{"id":127018,"date":"2014-06-30T19:33:37","date_gmt":"2014-06-30T19:33:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=127018"},"modified":"2014-06-30T19:33:37","modified_gmt":"2014-06-30T19:33:37","slug":"corporate-gag-orders-chilling-effect-whistleblowers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/business-news\/corporate-gag-orders-chilling-effect-whistleblowers\/","title":{"rendered":"Corporate Gag Orders Have a Chilling Effect on Whistleblowers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"subtitle\" style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>Washington Post investigation reveals corporations are trying to prevent employees from reporting wrongdoing<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #121212;\"><em>Deirdre Fulton<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #121212;\">Corporations are using overly broad and limiting nondisclosure agreements to prevent employees from reporting wrongdoing or fraud to government officials, according to\u00a0<a style=\"color: #005588;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/investigations\/workplace-secrecy-agreements-appear-to-violate-federal-whistleblower-laws\/2014\/06\/29\/d22c8f02-f7ba-11e3-8aa9-dad2ec039789_story.html?hpid=z1\">an investigation published in the\u00a0<em>Washington Post<\/em><\/a>\u00a0on Monday<em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #121212;\">Lawyers representing whistleblowers say the agreements, being used by defense contractors and hedge funds among other employers, contain language that goes beyond protection of trade secrets.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #121212;\">\u201cThere has been a shift from the traditional, sweeping gag orders to more disingenuous variations of these agreements,\u201d Tom Devine, legal director of the\u00a0<a style=\"color: #005588;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.whistleblower.org\/\">Government Accountability Project<\/a>, told<em>\u00a0Washington Post\u00a0<\/em>reporters Scott Higham and Kaley Belval. \u201cThe techniques are becoming much more sophisticated, but they have the same chilling effect.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #121212;\">The 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which established the Office of the Whistleblower at the Securities and Exchange Commission, also created a bounty program at the SEC to pay whistleblowers. The\u00a0<em>Post<\/em>\u00a0investigation<em>,\u00a0<\/em>however<em>,\u00a0<\/em>revealed that some nondisclosure agreements prohibit whistleblowers from reaping such financial rewards for their actions.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #121212;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/headline\/2014\/06\/30-3\" target=\"_blank\">This piece<\/a> was reprinted by <a href=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\" target=\"_blank\">RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Washington Post investigation reveals corporations are trying to prevent employees from reporting wrongdoing Deirdre Fulton Corporations are using overly broad and limiting nondisclosure agreements to prevent employees from reporting wrongdoing or fraud to government officials, according to\u00a0an investigation published in the\u00a0Washington Post\u00a0on Monday. Lawyers representing whistleblowers say the agreements, being used by defense contractors and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,5],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-127018","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news","7":"category-business-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127018\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}