Yes, Whistleblowers Must Be Protected. But They Also Need to Be Paid.
One of the things I do as a communications guy for WhistleAI is talk to journalists about whistleblowers. I’ve learned a lot about the mind of contemporary journalists in the process.
At WhistleAI, we are building an anonymous marketplace that allows whistleblowers to sell sensitive documents, videos, photos, audio recordings, and other source material to journalists. The whistleblower doesn’t even have to show the information to the journalist before selling it, because the WhistleAI network is able to verify the authenticity of the information using crowdsourcing and artificial intelligence.
This is a game changer for whistleblowers.
In the past, being a whistleblower was harzardous to both career and health. Why blow the whistle? What’s in it for the whistleblower?
The free market is a powerful tool for giving us more of the products we want, and fewer of the products we don’t want. But how can the free market be used to give us more whistleblowers? In short, how can the principles of supply and demand be used to minimize corruption in the world?
In the pre-blockchain world, it wouldn’t have been possible.
Before the blockchain, a whistleblower would have to contact a journalist directly. The journalist would immediately know the whistleblower’s identity. Once the whistleblower exposed his information to the journalist, the value of the information would plummet. The secret is no longer valuable once it’s no longer a secret.
Now, on a blockchain platform with a privacy coin, the journalist doesn’t even need to know who the whistleblower is. The WhistleAI Network verifies the contents of the information using artificial intelligence and crowdsourcing.
Imagine a marketplace where a journalist can browse through entries like:
WhistleAI has verified photo of “Allison Mack torturing NXIVM member while Keith Raniere watches.”
Or an entry like:
WhistleAI has verified video of “President Xi of China admits he has lost control of Kim Jong Un of North Korea.”
These are valuable secrets. But the whistleblower who obtains evidence of these secrets only has a reason to risk his career and his safety if there is an economic incentive to do so.
I’ll say it again: the only way to get more whistleblowers is to protect their identities and to pay them for their work.
This is the paradigm shift whistleblowing needs. We at WhistleAI are building that platform even as I type this article.
As a communications guy for WhistleAI, one of my duties is to partner with journalistic organizations to get our message out to the public. And I sure have learned a lot about people with journalism degrees since I began this job.
The most reliable objection I get from journalists is a very simple and rather surprising one. The objection goes like this:
I have strong concerns about the concept of compensation for whistleblowers.
Or this:
Paying for stories is unethical.
Yes. Apparently, paying sources for their valuable information is viewed as unethical.
Well, I am here to tell you that the journalist ethical standards are broken.
First and foremost, information is a commodity that has value. Money is not some evil corrupter of conscience. It is merely an inanimate object that allows for the equal transfer or wealth and value. In fact, all other industries would view the exchange of value with no return as unethical. Take a look at the coffee industry for example. A standard has been set within the industry so that all coffee bean farmers receive a fair value for their beans.
The expectation that whistleblowers should put their careers and livelihoods at risk to give away information for free is unscalable and morally indefensible.
Why would millennials with journalism degrees seem to agree universally on such an indefensible position? Why do they demand free labor?
Here’s a possible explanation.
In US culture, we have an infatuation with superheroes. In comic books and graphic novels, vigilantes with superhuman powers fight corruption for no monetary gain. In real life, superheroes of conscience are incredibly rare. Even first responders are paid for their work.
In the existing model of exposing corruption, journalists expect whistleblowers to be courageous superheroes.
This policy leaves protecting us to the few and not the many. In all fairness, until recent technological advancement this was the only way. A solution did not exist for the anonymous exposure of corruption to happen. Further, if anonymity could be achieved, an electronic payment to the whistleblower would surely leave a paper trail to his identity.
But that is no longer the case.
Here at WhistleAI, we are creating a completely unprecedented marketplace that makes it possible, for the first time in the history of humanity, to simultaneously protect and compensate whistleblowers for the dangerous work that they do.
If you’re a journalist trying to promote whistleblowing in the world and you have a problem with whistleblowers getting paid, then it’s time for you to get out of the way. A marketplace that protects the identities of whistleblowers and pays them real money for the risky business they’re engaged in is being built at a juggernaut’s pace right this second, and if mainstream journalists have a problem with that, then we don’t care.
The world is filled with citizen journalists who will be delighted to participate in such a marketplace. Once the doors to that marketplace open up, millions of non-mainstream journalists — people without journalism degrees — will flood those doors to engage in the time-honored activity of commerce.
It’s not like the concept of paying whistleblowers is anything new. The Obama-era law Dodd-Frank includes generous compensation for whistleblowers. From the SEC’s web site:
“ Section 922 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act provides that the Commission shall pay awards to eligible whistleblowers who voluntarily provides the SEC with original information that leads to a successful enforcement action yielding monetary sanctions of over $1 million. The award amount is required to be between 10 percent and 30 percent of the total monetary sanctions collected in the Commission’s action or any related action such as in a criminal case.” -https://www.sec.gov/spotlight/dodd-frank/whistleblower.shtml
Even Barack Obama understood that if you want to get more of something — i.e. whistleblowers — you subsidize it.
And what has the result of these policies? In 2017 alone, the SEC has awarded more than 50 million dollars to whistleblowers, up significantly from the previous year, and from the year before that.
What was the amount of financial whistleblowing to the SEC in the years before the compensation rules were announced in 2010? Virtually nonexistent.
At WhistleAI, we are taking this concept to the free market, and we are expanding it to include all corruption, not just financial malfeasance. Once the free market is primed to take on all corruption, corrupt and powerful people everywhere will think twice before they decide to exploit their fellow human beings.
And to the unimaginative hacks with journalism degrees who have a problem with it? Here’s a news story you can print: no one cares.
