowers” is backfiring, said Radack.
“I think the government hopes to chill speech by employees in the national security and intelligence fields, especially those at the NSA and CIA, but the unintended consequence is [that] more and more whistleblowers are coming through the doors of the Government Accountability Project (GAP),” said Radack. “I think courage is contagious, and we see more and more people from the NSA coming through our door after Snowden made these revelations.”
In a letter sent from Snowden to the German government this week regarding the possibility of working with German authorities to give details about the agency’s monitoring of German chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone, Snowden expressed similar observations.
“I am heartened by the response to my act of political expression, in both the United States and beyond,” Snowden writes. “Citizens around the world as well as high officials – including in the United States – have judged the revelation of an unaccountable system of pervasive surveillance to be a public service. These spying revelations have resulted in the proposal of many new laws and policies to address formerly concealed abuses of the public trust. The benefits to society of this growing knowledge are becoming increasingly clear at the same time claimed risks are being shown to have been mitigated.”