Advice for Whistleblowers and Journalists from an NSA Spy and Snowden's Lawyer

Drake and Radack, who appeared at the Berlin Transmediale festival's CAPTURE ALL event to discuss the documentary Silenced, spoke to me about the challenges facing future whistleblowers and journalists. While they didn't lay out a precise playbook, they did offer advice on how whistleblowers and journalists can better protect themselves.

Advice for Whistleblowers and Journalists from an NSA Spy and Snowden's Lawyer 1422892575192414

Advice for Whistleblowers and Journalists from an NSA Spy and Snowden's Lawyer 1422892575192414

For Radack, it starts with understanding the Espionage Act. While the 1917 law was initially designed to protect against spies, not whistleblowers, the US government has taken to claiming that the leaking of classified information is equivalent of espionage. Espionage Act prosecutions under President Obama, in Radack's estimation, have created a “backdoor war on journalists” and an “unofficial way to create an official secrets act,” which exists in the United Kingdom but not in the US. Educating whistleblowers and the journalists who work with them is of the utmost importance to Radack.

“A lot of people come to me after they blow the whistle and are being retaliated against,” Radack said. “My advice would be seek a lawyer, get lawyered up, before you blow the whistle. Also, there are now encryption protocols [like SecureDrop] that let you blow the whistle in a much safer way.”
After being shrugged off by NSA superiors, Drake contacted the Baltimore Sun's Siobhan Gorman in 2010, eventually blowing the whistle on the NSA's violations of Americans' electronic communications privacy with the Trailblazer project. And, back in 2002, Radack revealed an FBI ethics violation that occurred when John Walker Lindh—an American citizen captured in Afghanistan as an “enemy combatant”—was interrogated without a lawyer present.
Drake said he would have gone to the press a lot sooner instead of running into NSA stonewalling tactics. But he cautioned that publicizing state crime is no simple task for whistleblowers and journalists.

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Advice for Whistleblowers and Journalists from an NSA Spy and Snowden's Lawyer

Advice for Whistleblowers and Journalists from an NSA Spy and Snowden's Lawyer

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