The whistleblower occupies one of the loneliest positions in public life: the person who has seen what is being done in the name of an institution and cannot, in conscience, remain silent — at the cost, usually, of career, reputation, and sometimes freedom. From Daniel Ellsberg to Chelsea Manning to Edward Snowden to the countless anonymous people who reported institutional abuse to oversight bodies that were supposed to care, the whistleblower is the conscience of systems that would prefer no witness. Whether any specific act of whistleblowing was justified is a genuine question; that the act requires extraordinary moral courage is not.
Juana