2014/11/27 by Candice Delmas · 1 citation
Decision Sciences · Engineering · Social Sciences · #Applied philosophy #Engineering #Engineering ethics #Environmental ethics #Epistemology #Ethics in Business and Education #Government (linguistics) #Legal Education and Practice Innovations #Philosophy #Political science #Sociology #Torture, Ethics, and Law
paper · doi:10.5840/soctheorpract20154114
openalex publication_date 2014/11/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
What is wrong with government whistleblowing and when can it be justified? In my view, ‘government whistleblowing’, i.e., the unauthorized acquisition and disclosure of classified information about the state or government, is a form of ‘political vigilantism’, which involves transgressing the boundaries around state secrets, for the purpose of challenging the allocation or use of power. It may nonetheless be justified when it is suitably constrained and exposes some information that the public ought to know and deliberate about. Government whistleblowing should then be viewed, along the lines of civil disobedience, as a collective cognition- and legitimacy-enhancing device.