Whistleblower Case

Whistleblower

In my opinion Shawn Carpenter, who is an American Navy veteran in his thirties is a great example of a successful whistleblower. He had a great impact on the company where he worked at that time and set a high moral standard for all of us. Carpenter was employed by Sandia National Laboratories to investigate security breaches in the company network. During this time he uncovered malicious cyber-net attacks on several more government organizations including NASA. He followed the logical steps that we know from the book written by Trevino and Nelson in the way he unveiled an organized Chinese cyber-espionage ring (code named "Titan Rain" by FBI). During this time he faced a dilemma that led him to choose between loyalties to the company verses honesty and integrity as well as patriotism and doing the best for the country. This was an easy choice for him; he chooses to disobey his higher management when he was ordered not to disclose the findings to the FBI - the information that could potentially endanger the security of the USA. He gets fired (after step four - "Take It to the Next Level" according to Trevino and Nelson book) and sues the Sandia National for wrongful termination and wins this case where a jury awarded him almost $4.7 million.

The greatest omission in Sandia National Laboratories ethical toolkit was - dishonesty, mismanagement of information that could endanger others, not cooperating with authorities, as well as termination of an employee for the wrong reason, since this was not about Shawn's disobedience, but rather attempts of Sandia to "keep it all quite" while so many stakeholders are involved. As some of the stakeholders we can identify are - the company Sandia, Shawn, other government companies that are being targeted by cyber-spies, innocent people that could be effected by this criminal activity, the whole country is at stake. In this negative publicity Sandia Labs appears as a dishonest and unpatriotic company. This is a company that's "primary mission is to develop, engineer, and test the non-nuclear components of nuclear weapons". The first sentence from their mission is "Sandia is a national security laboratory involved in a variety of research and development programs to help secure a peaceful and free world through technology." Clearly, there is a big disconnection between their actions and their primary mission.

http://www.time.com/time/press_releases/article/0,8599,1098911,00.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandia_National_Laboratories

http://www.sandia.gov/mission/