the who's so many people around the world agree that whistleblowers are a necessary component of a functioning democracy. human nature is such that every country needs truth tellers who can stand up to those in authority and to expose waste, fraud, abuse, legality, or threats to the public health or public safety. but what happens when a country simply doesn't have a culture of whistle blowing, or what happens when there are whistleblowers, but there are no laws to protect them. we're going to tell you how those laws are written and implemented. and it may not be the way that you think i'm john curiosity and you're watching the whistleblowers. 2 2 2 most people have never heard of the australia based non governmental organization blueprint for free speech. blueprint for free speech was founded in 2014 by dr. su let dreyfus and it almost immediately became one of the most

important repositories in the world for research draft legislation and international activism on behalf of whistleblowers blueprint for free speech is responsible for successful whistleblower protection legislation in countries all around the world. and it works closely with other whistleblower organizations and with governments to tailored that legislation to each locale. we're happy to be joined by the executive director and founder of blueprint for free speech. dr. sue that dreyfus dr. dr. his career has spanned academia, journalism and advocacy. she's a specialist in cybersecurity technologies and in integrity systems that work as corrective mechanisms in society. her work at blueprint has been to improve the standards of laws and practices all around the world that protect freedom of expression. and she has raised the standards for whistleblower protection everywhere. she also works on projects to protect the media is ability to publish freely, particularly via the internet and the creation of new technologies to achieve those

goals. welcome, dr. still. ed dreyfus. let's start at the beginning. you've been interested in whistleblower and free speech issues for a long time. you were even one of the co founders of wiki leaks with julian assange . how did this all begin for you? when did it become a passion? so my background was originally as a journalist, i trained on one of the largest daily newspapers in australia and became a fully fledged staff reporter and then got my own beat there. and as part of that, i started to do more investigative journalism work. and i really began to understand the role of the whistleblower and its importance not only not work, but in the public interest, elements of journalism in particular. and so that's how i sort of came into this setting. and it became clear to me that whistleblowers, at least a dust age 20 some years ago, were treated very, very badly. i mean, today we're talking about the mean been being treated badly in many instances and they are. but back then, it was

a case of complete ignorance and very few protections in law, very few countries, suddenly protection, even in the us, which had some of the earliest with the glory legislation, was very narrowly scoped. you know, is it, is it fraud in the us government contract as opposed to broader society protection? and so those, those regions were how i sort of got into this and decided it was a very important field to actually work in. and what was your progression? did you begin as a journalist and then moved to academia and along the way, how did your activism come into play? so i've always had a busy activism about me. my. my mother told me from an early age that i had a strong sense of righteousness and, and indignation for injustice. so i think that was always part of it and was perhaps one reason i had gone into journalism was to report information. but to report information that was meaningful to people,

particularly about ro doing about things like correction. i went into academics because having worked in journalism for a while and 1st on a daily paper and then on a magazine in the tech space and then doing freelance and then having writing a book with jolena sponge. i decided that you know, the progression moving from a 400 word story to 4000 word feature, 240000 plus words working on a book. it was actually time to be able to delve into doing lots of primary research. and you really need to go kind of into academia to be able to have the resources and the time to do that. also i quite like the idea of teaching because they could see that they were really giant gaps and knowledge out there. and so i teach with blowing as part of my subjects, including for example, a subject on cybersecurity and digital privacy, where we talk about the difference between insider threat to an organization, the cybersecurity sense, and actually wisdom blowing,

which is not there to destroy the organization, but rather there to save it. so that's sort of how i got into the academic side of it, and it's been quite rewarding. there are a lot of whistleblower organizations out there. here in the united states. we have the government accountability project, the national whistleblowers center. the whistleblower and source protection organization and countless others and around the world. there are chapters of transparency, international, and groups. but blueprint for free speech is different. it focuses on legislation that would provide long term relief and a legal framework to help whistleblowers rather than on short term aid. how did you come up with the idea? and why do you think nobody has done something like this before? so i think a number of groups like gap do give feedback on draft legislation, but maybe they aren't necessarily the instigators of it. and part of it was a sense by sort of academic training. when i looked at this problem and thought,

wow, it's really important to help with the blowers you've got difficult cases. and that is something that you know, we should never ignore. but if you don't address the underlying structural problem, which is they're not protected law and that includes in regularly regulation, also implementation of the law. then you've got this huge problem of perpetually putting up wish fires wherever you go. they are going to be whistleblowers who have stood up, who have revealed wrong doing, and that's a good thing. that element of human nature that causes them to recognize wrong, doing and speak out about it. i always find that in a sense, quietly reassuring that human somewhere still have that element of them. and so that, that's great, but you've got to fix it at a fun mental level if you really want change of scale. and so that's how we came about to do it. so we do research into what is the legislation in various countries

and how can it be changed? and we take a really wrap around approach to changing the environment, the whole ecosystem for whistleblowers. and that means analysis and research of the legislation and in practice law reform, which is actually, you know, proposing new laws are changing laws. but it also seems like creating tools for whistleblowers in our keys. we do digital tools. so we do ricochet refreshed, which is a free and open source software. it runs on a desktop mac, windows, linux. and it allows, for example, a journalist and a whistleblower to chat to each other on line where both of them are not only chatting securely. they're chatting anonymously, so it means that a wister blurred can contact a journalist anonymously and give them information and file transfer anonymously

technologically anonymously. not just a fake email account on g mail and continue that conversation. so let's say that a whistleblower has actually disclosed instead of major documents that could be thousands of pages. well, journalist is going to know where to look. they need to be able to come back and say to the whistleblower, what am i looking for here? and there was a bar go, so it's on page $723.00 at the bottom. you know, but that ongoing conversation is really important to be able to weed through the massive information that we all generate. and that inevitably, we'll get this close because they're part of the bigger documents. it's also true for anti fraud agency. so increasingly in europe, that sort of technology of the anonymous dropbox is being used by government agencies in order to receive anonymous disclosures because they understand is very risky for whistleblowers and incense. the focus should be on what the disclosure is of the wrong doing, not who the person issues actually making it. and then we have

a new free software project called guzzling. and this is quite interesting because we've again gone deeper into the systemic problems. and so it's not just an end user piece of software, it's a piece of software for software developers. and what it does is it allows you, if you write a software application, whether it's a chat pro ram or file program or storage or io t, whatever it is, to easily plug in tour to that software. what does that mean? you've just added the functionality of anonymity to the software. now that's actually usually quite difficult to do. it's not very easy to plug into tor, it's very risky. you have to study a lot to figure out how to do it properly. if you don't do it properly than the anonymity won't be preserved and then there's a risk that people think they're transferring information honestly and they're not . but by doing this, by making it sort of plug and play,

we hope that it will actually expand the amount of anonymity that is available to software developers and therefore eventually to innocence seed. all of the software applications that whistleblowers and journalists might consider using. i'm proud to say that i've been associated with you and with blueprints since 2015, and we did some good work together getting a new whistleblower protection law passed in greece. one of the things that amazed me when i 1st met you was how much success you had already had elsewhere around the world. you've been able to help governments enact new legislation in countries as disparate and diverse as canada, zambia, the czech republic. in jamaica, there are many, many more. how do you do that? do government's approach you or do you proactively offer up a template of new legislation? so typically we will approach it,

we might get with simpler reports from cases on the ground will approach a set of n g o z or other civil society groups. academics i in particular countries and build work with them to build an ecosystem. so we don't just walton over the top and say you have to do it this way because although there are some common threads that you want to be in every piece of wisdom floor legislation to protect them with the blower. there are a number of components that really vary by the culture of the country. so in the united states paying whistleblowers, who reveal serious corruption, a portion if you will, of the savings, for example, to government is something that is comfortably embedded into aspects of american society. that culturally is quite foreign. for example, to the culture in the u. k. and it wouldn't be a fit, many people feel in the k to there with the blower structures there. so that's just

depending on what the culture is of the country. and you have to be really sensitive to that fact. you can't just wilson over the top. so for example, in spain, we've been very active in bringing together a number of different n g o z and members society that care about this topic. and that might be criminology professors or law professors. it might be a consumer groups who are carrying about whether or not there are flaws in high chairs or baby seats in cars that you need to have a safe avenue to be able to report those things. so they get, they get fixed or it might be a financial institution, for example, a regulator in finance area who wants to know when a bank is doing the wrong thing. and so we try to bring them together in coalitions . it doesn't always work and i always get along but, and then try and find the common ground between them. and from that,

we sort of bubble it up from the ground up and take that usually in a series of round tables and discussions to the relevant bureaucrats who are involved in decision making. often it's a department or ministry of justice, but it may be in some other area. and then we involve the politicians in the process. so it's a long haul. we, for example, had a contribution to ukraine's 1st whistler protection law. and that was passed a few years ago and that we've done with a number of civil society groups. and you know, that is an example of what you can do if you do this over a long period of time. thank you, dr. so let dreyfus don't go away, you're watching the whistleblowers, we're going to take a short break and then continue our conversation with our guest doctors who at dreyfus. 2 2

ah, a general cape club. that means national government can come into the economy as much as a financial 22 in the yes we didn't. i'm about to get it to us all to that at all. with my son he died. did the mean a bad to do the, this is a for me, i need to just do this and he, sadly, i mean for the reset your home phone go out a through,

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ah, welcome back to the whistleblowers. i'm john kerry aku and were speaking with dr. su let dreyfus, she's a professor, journalist activist and the founder and executive director of the n g o blueprint for free speech. welcome back. dr. dreyfus, i want to ask you about financing so many whistleblower organizations here in the u . s. have big plans, but small budgets, they mean well and indeed they help a lot of people, but they just don't have the budgets necessary to make a major impact on things like legislation. i know that blueprint partners with other organizations to get projects done. you also have had success with foundations around the world. can you tell us about some of your partnerships? yeah, i mean we, we are almost all of our funding is done on

a project basis because we don't have an endowment. and, and it is hard. you are scraping and applying for grants, rounds, competitive grant rounds every day. you know, i will get off this in a few and i will go work on yet another grantor application, which is unfortunate because i really like to spend that half of my time. i spend on this doing the work instead, but fortunately we have a good people, the organization who can do that. so the kinds of grants we've had, for example, we've had some number of european commission competitive grants. we one, those are often over sort of a longer period to 3 years. and those have been partnering with a set of civil society groups that we will typically reach out to 3456, in some cases, more than 10 different countries, civil society groups and say, okay, let's try and let's try and do this in a way that works for, you know, if multiply able across the set of countries and we've got

a project we're working on at the moment, which is to actually train lawyers to better fanned journal is active is back to the mac. researchers again slap cases. so those are in a sense of excess, just letting you litigation, that's not really designed when it's just designed to muzzle people from reporting, for example, on their research. and that's across live in countries. so those are the kinds of things we sometimes get private foundations. where we apply and you know, we asked we, we fun us to do this particular project for the next year. the great news is that i have not found that any of the funders who we've dealt with today have been in any way interfering. they've all been very hands off and we wouldn't work with a funder who were super interfering because it's, it's not what we're all about. but they just want to know that you are actually doing the job. and then they, we, you know, they see that we're,

we're actually doing the job and that's fine. but we have total freedom and i insist on that. we have total freedom in how we go about it and what we're recommending. another thing that i've always admired about blueprint for free speech is that you produce a great number of scholarly reports. you make those reports available to the public for free on your website as well as your draft whistleblower legislation. that is certainly unselfish. tell us about the decision to do that. what results have you seen? it's great actually. you know, so we, for example, partnered with another civil society group in europe to develop a set of reports across certain countries. and, and then we've had it in both of our libraries which is great. those reports have actually been used by a whole set of people. i get emails from universities in the us from the midwest who going? oh wow. we had no idea. just resource was there. you know, i'm, i'm going to actually give it to my class of law students. i've had law professors

doing it. i've had people who are a bureaucrats who have been the secretarial role or the secretary at ro, or in parliamentary committees come and say, wow, this is a really great resource. but we've done that because we think it's very important to do it through the lens of with the blower protection. right. so there are a lot of country reports. you can get out there about this country in that country, but they're not really the lens of whistler protection and often the we supply protections that exist in society are not in one single piece of legislation. we recommend that it is because you find better outcomes when it is centrally located . one piece of legislation, but very frequently it's in a piece of labor law or consumer law or some other piece of or cream mean digital rights law. some other piece of legislation we've kind of pieced it together and you'll draw ok, well bureaucrats can get that protection from this corner, you know. and so it's

a bit messy. so by bringing them all together in one place in one report, for example, a solicitor who's got a whistleblower knocking on the door for the 1st time, doesn't really know much about the legislation and go right. okay, this 6 pieces of legislation, care of the groups that are involved and these are the existing cases that i need to go study. and he or she can ramp up really quickly to help the whistleblower on the ground in that country. can you tell us about the countries around the world that are making real progress on whistleblower protections and what countries do you think are backsliding? are you seeing any trends? we've been reasonably happy with where spain is going and and initially it's been a bit of a hard slog. the spanish government was pretty closed in their approach. they were not really including civil society. we kept politely knock on the door. finally, they agreed to have a set around tables, although with very short notice. and then eventually more than

a year after the due date from the european directive that was passed to protect whistleblowers was supposed to be implemented national law. they have actually released a draft piece of lation which has some weaknesses, but there are a lot of strengthening as well. so i'm quietly optimistic that that that piece of legislation will go through late, but hopefully, treating good by the end. pretty good coverage. certainly it's important, it's the 1st time that spain will have passed any whistleblower legislation at the federal level. spain has had a number of problems with corruption and therefore it's really important that this legislation both exists and is reasonably robust. so i'd say in my hopeful category, they'd be kind of leading the charge a straight. it has been a great disappointment in it's with the blower legislation. so i was involved in

the initial 1st ever, a federal legislation that was passed in a straight back in 2013. now that was for public servants, but we've had now a number of high profile cases of whistleblowers in the public service to have not been able to use that legislation to protect themselves. and that's partially because of carve outs that were insisted on being put in there by a set of politicians to cabinet members at the time we objected to them, they pushed them through. anyway, we were hopeful that this last couple weeks, a judge in the a c t chords might go ahead and rule on an important case that, that it did apply. unfortunately, they will the wrong way. and now the case will go ahead again, that was the blower that cases sub gdc. so i won't go into a lot of detail about it. but the allegation that the whistleblower is made is

around war crimes against special the special unit within the straight military overseas. so it's very serious allegations, and it's been supported by a, a report that was done by a judge who is also a military officer who did an independent evaluation of the situation. so i'd say in the kind of downward trajectory, baskin astray, leads the charge there. the attorney general here has recognised this, the whistler legislation is not fit for purpose and needs to be overhauls. and in fact, he personally intervened when this labor government to power some months ago in one of the major whistleblower cases that have burned clary. and this is a case that blueprint had been agitating for for a number of years and,

and the charges were dropped against him, which was great. but they have not extended this to other whistleblowers in the pipeline. including for example, a tax office with the blower who with a blue on something that's really fundamentally important. and that is the proper policies and checks and balances are, are actually adhered to before the tax office reaches into the individual citizens bank account and garnishes wages. because they've decided that you owe them money regardless of whether or not an individual does or doesn't. you really want to be sure there is the beer oversight and checks and balances on that because obviously that power is immense. so so and those were being followed according to the wisdom flora they had just been pushed to the side. so those, those i would say are in a sense, the comparison countries,

not all of the countries in europe have actually implemented the whistleblower, a directive, whistler protection directive that was passed in 2019 in europe. now that was supposed to been done 2 years after it was passed, which was i think about november. and that's unfortunate. there instead of reasons why i think that is some government didn't fully understand the power of with sibling legislation and blueprint was involved in getting that e u directive past. so when the parliament in europe passes. busy the legislation is binding in that there's a clock ticking on when the national parliaments must then make her own version of the legislation of sheer. it's all the ticket boxes and pass it in their own law in the, you know, in a way that's compatible with, with their own law structure. so there are still a number of countries that haven't done that yet. and, you know, we can only watch

a few of them, but other n g o are watching other ones because of limited resourcing. but i think it is something that's really important for some resourcing to go into. because if we get this right in 27 countries in europe, the pressure on the rest of the world to actually do this consistently is high. and, and that's something we hope to see in a sense that european directive becomes the standard that the rest of the. busy world's legislation in countries that don't currently have with the plural legislation. for example, many countries in asia that becomes the standard that they really have to adhere to . and that's good because it's a reasonably good standard. yes. okay. there are some things and that we'd like a little bit more. but in the scheme of things i, you know, it's a reasonably good standard. thank you to our guest doctor so dreyfus. that's all we

have for you today. i'm john kerry aku and this has been the whistle blowers. 2 ah, a how to meet you. what are your ship with a hair dresser, a bus driver, a sales person, anyone could become a victim who that private negotiators 1st appeared with one of them because it was time less with a . ready use more your body be up, but that is my mind. i don't know global go to let me know if you want to be

feasible. mention it on from the yet. could be a study sports took over the summer. if you could put it with a friend's, got some kind of a bombing, their own good perception that even a he'll get, they are putting a life. but they are giving him the opportunity to share his views. not only important in some ways, but also in the universities add to the younger people i was making a are put in as a villain, but that is definitely not the case. and oh,

do you know that he understands what is good for damnation? oh, which is good for people. ah ah 50 meters away from me. this is where another ukrainian shill, emergency workers are still working here, trying to clear out of the rubble perhaps to find more victims ukrainian shelling of doing it 50, killing at least one civilian and leaving all those wounded according to officials that is used us supplied high mileage rockets to attack multiple civilian areas with hope for whipping up and put i'm afraid they, they're still forced to sleep so far. this is.