Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by xenocyon 2224 days ago
That's a strange equivalence, and a malevolent comment.

Outing whistle-blowers (or supposed whistle-blowers) is bad for democracy. The government is supposed to be transparent to the people. This does not mean that the people should be transparent to the government, or that dissidents should be outed.
2 comments
drak0n1c 2224 days ago
The "whistle-blower" was a federal employee making allegations of hearsay and intent identifying other federal employees (not just the President). What is the line that decides that one is immune to scrutiny while others receive the full brunt? Is it partisan lines, or perhaps seniority cut-offs? Carter Page received no such protection from being targeted and publicly unmasked, despite being a long-time investigation informant.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/while-were-talking-a...

Such ambiguity fosters an environment of pre-emptive accusations, rife with alternating investigations and immunity.

link
Amezarak 2223 days ago
Do you find it implausible that an agent of the CIA could pose as a whistleblower to advance antidemocratic intelligence efforts against US citizens?

Look, I'm not saying that's what happened, I don't know anything about it, but the idea that we should be shutting down inquiry into CIA agents interfering in other parts of our government, given the known history of the CIA, is absolutely crazy to me. And it's not like they've changed! We're talking about an organization that just recently illegally spied on the Congressional illegal CIA torture investigation and then lied about it to Congress (also a crime) - and got away with it!

Even in other branches of the government, we know that "whistleblowers" are not always acting in good faith - the NY Times just did a story about a "whistleblower" lying to the press about what was happening and using that as an excuse to leak people's personal information to the press, all in order to advance his own political agenda. If that can happen at the IRS, surely it can happen at the CIA? And surely we should at least be able to look into whether that's a possibility>

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/17/business/media/ronan-farr...

link