Charles Littlejohn, a former IRS contractor, leaked the tax returns of the rich to show the public how the uber-wealthy game our tax code. Now he’s facing potential prison time. They’ve nabbed the wrong criminal.
Did they game the system, or did they commit a crime? Did he commit a crime?
Don’t get me wrong, I’d eat Jeff Bezos for dinner given the chance… but I don’t think you can commit a crime to expose someone for being legally unethical and expect the crime to be forgiven.
If they committed a crime that the IRS was failing to address, then there should be regular whistleblower protections at play here. And if whistleblower protections are failing to do their jobs, then I hope this guy gets all the defense he deserves.
If there was no crime being unveiled – just “normal” tax avoidance in order to dodge paying a fair share – then the question is very different from the one you posed. It should be be whether the public’s interest in having access to this information outweighs the violation of individual privacy it represents.
ALWAYS be wary of appeals to simple rules in vastly asymmetrical situations.
I’m not sure there’s a clear-cut answer here, but I also think that once you have amassed a certain level of wealth, your expectation of privacy in your financial affairs necessarily diminishes. I don’t see how the richest people in the world, people whose personal finances are so deeply intertwined in the operations of the public economy, have any claim to privacy at all when it comes to their own bookkeeping.
Is it whistleblowing when you leak private personal information to the public? I thought whistleblowing protections only would apply if the person reported their complaint to the United States Office of Special Counsel or the Merit Systems Protection Board.
That said, it seems there is often a greater public service when info is leaked to the public at large. But I don’t really support releasing private personal info to the general public.
Be careful not to think like a cop. It’s cop-thinking to say that any kind of information disclosure that doesn’t perfectly conform to the statutes and protocols set up by the cops is automatically not whistleblowing. Cops don’t own whistleblowing and it’s still whistleblowing even if the cops don’t like it. Often, the kind of whistleblowing the cops don’t like is the most important kind.
statutes and protocols set up by the cops
Statutes are made by lawmakers not cops. Lawmakers are elected; votes matter. Ultimately I prefer living in a land of laws rather than mob rule.
In the situation under discussion here, a person (perhaps illegally) releasing private information to better inform the public, I think the action is more like civil disobedience. A very honorable way to draw attention to wrongs in the world, but carries the risk of legal repercussions.
No, in this case we’re talking about cops. The US OSC, for example, is literally cops. It’s a federal law enforcement organization.
Just because cops are put in power by elected officials doesn’t mean they aren’t cops.
Following Peelian principles / consent-based policing philosophies does not mean lawlessness. Again, don’t fall into the mental trap of thinking like a cop. The choice isn’t police state vs mob rule. That’s just where your mind goes because you’ve been taught to think like a cop from a very young age. I was too, and catch myself falling into the pitfalls of cop-thinking all the time.
a federal law enforcement organization
No. A law enforcement org does not write the laws. They enforce them, whether rightly or wrongly.
¿Por que no los dos?
