Privacy and Leaks

Unfortunately, I agree with Randolph Hobler ’68 (Inbox, April 2) completely. Most agencies of the government do a good job of complying with the sections of the Whistleblower Protection Act that mandate effective education and training in the act, but they do nothing to enforce it, they don’t discipline violators of the law, and if anything, they participate in the retaliation that inevitably occurs against anyone who reports “waste, fraud, and abuse” as they are supposed to do.

On my family’s website, I’ve described what happened to my wife and me as park rangers for the National Park Service (www.schundler.net). If our “reward” for writing the inspector general’s office about abuses and waste in one small park of the National Park Service resulted in not being rehired (as we were supposed to be) and then not getting any support from anyone in the government until the Office of Special Counsel had to prosecute our case (successfully), imagine what happens in other agencies, and in cases where much more significant problems are being exposed!

In the final analysis, what Edward Snowden did was wrong, but what is even more wrong is a Whistleblower Protection Act that is not enforced in almost every agency of the government — which then drives people to take more drastic (and sometimes illegal) action.