Imagine what we would know and what we would not know without whistle blowers and journalists who have spread knowledge of actions by those within the federal government who wanted to keep secret improper and illegal things they were doing.<\/p>\n
Ben Wizner suggested doing that Monday during an \u201cOn the Issues with Mike Gousha\u201d session at Eckstein Hall. His partial list of things that might not have come to light included CIA secret prisons around the world, warrantless surveillance of American citizens, and the abuse of prisoners by American military personnel in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.<\/p>\n
And then there\u2019s Edward Snowden, the National Security Administration contractor who released a large volume of records about secret surveillance of huge numbers of people, both in the United States and around the world. Wizner, director of the American Civil Liberties Union Speech, Privacy & Technology Project, is one of the main attorneys on Snowden\u2019s defense team. Snowden has been living in asylum in Russia.<\/p>\n
Ideally, federal agencies and congressional oversight committees would act in the public interest in letting Americans know about matters such as the ones Wizner cited. But, he said, they generally don\u2019t, choosing to protect themselves and such secrets. What\u2019s the alternative? \u201cEnterprising journalists and brave whistle blowers\u201d who create channels to make such secrets public and act as \u201ca safety valve\u201d against government excess, Wizner said.<\/p>\n
Wizner said, \u201cIt should not be criminal for someone in government to reveal conduct that\u2019s illegal, and I can say that categorically.\u201d The federal law being used against whistle blowers dates from the World War I era and should not be used against people who give information to journalists in the public interest, he said.<\/p>\n
As for Snowden, his famous client, Wizner said, \u201cSometimes it takes a dramatic act like this, of going outside the law, in order to re-invigorate the public debate and, actually, ironically to reinvigorate the traditional public oversight mechanisms.\u201d He said he did not feel the secrets Snowden passed on to journalists had hurt national security and, on some fronts, had led to improvements in security and in the law and oversight related to government surveillance.<\/p>\n
Wizner was joined for the discussion before a capacity audience in the Appellate Courtroom by Christa Westerberg, a Madison attorney who is vice-president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, and Dan Bice, a widely-read columnist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel who specializes in uncovering questionable or improper things done by public officials.<\/p>\n
Westerberg said Wisconsin\u2019s laws on open records and open meetings emphasize the importance of the public\u2019s right to information about government actions. The public should have \u201cthe greatest access to information possible,\u201d she said. Wisconsin\u2019s law is \u201cvery expansive\u201d compared to many other places, but officials at local and state levels are still prone to try to keep some things out of view. Determination is needed to protect access to information.<\/p>\n
Bice said he gets more tips about secrets involving public officials than he can handle. Many of the dilemmas and difficult issues that attach to reporting of major national security issues occur often in smaller ways in his work, including deciding what to report and how to handle the identification of sources of information. \u201cThese Edward Snowden moments don\u2019t just happen on a big scale every 10 years. They happen for me every day,\u201d Bice said.<\/p>\n