10 Most Controversial Whistleblowers In Tech


Bangalore: There were a few heroes in history, who daringly came out exposing some secret projects by the governments. In the recent one, Edward Snowden, the guy who blew the lid off USA’s secrete project PRISM that was spying on us, is stranded at Russian airport, after his passport has been annulled by U.S.; lets take a look at these 10 tech whistleblowers who were engineers, academics, and scientists, and who risked their career, citizenship and life to bring forth the truth. The list is compiled by CIO.

#10 Daniel Ellsberg

Leak: The Pentagon Papers (1969)

Daniel Ellsberg could be considered the biggest whistleblower ever. He was an economics Ph.D. and analyst for the Rand Corporation, and he risked it all by sharing 7,000 pages of the classified documents with The New York Times showing how three presidential administrations and the military lied about the Vietnam War.

He was slapped with sentence of 115 years in prison for violating the Espionage Act, however Ellsberg avoided prison time after the Nixon administration bugged his psychiatrist's office and the judge declared a mistrial. It also lead to a new law by Supreme Court that established the right of newspapers to reveal government secrets without fear of censorship or retribution. (Source: Wikipedia)

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