Update 10/10/13: War on whistleblowers has chilling effect on gov’t accountability

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Pardon Chelsea Manning! Sign the petition!

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released a report today raising serious issues with Obama’s attempts to silence whistleblowers and journalists. They state that the Obama administration’s aggressive prosecutions, and newly transformed relationship with the media, has had a chilling effect on the ability of the press to hold the government to account. Disturbing, given Obama’s promise of accountability and transparency. “U.S. President Barack Obama came into office pledging open government, but he has fallen short of his promise”, they write.
Government employees witnessing corruption and wrongdoing do not have the proper outlets to expose wrongdoing, and are intimidated against doing so:

“Those suspected of discussing with reporters anything that the government has classified as secret are subject to investigation, including lie-detector tests and scrutiny of their telephone and e-mail records. An ‘Insider Threat Program’ being implemented in every government department requires all federal employees to help prevent unauthorized disclosures of information by monitoring the behavior of their colleagues.”

The crackdown on transparency and on exposing wrongdoing in the government has also depended on the prosecution of journalist sources under the “Espionage Act”, which the report states is the Obama administrations most successful tool for silencing whistleblowers. And the prosecution of Chelsea Manning “was a turning point” in the Obama administration’s war on whistleblowers.
The Guardian covers the report in its article “Obama’s efforts to control leaks ‘most aggressive since Nixon”:

Under Obama, the Espionage Act has been used to mount felony prosecutions against six government employees and two contractors accused of leaking classified information to the press, including Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning and Edward Snowden. In all previous administrations, there had been just three such prosecutions.

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