#whistleblowing

On June 20, I'm keynoting the LOCUS AWARDS in OAKLAND.

Let's take a sec here and notice something genuinely great happening in the US government: the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau's stunning, unbroken streak of major, muscular victories over the forces of corporate corruption, with the backing of the Supreme Court (yes, that Supreme Court), and which is only speeding up!

A little background. The CFPB was created in 2010. It was Elizabeth Warren's brainchild, an institution that was supposed to regulate finance from the perspective of the American public, not the American finance sector. Rather than fighting to "stabilize" the financial sector (the mission that led to Obama taking his advisor Timothy Geithner's advice to permit the foreclosure crisis to continue in order to "foam the runways" for the banks), the Bureau would fight to defend us from bankers.

The CFPB got off to a rocky start, with challenges to the unique system of long-term leadership appointments meant to depoliticize the office, as well as the sudden resignation of its inaugural boss, who broke his promise to see his term through in order to launch an unsuccessful bid for political office.

But after the 2020 election, the Bureau came into its own, when Biden poached Rohit Chopra from the FTC and put him in charge. Chopra went on a tear, taking on landlords who violated the covid eviction moratorium:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/20/euthanize-rentier-enablers/#cfpb

Then banning payday lenders' scummiest tactics:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/29/planned-obsolescence/#academic-fraud

Then striking at one of fintech's most predatory grifts, the "earned wage access" hustle:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/01/usury/#tech-exceptionalism

Then closing the loophole that let credit reporting bureaus (like Equifax, who doxed every single American in a spectacular 2019 breach) avoid regulation by creating data brokerage divisions and claiming they weren't part of the regulated activity of credit reporting:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/16/the-second-best-time-is-now/#the-point-of-a-system-is-what-it-does

Chopra went on to promise to ban data-brokers altogether:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/13/goulash/#material-misstatement

Then he banned comparison shopping sites where you go to find the best bank accounts and credit cards from accepting bribes and putting more expensive options at the top of the list. Instead, he's requiring banks to send the CFPB regular, accurate lists of all their charges, and standing up a federal operated comparison shopping site that gives only accurate and honest rankings. Finally, he's made an interoperability rule requiring banks to let you transfer to another institution with one click, just like you change phone carriers. That means you can search an honest site to find the best deal on your banking, and then, with a single click, transfer your accounts, your account history, your payees, and all your other banking data to that new bank:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/21/let-my-dollars-go/#personal-financial-data-rights

Somewhere in there, big business got scared. They cooked up a legal theory declaring the CFPB's funding mechanism to be unconstitutional and got the case fast-tracked to the Supreme Court, in a bid to put Chopra and the CFPB permanently out of business. Instead, the Supremes – these Supremes! – upheld the CFPB's funding mechanism in a 7-2 ruling:

https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/05/supreme-court-lets-cfpb-funding-stand/

We're honored to sponsor such quality investigative journalism. Epoch's video includes documents that aren't available to the public, so this is the SINGULAR place you'll be able to hear about them.

Epoch has a real risk of being shadowbanned or ad restricted by YT for this video, so please check it out and share manually. On Haven, he won't have to worry about it! Watch it here: (also, suggest tags for this post, if you kindly would)

The BBC doctored a Donald Trump speech by making him appear to encourage the Capitol Hill riot, according to an internal whistleblowing memo seen by The Telegraph.

A Panorama programme, broadcast a week before the US election, “completely misled” viewers by showing the president telling supporters he was going to walk to the Capitol with them to “fight like hell”, when in fact he said he would walk with them “to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard”.

The “mangled” footage was highlighted in a 19-page dossier on BBC bias, which was compiled by a recent member of the corporation’s standards committee and is now circulating in government departments.

The dossier said the programme made the US president “‘say’ things [he] never actually said” by splicing together footage from the start of his speech with something he said nearly an hour later.

It claimed senior executives and the BBC’s chairman had ignored and dismissed a string of serious complaints raised by the corporation’s own standards watchdog.

Donald Trump Jr, the president’s eldest son, accused the BBC of dishonesty and “fake news”.

He reposted The Telegraph’s story on X, writing: “The FAKE NEWS ‘reporters’ in the UK are just as dishonest and full of s--- as the ones here in America!!!!”

The Telegraph will soon publish other excerpts of the memo, which accuse the BBC’s Arabic service of bias over its coverage of the war in Gaza, and accuse the corporation of “effective censorship” of its coverage of the transgender debate.

The document raises serious questions about the culture at the BBC, how it affects impartiality and how managers including Tim Davie, the director-general, are accused of turning a blind eye to evidence of bias.

The Conservatives have demanded an immediate investigation into how the Panorama documentary was allowed to be broadcast.

Nigel Huddleston, the shadow culture secretary, said: “These are extremely concerning revelations that could seriously undermine the brand and reputation of the BBC.

“The BBC licence fee is justified on the basis of impartiality and trust.

“There can be no justification for this kind of deliberate manipulation and the spreading of misinformation. “This is not the first time that evidence of bias at the BBC has emerged, but it is one of the most stark and alarming examples to date.

“Licence-fee payers deserve an immediate explanation and apology from the BBC and a thorough investigation into this scandal must take place.”

The most damaging disclosures involve a one-hour Panorama special called Trump: A Second Chance? that was broadcast in October last year.

As well as altering Mr Trump’s words, the documentary also showed flag-waving men marching on the Capitol in Washington DC on Jan 6 2021 after the president spoke, which “created the impression Trump’s supporters had taken up his ‘call to arms’”. In fact the footage, was shot before Mr Trump had even started speaking.

The report said Panorama’s “distortion of the day’s events” was so egregious that viewers would ask: “Why should the BBC be trusted, and where will this all end?”

When the issue was raised with managers, they “refused to accept there had been a breach of standards”. The report’s author then warned Samir Shah, the BBC chairman, of the “very, very dangerous precedent” set by Panorama but received no reply.

The internal whistleblower sent a copy of the 19-page letter to every member of the BBC Board last month.

Boris Johnson, the former prime minister, called the revelation a “total disgrace”.

He posted on X:

This is a total disgrace. The BBC has doctored footage of Trump to make it look as though he incited a riot - when he in fact said no such thing. We have Britain's national broadcaster using a flagship programme to tell palpable untruths about Britain's closest ally. Is anyone at… — Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) November 3, 2025

Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, said: “It’s no wonder that fewer people are paying the BBC licence fee every single year.”

Former BBC radio presenter Liz Kershaw said on X: “This is no surprise to me. I presented news and current affairs programmes on the BBC on four stations from 1993 to 2011. The biased groupthink among its journalists was outrageous and had to be fought and rebalanced every day.”

Morgan Stephens at Daily Kos:

With watchdogs purged and the GOP obediently falling in line with Donald Trump’s authoritarian agenda during his first three weeks in office, Senate Democrats are turning to a different strategy: whistleblowers. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Homeland Security Committee Ranking Member Gary Peters launched a new online portal Monday for individuals to report wrongdoing, abuses of power, and threats to public safety.  Trump and his co-President Elon Musk’s bold and illegal plays for power inspired the move, according to the Democratic senators. “In the first three weeks of his administration, President Trump has shown a blatant disregard for the rule of law and a callousness for the American people,” said Schumer and Peters in a joint statement. “From the DOGE takeover of the Treasury Department to the federal funding freeze, this Administration has wreaked havoc on programs that American families, seniors, students, veterans, and others have come to depend upon.” The senators also included a letter written to future whistleblowers and a list of resources, including a legal overview of the Whistleblowers Protection Act, the Office of the Whistleblowers Ombuds, and the National Whistleblower Center.  The straightforward website gives whistleblowers one page to fill out. The form includes multiple options for the “nature of [the] complaint,” including “retaliation,” “wasteful spending,” “fraud,” “criminal activity,” or “other.”  The Democratic lawmakers also vowed to hold hearings and inquiries should any submitted complaints warrant them.

[...] According to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, this is part of a “three-pronged counteroffensive” strategy Democrats have laid out in the past month when describing how they’ll push back against the Trump administration. The plan, Jeffries says, includes “appropriations,” “litigation,” and “communications.” In a swift response to Trump’s chaotic federal funding freeze, Jeffries also proposed a 10-point plan detailing how Democrats will protect Americans’ social security privacy, defend Medicare and other essential government programs, and highlight how Republicans are raising the cost of living. This comes as Trump and Musk have been gutting government watchdogs while shaping the federal government to their corrupt liking. 

Elissa Welles for The Verge blog did more digging; she found out that, yeah, this 'whistleblower' made it up. They put it through multiple detectors and reached out to Signal, who said that the 'badge' Trowaway_whistleblow (the anonymous name of the poster) sent them was AI-generated via Google Gemini. Uber has also confirmed the story is fake.

And it's made me think that in this era of enshittification and AI Slop, we're not stopping to think and ask for sources anymore. Reddit used to be famous for that, remember? It was a fucking meme in itself.