Is or isn&#39;t it illegal to reveal a/the whistleblower&#39;s name? According to Politico: But [US Senator Rand] Paul told reporters Tuesday he is &quot;more than willing to and probably will at some point&quot; name the whistleblower. &quot;There is no law preventing anybody from saying the name whether you're in the media or you're an elected official,&quot; he said. Sergio Gor, a spokesman for Paul, added, &quot;The whistleblower statute protects the accuser from being fired but says nothing about skeptics revealing his name. There is absolutely no statute that prevents anyone, other than the inspector general from releasing the accuser’s name.&quot; &quot;There is no law preventing anybody from saying the name whether you're in the media or you're an elected official,&quot; he said. So, it is this claim correct, basically, is the whistleblower protected from retribution, but there is no law prohibiting his identity being made public by anyone (except the IG apparently)?
There is actually more than one law covering whistleblowers, so the other answer is only partially correct. According to the NYT, the case in question here is also covered by the Inspector General Act of 1978 Do whistle-blowers have a right to remain anonymous? Only in a limited way. Another part of the Inspector General Act says that agency watchdogs “shall not, after receipt of a complaint or information from an employee, disclose the identity of the employee without the consent of the employee, unless the inspector general determines such disclosure is unavoidable.” In line with that law, the inspector general for the intelligence community, Michael Atkinson, did not include the whistle-blower’s name in his report to the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire. Mr. Maguire testified last week that he did not know the name of the person [...] But the legal prohibition on disclosing the official’s name applies only to Mr. Atkinson. It does not bar Mr. Trump and his allies from trying to identify him or disclosing his name if they figure it out. (It would be illegal under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act for any official to disclose his name if he is a covert agent, but no one has suggested that he is.) The same information can be found in an OIG FAQ Q: Will OIG reveal employee identities or the fact that they cooperated? A: OIG investigators will respect the confidentiality of Department employees as provided by law. Section 7 of the Inspector General Act states that “[t]he Inspector General shall not, after receipt of a complaint or information from an employee, disclose the identity of the employee without the consent of the employee, unless the Inspector General determines such disclosure is unavoidable during the course of the investigation.” During the course of some investigations, it may be unavoidable that the identities of individuals involved will become known. However, OIG strives to protect the confidentiality of Department employees who provide OIG with information. In addition, employees should be aware that reprisal against any employee for cooperating with OIG is forbidden by the Inspector General Act and DAO 207-10, Section 4. Further, OIG takes whistleblower protection very seriously and, along with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, investigates alleged reprisals against employees for making protected disclosures to OIG. So Paul's spokesperson seems to be correct.
That is private. Who you work for is not information that is disclosed publicly by any state actor in Germany, just like your taxes. In fact, that or who you are employed at is often regarded as personal and private information. Nigh impossible through agencies Public agencies like the Fiskus (tax), Agentur für Arbeit, and immigration are not allowed to give any information about a person to anyone but that person or another agency that has the right to that information. Yes, (generally speaking) the tax office may not even say that a person exists (or doesn't) and what their tax number is to anyone but the person in question.
So can Congress itself just declare someone guilty of insurrection and bar them from standing in elections, without that being considered a bill of attainder? No. Even if it isn't a bill of attainder, the Congress can't do that. Or do they have to delegate the finding of fact (in re insurrection) to another body, e.g. to the judiciary? The issue would be presented when someone ran for public office and their qualifications were challenged, and would be resolved by state and local election officials, subject to judicial review. If that was not done, Congress could nonetheless refuse to recognize a state certification of someone's election on these grounds.
If someone testifying before congress refuses to respond to appropriate questions (questions within the scope of the congressional inquiry), that person can be cited for contempt of Congress. One way to avoid this is if the witness can invoke the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. That says that a person may not be compelled to be a witness against himself (or herself) in a criminal case, and has been interpreted to mean that if testimony might in future be used against the witness in a criminal case, it cannot be required, even if the current occasion is not a criminal case. However, if a person has been granted immunity in a particular matter, no testimony can be used against the person in a criminal case on that matter, and so there is no Fifth Amendment privilege not to testify on that matter. This applies to testimony before a court as well as before Congress. The grant of immunity must be at least as comprehensive as the refusal to testify would have been, or the privilege remains. Therefore, if a person has been granted immunity on a subject, that person cannot refuse to testify before Congress by invoking the Fifth Amendment. If the person does refuse, s/he can be cited for contempt of Congress. However, the person can raise a claim that the inquiry was not a proper one, for example because the subject was not a proper one fo Congressional inquiry, or that the Committee was not properly authorized. If the court upholds such a claim, the person will not be convicted of contempt. Also, while Congress can issue a citation, the Justice Department is not required to prosecute the person, and may choose to let the issue drop. Or the court might not convict on some other ground. And of course Congress (or one house of it) has to vote to issue the citation, which it might decide not to do, for political reasons, or indeed for any reason at all. So a grant of immunity alone is not enough to say that testimony will be compelled, but it is a significant step towards such compulsion. Note that under Murphy v. Waterfront Comm'n, 378 U. S. 52 (1964), a state grant of immunity also bars Federal use of the compelled testimony or its fruits, and under Kastigar v. United States, 406 U.S. 441 (1972) a Federal grant of immunity bars state use of the compelled testimony or its fruits. See also This Justia essay on "the Power to Compel Testimony" which covers the whole subject with multiple case citations.
Confidential is simply a less "forceful" name than "privilege". If something is "confidential", this means that the recipient won't voluntarily blab it. This covers a multitude of sins. The rubric I was taught in law school is that even the front page headline of the New York Times if it relates to your case, it is confidential, because you don't want to tip off an adversary who may not have read that paper that day for some reason to the disadvantage of your client. If something is privileged, you can't be compelled to do so involuntarily. A "privilege" is a more "forceful" word. In practice, most stuff that you have a legitimate need to keep secret in the face of compulsory evidence gathering tools are privileged, and confidential matters not covered by a privilege are kept that way because it is best practice not to be source of an opponent's discovery of information and not because it can't be found any other way from something that someone has a legitimate reason to keep secret from someone in a lawsuit or criminal case (which is the main circumstance when privileges are invoked).
united-states In the United States, information released through the federal Freedom of Information (FoI) process, or any of the various state-level versions of FoI, is considered public information. The person who receives it may share it at will, or publish it. Indeed many such inquiries are made by news reporters who intend to publish the information, and many others are routinely posted to various web sites. I suspect that the law on this point in the UK is similar, but I have not checked it.
The question actually asked, "what legal theories would support or harm...", is somewhat unclear. But what the questioner seems to be asking is, basically, what would happen if you tried it? The answer, it seems to me, is pretty straightforward. In the hypothetical case, you have been publishing a notice for years, saying "I have not been served with a subpoena." You then get served with a subpoena that includes a gag order. The gag order, presumably, includes wording prohibiting you from revealing the existence of the subpoena. You then cease publication of the warrant canary. By doing so, you have revealed the existence of the subpoena, and you are in violation of the gag order. You will be subject to whatever penalties you would be subject to if you violated it in some other way; for example, by publishing a notice that said, "Hey! We got a subpoena! It's a secret!" The distinction between revealing the existence of the subpoena by action, rather than by inaction, is a false one. It's exactly the kind of cutesy legal formality that non-lawyers love to rely on, but real judges ignore. If you tell someone: "Hey, you know John Smith's three sons, Joe, Ted, and Bill? Joe and Ted are good people; they have never molested any children. As for Bill--well, I don't have anything to say about Bill." If Bill is not a child molester, you have defamed him, and you are not going to convince a judge otherwise. The EFF link you link to tries to claim it'll "work" because courts are reluctant to enforce speech. Even if that were true, that might mean your canary would be effective in the sense of giving the public notice of the subpoena. That doesn't mean you wouldn't be liable for giving the public notice. For example: I put up a billboard saying "Bill Smith is a pedophile." Even if the court can't force me to add the word "not", that doesn't mean the billboard isn't defamatory. Realistically, though, courts compel speech all the time. Court-ordered apologies, disclosures, and notices are not unusual. And if ever a court would be inclined to compel speech, it would be in a situation like this one, where a company intentionally set out to get around a gag order with this kind of convoluted sea-lawyering.
These are some thoughts about the state of affairs in the US, I do not know how it works in the UK. In the US it seems to be a legal gray area. Gray enough that I do not think any lawyer could say for certain that the use of the data is legal. The data is stolen. If possessing stolen property is illegal then possessing this data is also likely illegal. Of course experts disagree, Stuart Karle, an adjunct media professor at Columbia University and former general counsel for the Wall Street Journal says: ...the documents have been published by the hackers, they are now public by virtue of being put on the Internet. But Barrett Brown was charged with trafficking in stolen authentication when he forwarded a link to some stolen emails. He signed a plea for acting as an accessory after the fact. He spent more than a year in jail while they sorted it out. In the US there is no law banning the download of hacked documents. In fact Bartnicki v. Vopper 532 US 514 (2001) stands for the rule that journalists can report on illegally obtained information. But contrast that with the Barret Brown prosecution! And decide where a data scientist fits. Also there is the question of whether an illegally recorded conversation is of the same "illegal" nature as hacked personal information.