How the Trump transition ethics pledge differs from recent norms; Reuters, November 27, 2024

Heather Timmons , Reuters; How the Trump transition ethics pledge differs from recent norms

"U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's team signed an agreement on Tuesday with President Joe Biden's administration to coordinate with federal agencies and share documents, after weeks of delays.

The Trump team also posted a separate ethics pledge on the website of the General Services Administration, which echoes the standard ethics pledge signed by other past presidential candidates, ethics experts say, with some notable differences...

TRUMP'S ASSETS AND CONFLICTS

The standard pledge contains a promise that the candidate, if elected, will "avoid both actual and apparent conflicts of interest" and to "hold only non-conflicting assets, such as assets exempt from conflict by regulation."

The Trump transition team pledge contains no mention of Trump's personal ethics or assets.

It's a notable difference, said Enzo Benoit, spokesman for the Partnership for Public Service, which monitors transitions. But it may be a minor issue because Trump will be bound by the more detailed conflicts of interest requirements when he actually takes office."

Peter Buxtun, whistleblower who exposed Tuskegee syphilis study, dies aged 86; Associated Press via The Guardian, July 15, 2024

 Associated Press via The Guardian; Peter Buxtun, whistleblower who exposed Tuskegee syphilis study, dies aged 86

"Peter Buxtun, the whistleblower who revealed that the US government allowed hundreds of Black men in rural Alabama to go untreated for syphilis in what became known as the Tuskegee study, has died. He was 86...

Buxtun is revered as a hero to public health scholars and ethicists for his role in bringing to light the most notorious medical research scandal in US history. Documents that Buxtun provided to the Associated Press, and its subsequent investigation and reporting, led to a public outcry that ended the study in 1972.

Forty years earlier, in 1932, federal scientists began studying 400 Black men in Tuskegee, Alabama, who were infected with syphilis. When antibiotics became available in the 1940s that could treat the disease, federal health officials ordered that the drugs be withheld. The study became an observation of how the disease ravaged the body over time...

In his complaints to federal health officials, he drew comparisons between the Tuskegee study and medical experiments Nazi doctors had conducted on Jews and other prisoners. Federal scientists did not believe they were guilty of the same kind of moral and ethical sins, but after the Tuskegee study was exposed, the government put in place new rules about how it conducts medical research. Today, the study is often blamed for the unwillingness of some African Americans to participate in medical research.

“Peter’s life experiences led him to immediately identify the study as morally indefensible and to seek justice in the form of treatment for the men. Ultimately, he could not relent,” said the CDC’s Pestorius."

Calls mount for binding SCOTUS ethics code after anti-abortion crusader alleges Hobby Lobby leak; ABA Journal, November 21, 2022

DEBRA CASSENS WEISS, ABA Journal; Calls mount for binding SCOTUS ethics code after anti-abortion crusader alleges Hobby Lobby leak

"The New York Times and other publications covered the reaction to Schenck’s allegations. Reactions included:

• Fix the Court, a court transparency group, called for passage of the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal and Transparency Act, which would require justices to write and adopt an ethics code; strengthen recusal rules; and adopt disclosure rules for gifts, income and reimbursements. Similarly, Democratic U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota said in a tweet the justices should “operate under the same ethics rules as every other federal judge.” (Fix the Court, the New York Times)

•Brian Fallon, executive director of Demand Justice, a legal advocacy organization, said the Senate Judiciary Committee should investigate the new leak report. (The Washington Post)

• Louis J. Virelli III, a professor at the Stetson University College of Law, said revelations are creating public concern, and “the cost for the justices will be more transparency.” Requiring the justices to disclose with whom they meet, particularly those with interests in a decision, would be constitutional, he said. (The New York Times)

• Alicia Bannon, director of the judiciary program at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, criticized “a whole bunch of bad incentives & broken processes that encourage today’s politicized dynamics” in a tweet. “18-year terms for justices + decoupling appointments & vacancies would be a good place to start,” she tweeted. “Finally, this is also an opportunity for leadership from the justices. SCOTUS could adopt a binding code of conduct tomorrow. They could commit to greater transparency, including re: recusal. They could stop appearing w/ politicians and litigants. Legitimacy must be earned.” (The National Law Journal)

• In a blog post, Paul Horwitz, a professor at the University of Alabama School of Law, said the revelations raise questions that include: What is the right balance between isolation and non-isolation for judges and justices? And how many actions described by the New York Times are not only legal but generally treated as the way the system works? (PrawfsBlawg via Original Jurisdiction)"

After years in committee limbo, a statewide ethics code is finally adopted in Vermont; VTDigger, May 4, 2022

Sarah Mearhoff , VTDigger; After years in committee limbo, a statewide ethics code is finally adopted in Vermont

"Gov. Phil Scott signed into law Vermont’s first-ever statewide code of ethics for public officials on Tuesday, putting to rest a yearslong debate in the Statehouse and bringing Vermont in line with a majority of other states.

S.171 establishes a baseline code of ethics for public officials in the legislative, executive and judiciary branches of state government. It sets boundaries around conflicts of interest, preferential treatment, gifts, outside employment, the use of state employment for personal gain and more. It also protects whistleblowers from retaliation.

Upon signing the bill, Scott said in a statement Tuesday that it “takes a positive step towards ensuring public trust in their elected officials.”"

I'm the Google whistleblower. The medical data of millions of Americans is at risk; The Guardian, November 14, 2019

Anonymous, The Guardian; I'm the Google whistleblower. The medical data of millions of Americans is at risk

"After a while I reached a point that I suspect is familiar to most whistleblowers, where what I was witnessing was too important for me to remain silent. Two simple questions kept hounding me: did patients know about the transfer of their data to the tech giant? Should they be informed and given a chance to opt in or out?

The answer to the first question quickly became apparent: no. The answer to the second I became increasingly convinced about: yes. Put the two together, and how could I say nothing?

So much is at stake. Data security is important in any field, but when that data relates to the personal details of an individual’s health, it is of the utmost importance as this is the last frontier of data privacy.

With a deal as sensitive as the transfer of the personal data of more than 50 million Americans to Google the oversight should be extensive. Every aspect needed to be pored over to ensure that it complied with federal rules controlling the confidential handling of protected health information under the 1996 HIPAA legislation."

Federal whistleblowers would do it again, even after retaliation and ‘professional suicide’; The Washington Post, October 4, 2019

Joe Davidson, The Washington Post; Federal whistleblowers would do it again, even after retaliation and ‘professional suicide’

"“Was the destruction of my career and family worth the excruciating time and money, ostracism and vilification? No,” [former FBI agent Jane Turner] said Wednesday. “Was standing up and doing the ethical, legal and moral whistleblowing the right thing? Yes. Would I do it again? My moral and legal compass would not allow any different course of action.

Her advice to the CIA whistleblower: “Carefully weigh the costs to you, your family and your career when deciding whether to blow the whistle. And document, document, document … because the hierarchy will lie.”"

Convercent CEO: Encourage Employees to Speak Up on Ethics Issues; Fortune, August 1, 2018

Damanick Dantes, Fortune; Convercent CEO: Encourage Employees to Speak Up on Ethics Issues

"The risk of an ethics scandal is far too great for a CEO to ignore. The conventional approach is to publish a list of ethics guidelines and expect everyone in an organization to follow—but if there’s one thing we’ve learned this year, it’s simply not enough. At risk: the image of an organization and the finances of its stakeholders.

Call it the post-Harvey Weinstein era. The court of public opinion holds corporations accountable for saying one thing and doing another, says Patrick Quinlan, CEO of compliance management software company Convercent. Quinlan’s company operates a compliance and ethics cloud platform—think of it as a 21st century whistleblower hotline—for employees of businesses and governments around the world."

Trump Body Man Turned EPA Whistleblower Is Violating Ethics Rules, the Agency Says; ProPublica, April 12, 2018

Derek Kravitz and Alex Mierjeski, ProPublica; Trump Body Man Turned EPA Whistleblower Is Violating Ethics Rules, the Agency Says

"The Ethics in Government Act requires that all political appointees file financial disclosures with the agency they work at within 30 days of their start date. The disclosures serve two purposes: transparency and identifying potential liabilities tied to financial conflicts of interest. They include staffers’ assets, debts, and stock and other financial holdings. Staffers can get 90-day extensions from agencies.

EPA officials say Chmielewski has not been granted any extensions, and he’s still obligated to provide a financial disclosure even though he has left the agency...

Marilyn Glynn, former general counsel and acting director of the Office of Government Ethics in the George W. Bush administration, said Chmielewski’s failure to file the government paperwork is “highly unusual.”

“Never filing anything seems unusual to me,” she said. “He was still under the obligation to recuse himself [in the event of a conflict of interest], so presumably the ethics office would’ve told him that he’s liable for criminal prosecution should he step over that line.”

It’s unclear if Chmielewski simply forgot to file the required paperwork or chose to dodge the requirement."

Report: Facebook Staff Suddenly Concerned About Privacy, Specifically Theirs; Gizmodo, March 31, 2018

Tom McKay, Gizmodo; Report: Facebook Staff Suddenly Concerned About Privacy, Specifically Theirs

"The ridiculous mess over at Facebook has continued to get worse, with staff allegedly in a full-on “uproar” over the fallout of the leak of consumer hardware VP Andrew Bosworth’s 2016 memo claiming things like terrorism and cyberbullying suicides were justifiable side effects of the site’s continued growth.

Per the New York Times, what began as widespread concern over the company’s Cambridge Analytica data-sharing scandal has now apparently transformed into a sort of panic over possible further leaks of potentially damaging internal information like Bosworth’s memo. While some staff are urging greater transparency, others have turned to shredding emails and demanding leakers be found and dealt with..."

Whistleblower at the CIA (2017) by Melvin A. Goodman

Kip Currier: While at Politics & Prose Bookstore in Chevy Chase, Maryland this afternoon, I was able to catch the tail-end of Melvin A. Goodman's very engaging talk and Q & A with the audience about his 2017 book, Whistleblower at the CIA: An Insider's Account of the Politics of Intelligence (review by Publishers Weekly here). Goodman (in the portion of his talk that I heard) made some interesting historical points about secrecy, national security, transparency, and accountability, spanning the George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump administrations.

On a related note, the Washington Post's Elizabeth Svoboda's  (July 13, 2017) What makes whistleblowers speak out while others stay silent about wrongdoing explores a number of high profile, high stakes whistleblowers within the worlds of amateur sports, government agencies, and corporations.

More of Kremlin’s Opponents Are Ending Up Dead; New York Times, 8/20/16

Andrew E. Kramer, New York Times; More of Kremlin’s Opponents Are Ending Up Dead:

"Other countries, notably Israel and the United States, pursue targeted killings, but in a strict counterterrorism context. No other major power employs murder as systematically and ruthlessly as Russia does against those seen as betraying its interests abroad. Killings outside Russia were even given legal sanction by the nation’s Parliament in 2006...

“The government is using the special services to liquidate its enemies,” Gennadi V. Gudkov, a former member of Parliament and onetime lieutenant colonel in the K.G.B., said in an interview. “It was not just Litvinenko, but many others we don’t know about, classified as accidents or maybe semi-accidents.”"

IOC Says Doping Whistleblower Who Fears For Her Life Not Its Problem; Reuters via Huffington Post, 8/21/16

Reuters via Huffington Post; IOC Says Doping Whistleblower Who Fears For Her Life Not Its Problem:

"IOC president Thomas Bach, responding to a question about a perceived lack of support from the IOC for Stepanova, said: “I have to reject this. We are not responsible for dangers to which Ms. Stepanova may be exposed.”

Stepanova said this week that the accessing of her account was done to discover her whereabouts. She has been branded a traitor by many people back home in Russia.

“If something happens to us then you should know that it is not an accident,” Stepanova said in a conference call days ago."