"A former Justice Department lawyer is facing legal ethics charges for exposing the President George W. Bush-era surveillance tactics—a leak that earned The New York Times a Pulitzer and opened the debate about warrantless surveillance that continues today. The lawyer, Thomas Tamm, now a Maryland state public defender, is accused of breaching Washington ethics rules for going to The New York Times instead of his superiors about his concerns about what was described as "the program." Tamm was a member of the Justice Department's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review and, among other things, was charged with requesting electronic surveillance warrants from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court."
Thursday, January 28, 2016
Ethics charges filed against DOJ lawyer who exposed Bush-era surveillance; ArsTechnica.com, 1/26/16
David Kravets, ArsTechnica.com; Ethics charges filed against DOJ lawyer who exposed Bush-era surveillance:
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In the age of Wikileaks and Snowden, articles like this really bring ethics into question. Although, it seems like incidents like this do not garner as much attention as the big names anymore.
ReplyDeleteWhat I found really interesting about this was that he is facing ethics charges for not going to his superiors. That seems to me more like a policy or structure violation than an ethical one. The question, to me, on ethics violations comes down to whether or not government information like this belongs to, and should be communicated to, the public. Should the public be aware of warrant-less electronic surveillance techniques? After all, it is our government and our privacy at stake. Ess (2014) believes that our government justifies this surveillance on its citizens even more after 9/11, searching through emails and conversations in an attempt to thwart terrorism in the name of security. It's hard to say how effective it is and if the means justify the end. However, to say it is unethical to make the public aware of governmental surveillance, and to charge him as such, seems like it is missing the ethical dilemma on the larger scale and whether or not it is ethical or unethical not only to have the surveillance, but for it to be communicated or hidden from citizens.
Thanks,
Jeremy
Ess, C. (2014). Digital Media Ethics, 2nd Edition. Malden, MA: Polity Press.