The story of Whistleblower Thomas Drake

As an National Security Agency (NSA) official, Thomas Drake took an oath to the US constitution, not a secrecy agreement (00:20). This secrecy was narrowly defined as classified information. In 2008 he resigned as his security clearance was suspended and his house was raided by FBI agents (02:00). Drake provided significant amounts of information on the secret surveillance programme, known as Stella Wind in the aftermath of 9/11, and revealing corruption and abuse at NSA. He approached someone from the Baltimore Sun in 2006, exercising his freedom of speech, guaranteed under the First Amendment of the US constitution, because he felt the information on wire-tapping was in the public interest (03:45). The secret surveillance practice also went against a superior directive called ThinThread , which provides full protection of the Fourth Amendment rights, and included the prime directive of the NSE since the 1960s -- you do not spy on Americans without a warrant. Drake provided this information, which was used in a New York Times article, the publication of which triggered an extraordinary response (05:05). The NSA launched a massive criminal investigation looking for the sources for the article in which he got caught up (05:35).

[SocialAlchemyProject]

Dear Free Speech Debate: Brilliant, and I thank you for making this very available in the significant maximum public interest. Tyler Lord Hamilton

[GabrielIncertis]

The most free country in the world? Are you sure?

[joellis]

thanks for another man standing tall and proud of whom he is v. all the bend lambs.
thank you for your courage and human heart v. animal masses. Right always defeat Wrong.

[Orf]

5:00 There are some secrets worth keeping"---"Nuclear secrets, troop movements, encryption codes---those are all valid secrets."

[slobodanhorvaarten]

Drake knows what he is talking about.  He has had a lot of time to think about everything.

[Orf]

18:45 “an enemy of the state, a traitor, a turncoat”

[Orf]

29:00 peter van burden violated state dept for simply sharing a link to Wikileaks on his blog

[Orf]

23:00 would you have used Wikileaks? I would

[Orf]

10:24 do you think whistleblower protections are sufficient? Not even close.

[Orf]

17:45 “mr. drake. How’d you like to spend the rest of your life in prison?

[Orf]

8:55 “unauthorized contact w reporter”

[Orf]

23:30 Wikileaks is providing a clearly invaluable service

[irongamernet]

Fix your audio. It is only coming out the left channel.