Daniel Ellsberg: Snowden made the right call when he fled the U.S.

[Catherina]

175. It's just disgraceful how their concerns are treated. Worse than I even thought

Not only do intelligent contract employees have fewer whistleblowing protections, but the private corporations that employ them also have fewer legal restrictions when it comes to electronically monitoring and surveilling employees. According to Paul Secunda, a labor law professor at Marquette University, federal workers directly employed by the federal government receive at least some protections from the 4th Amendment against searching their communications, even on federal equipment, without first establishing reasonable cause.

Indeed last year, the FDA was caught employing a sophisticated electronic surveillance system to monitor disgruntled FDA employees who were communicating with Congressional staffers, journalists, federal Inspectors General (IGs), and the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) regarding problems with the design of a medical device. Following an investigation, last June the OSC released a http://www.osc.gov/documents/press/2012/press/Agency%20Monitoring%20Policies%20and%20Confidential%20Whistleblower%20Disclosures%20to%20the%20Office%20of%20Special%20Counsel%20and%20Inspectors%20General.pdf
"Memorandum For Executive Department and Agencies"], which noted that:

agency monitoring specifically designed to target protected disclosures to the OSC and IGs is highly problematic. Such targeting undermines the ability of employees to make confidential disclosures. Moreover, deliberate targeting by an employing agency of an employee’s submission (or draft submissions) to the OSC or an IG, or deliberate monitoring of communications between the employee and the OSC or IG in response to such a submission by the employee, could lead to a determination that the agency has retaliated against the employee for making a protected disclosure. The same risk is presented by an employing agency’s deliberate targeting of an employee’s emails or computer files for monitoring simply because the employee made a protected disclosure.

However, since contractors are employed by private corporations, arbitrary searches by corporate entities on corporate property are legal, thus making it significantly more difficult for whistleblowers to pass on information without being detected by the corporations employing them.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/16938-snowden-leak-highlights-few-whistleblower-protections-for-intelligence-contract-employees