Oregonian and UO Auditor add drop sites for whistleblowing, muckraker docs

Whistleblowing is all the rage these days. If you’ve got some hot muck it’s a seller’s market. Investigative reporter Les Zaitz has the story on the Oregonian’s new secure drop site, here:

Want to secretly submit a tip? Try our new SecureDrop

…. We understand there are those with information they want public who don’t want to risk being identified as the source. The reasons to remain anonymous are many.

SecureDrop was developed by journalists and software engineers to address this concern. The system relies on encoded communications to dedicated computer servers at The Oregonian/OregonLive that are separate from the newsroom system.

You can find details on how to use the system and the levels of protection by going to this web page:[LINK: How to use SecureDrop.]

That link starts start with instructions for booting from a secure operating system on a USB key and installing Eric Snowden’s favorite Tor browser. Yikes.

Or you could report violations of UO policy and so on to UO. Now that we have an independent governing board we’ve got our own auditor, Brenda Muirhead. She has contracted with the outside firm EthicsPoint, for a “totally confidential and anonymous” UO fraud reporting hotline, here:

Ah yes, the NCAA and the PAC-12. If you’re a professor you may not have realized that you could be fired for violating NCAA rules. UO’s former NCAA Faculty Athletics Representative Jim O’Fallon and our former interim President Bob Berdahl taught me that one the hard way – or tried to.

I’m no law professor, but I’m a bit surprised that the UO audit reporting site doesn’t have explicit warnings about the potential dangers to your career of reporting misfeasance and malfeasance. It seems to me that there are many circumstances where the UO administration could learn your identity from the details of the complaint or subsequent investigation, exposing a whistleblower who’d been told they’d be anonymous to potential retaliation, costly legal bills, and so on. And don’t count on UO’s General Counsel to defend you. Read the Oregon Bar’s rejection of Jennifer Morlok’s argument that interim GC Doug Park and AGC Samantha Hill had an attorney-client relationship with her, when she blew the whistle on the GC’s office seizure of Jane Doe’s counseling records:

The UO Audit website doesn’t mention this, but if you follow the links to file a report you get handy dropdown menus for reporting various issues:

Athletics sure is a risky business:

Remember, if you know about any of this stuff and don’t report it, UO could fire you for violating NCAA rules. But if you report it, you could find yourself it a very sticky spot with your boss and perhaps some hostile fans. Tough choice.