When Whistleblower Francis Haugen came forward and testified before Congress about what she thought was going wrong inside Facebook, she changed big tech forever. But how? I recently talked about this with Stephen Kohn, author of the book, Rules for Whistleblowers, A Handbook for Doing What’s Right, and many, many other books and publications on whistle-blowing. He’s also one of the nation’s leading whistleblower attorneys. It’s been about 18 months since Francis Haugen appeared before Congress. I began by asking Stephen about the impact of her testimony.
You can listen to our conversation on the Debugger podcast by clicking play below, or by following this link. Below that you’ll find a full transcript.
Stephen Kohn: Well, the impact should be long term. Under the new whistleblower laws, whistleblowers can file anonymous and confidential claims to a variety of agencies concerning wrongdoing, of which is the SEC, which Francis filed. Now she did it publicly, but the overwhelming majority of whistleblowers … in fact, all my clients … go anonymous and confidential, so in this way they can keep their jobs, keep their reputation and become essentially a confidential informant to the US government.
So that’s what Facebook is facing, and all tech is facing – the realization that their employees can be anonymous and confidential, qualify for extremely large financial awards, 10-30% of a sanction, and really keep their jobs.
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