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Save the Children had to sign confidentiality agreements to work at a migrant detention camp run by Australia in Nauru. The group's Mat Tinkler discusses what they did and didn't say about abuses.

Interesting @npr story on the intersection of secrecy, whistleblowing, confidentiality agreements, and human rights.

#whistleblowing #secrecy #law of secrecy #confidentiality agreements #human rights

The D.N.C. emails were in the public interest but they also show how reckless and agenda-driven WikiLeaks has become.

Interesting discussion of trying to balance transparency in the public interest with individual privacy when it comes to massive leaks.

#wikileaks #assange #transparency #privacy #balance

Washington, D.C., July 8, 2016. Last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced that the Chief of the Office of the Whistleblower, Sean McKessy

The Securities and Exchange Commission has announced that Sean McKessy, the Chief of the Office of the Whistleblower, will be leaving the SEC. Mr. McKessy was the first Chief of the Office of the Whistleblower and helped to establish the office. Jane Norberg, the Whistleblower Office’s current Deputy Chief, will serve as Acting Chief following Mr. McKessy’s departure.

During Mr. McKessy’s time as Chief of the Office of the Whistleblower, the office received more than 14,000 tips from whistleblowers throughout the United States and around the world. Information provided by these whistleblowers has led to the SEC bringing successful enforcement actions resulting in over $504 million in sanctions.

In a clear sign of the increased awareness – and effectiveness – of the SEC’s whistleblower program, the SEC awarded five whistleblowers a total of over $26 million for their assista

Over the course of one month (between May 13 and June 9), the SEC has issued $26 million to whistleblowers who provided information related to four separate SEC enforcement actions. The awards issued during this time account for nearly one-third of the total amount of money that has been awarded by the SEC since the whistleblower program was established in 2011.

We should amend the Espionage Act to allow for a public interest defense.

In a recent opinion piece for The New York Times Mark Hertsgaard proposes the idea that Edward Snowden’s release of classified documents regarding the National Security Agency’s telephone monitoring activities should be viewed in light of the experiences of two other individuals who went through the appropriate whistleblower channels to voice concerns about warrantless surveillance conducted by the N.S.A.

Thomas Drake was a senior N.S.A. official who expressed concerns about the N.S.A.’s surveillance system in the early 2000s. Following the proper procedures, he went up the chain of command until he eventually reached the Department of Defense’s Office of Inspector General. Mr. Drake was eventually forced to resign and ultimately pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor in exchange for the government dropping several felony charges.

John Crane was an Assistant Inspector General in the Department of Defense and helped oversee the whistleblower program. Mr. Crane has recently come forward alleging that Mr. Drake was persecuted by the very officials whose job it was to protect him. Mr. Crane took his concerns of record destruction to the Office of Special Counsel, an independent federal agency tasked with protecting federal employees from retaliation for whistleblowing. The Office of Special Counsel will examine whether those records were in fact destroyed and whether the Inspector General’s Office provided false information about those records to the Justice Department or to the judge in Mr. Drake’s case.

Mr. Snowden has stated that the course of Mr. Drake’s case played an influential role in his decision to go to the press with the classified documents he obtained, rather than raise his concerns internally. For those who need a refresher on the Edward Snowden saga, here is a helpful summary.

Ontario’s securities watchdog says July 14 is the launch date for its whistleblower program, which will pay up to $5 million for information about fraud.

July 14, 2016 is the projected start date for the Ontario Securities Commission’s whistleblower program. This program will be the first whistleblower program in Canada that will grant monetary awards to whistleblowers for the tips they provide.

Under this program, awards will be capped at $1.5 million unless the Securities Regulator can collect at least $10 million in sanctions from the company in question. If they are able to collect at least $10 million, the whistleblower would receive between five and 15 percent of the amount collected in sanctions, up to a cap of $5 million.

This program differs from the SEC whistleblower program in the U.S., most notable in how the monetary award systems work. In the U.S., a whistleblower who provides a tip to the SEC can be awarded between ten and 30 percent of the amount the SEC is able to collect from a company. There is also no cap on the amount of money a whistleblower can be awarded under the SEC program.

Action has been taken around the world in response to the disclosures, but the lucrative corporate registration business is likely to resist major change.

The release of the Panama Papers is the largest leak of secret documents to journalists to date. Over 370 reporters in 76 countries have published and/or reported on the more than 11.5 million documents from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. As the latest in this trend of massive leaks of secret information, the Panama Papers leak seems to have solidified large-scale, unauthorized disclosure of government and corporate secrets as a phenomenon unlikely to stop anytime soon.

The aftermath of this leak has led to officials in several countries stepping down from their positions and much of the information brought to light by this leak is being investigated by the relevant governmental entities throughout the world. Investigations into the allegations raised in the Panama Papers are underway in a number of countries, including the United States. However, despite the global outcry surrounding the Panama Papers right now, many believe it is unlikely that any real reform will occur in the United States.

A new law designed to enable Dutch employees to report workplace misconduct took effect July 1. The Whistleblowers' Center Act (34105/7) contains new reporting obligations for employers and...

The Netherlands’ new whistleblower protection law went into effect on July 1st. The updated law requires all companies with more than 50 employees to establish official whistleblowing policies that will allow employees to report workplace issues. The law also established the Whistleblowers' Advice Center, which has the power to investigate reports of wrongdoing and provide legal protections for employees.

Thomas M. Tamm, a former Justice Department lawyer who said he was a source for a 2005 New York Times article, will receive a “public censure” but is likely to keep his license.

A District of Columbia bar committee has agreed to recommend a deal to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals that would allow Thomas Tamm, a former Justice Department lawyer, to keep his law license, even though Mr. Tamm states that he was one of the sources for a 2005 article in The New York Times regarding the NSA’s wiretapping program. Mr. Tamm has admitted that, as part of being a source for said story, he revealed confidential client information.

The deal requires a “public censure” for Mr. Tamm as punishment for his revealing confidential client information. This punishment would allow Mr. Tamm to continue to practice law as an assistant public defender in Maryland. In reaching this recommendation, the committee considered a number of mitigating factors, including the fact that Mr. Tamm acted as a whistleblower, that he revealed only the existence of the program and not any operational details, that he neither sought nor received financial gain, and that he has already endured years of being under criminal investigation as a result of his actions.

On July 14, 2016, the Ontario Securities Commission (the “OSC”) broke ground in Canada when it officially launched its widely anticipated Office of…

This month, the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) launched both its Office of the Whistleblower and its Whistleblower Program. This program is the first in Canada to offer monetary awards in exchange for reports of corporate misconduct. This program can be contrasted with Quebec’s Autorité des Marchés Financiers Whistleblower Program, which does not provide financial incentives to whistleblowers.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers is urging a government watchdog to tackle what it describes as ‘persistent, systemic’ problems with the handling of defense and intelligence whistleblowers.

Last month a bipartisan group of Senators and Congressmen sent a letter to the Pentagon’s Inspector General’s Office to address “persistent, systematic” “reprisal and miscoduct” within the agency. The lawmakers were concerned by the treatment of several defense and intelligence whistleblowers. The letter in part was inspired by a May 2015 report from the Government Accountability Office which found long delays in a number of military whistleblower reprisal cases that were overseen by the Pentagon Inspector General’s Office. The letter specifically inquired as to what reforms have been undertaken since that report was released.

The elected officials who signed the letter were: Senator Chuck Grassley, R-IA; Senator Claire McCaskill, D-MO, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, D-NY; Congressman Jason Chaffetz, R-UT; and Congressman Elijah Cummings, D-MD.

Reports of Retaliation Against Whistleblowers Among Problems Facing T.S.A.

The Transportation Security Administration has been under heavy scrutiny over the past several weeks, with the T.S.A.’s Head of Security Kelly Hoggan recently being removed from his position. The T.S.A. is additionally facing allegations that employees who reported lapses in security were retaliated against for those reports.

The protocol in questions is known as “directed reassignments”. Many T.S.A. employees have come forward saying this protocol was abused to relocate employees who reported security lapses or misconduct by managers to less desirable airports. During a recent investigatory hearing conducted by the House Oversight Committee, both Republicans and Democrats raised concerns that the T.S.A.’s practice of reassigning employees who reported security weaknesses of managerial misconduct was not only abusive, but was also extremely costly and resulted in splitting up the families of those employees who were relocated.

Many T.S.A. employees have come forward to criticize the agency, claiming they were reassigned, demoted, investigated or fired for reporting security lapses or misconduct by senior managers. These claims were investigated and subsequently corroborated by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, an independent federal investigative agency that works to protect whistleblowers.

SEC Announces Two Multi-Million Dollar Awards to Whistleblowers

Last month, the SEC announced that it had awarded two separate multi-million dollar awards to individual whistleblowers who had provided information to the SEC.

The first award was $3.5 million dollars granted to a whistleblower who provided the SEC with “useful information for an ‘ongoing investigation.’” The second award was between $5 and $6 million granted to “a former company insider” who provided the SEC with “a detailed tip” which “led the agency to uncover securities violations that would have been nearly impossible for it to detect but for the whistleblower’s information.” This award was the third-highest in the SEC’s history.

While the number of tips reported to the SEC has increased dramatically over the past several years, the percentage of tips that lead to monetary awards from the SEC remains extremely low.

Uber released its first-ever transparency report this week, giving an inside look at how the company handled information requests from law enforcement and regulators.

A bill that would grant whistleblower protections for nurses in Nebraska has won final approval from lawmakers.

The company is challenging the use of secrecy orders that prevent it from telling people when the government obtains a warrant to read their emails.

#justice department

SEC Brief Supports Fired In-House Lawyer’s Suit Against Vanguard, Says He Qualifies as a Whistleblower

In late 2015, the New York Supreme Court dismissed an in-house lawyer’s suit against mutual fund giant, Vanguard Group, finding that the lawyer, David Danon, had violated legal ethics rules by disclosing confidential attorney-client information about Vanguard.

The case is now in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, where Danon asserts that he was wrongfully terminated after disclosing alleged federal and state tax underpayment by Vanguard over a period of decades. The Securities and Exchange Commission got involved, filing an amicus brief on March 28th in support of Danon’s suit.

The mutual fund giant contends that plaintiff David Danon doesn’t qualify for whistleblower protection, because he only sought it after learning that he would be let go by Vanguard. However, Danon, supported by the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission’s filing Monday, is arguing that he should nonetheless qualify for protection against retaliation under the Dodd-Frank financial reform law of 2010 because he raised concerns about Vanguard’s approach to taxes.

For more information on the circuit split regarding internal and external whistleblower protection under Dodd-Frank see here and here. However, Danon’s case presents an interesting twist with regard to the underlying attorney-client privilege concerns.

#whistleblowers #whistleblowing #SEC #Dodd-Frank #lawofsecrecy #retaliation #employmentlaw #attorney-client privilege

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