Many organizations in EA have whistleblower policies, some of which are public in their bylaws (for example, GiveWell and ACE publish their whistleblower policies among other policies). EV US and EV UK have whistleblower policies that apply to all the projects under their umbrella (CEA, 80,000 Hours, etc.) This is just a normal thing for nonprofits; the IRS asks whether you have one even though they don’t strictly require it, and you can look up on a nonprofit’s 990 whether they have such a policy.
Additionally, UK law, state law in many US states, and lots of other countries provide some legal protections for whistleblowers. Legal protection varies by state in the US, but is relatively strong in California.
Neither government protections nor organizational policies cover all the scenarios where someone might reasonably want protection from negative effects of bringing a problem to light. But that seems to be the case in all industries, including in the nonprofit field in general, not something unusual about EA.
I’m not aware of any EA organizations that provide financial rewards for whistleblowers, which seem like they’d be very tricky to administer without creating incentives you don’t want. The main example of financial rewards that I’m aware of is that the US government provides large financial rewards to whistleblowers whose evidence leads to the conviction of some fraud cases.
Neither government protections nor organizational policies cover all the scenarios where someone might reasonably want protection from negative effects of bringing a problem to light. But that seems to be the case in all industries, including in the nonprofit field in general, not something unusual about EA.
I think that is correct as far as it goes, but I suspect that the list of things you generally won’t get protection from (from your linked post) is significantly more painful in practice in EA than in most industries.
For example, although individuals dependent on small grants are probably particularly vulnerable to retaliation in ~all industries, that’s practically a much bigger hole in EA than elsewhere. The general unavailability of protection for disclosures about entities you don’t work for is more stifling in fields with a patchwork of mostly small-to-midsize orgs than in (say) the aerospace industry. Funding centralization could make retaliation easier to pull off.
So while the scope of coverage might be similar on paper in EA, it seems reasonably possible that the extent of protection as applied is unusually weak in EA.
I’m not aware of any EA organizations that provide financial rewards for whistleblowers, which seem like they’d be very tricky to administer without creating incentives you don’t want.
Agree, although those incentive problems could potentially be mitigated by limiting compensation to losses (e.g., loss of job, grant opportunity, an estimate of lost reputation) incurred due to good-faith whistleblowing activity that met specified criteria.
My understanding is that UK law and state law whistleblower protections are extremely weak and only cover knowledge of literal and usually substantial crimes (including in California). I don’t think any legally-mandated whistleblower protections make much of a difference for the kind of thing that EAs are likely to encounter.
I checked the state of the law in the FTX case, and unless someone knew specifically of clear fraud going on, they would have not been protected, which seems like it makes them mostly useless for things we care about. They also wouldn’t cover e.g. capabilities companies being reckless or violating commitments they made, unless they break some clear law, and even then protections are pretty limited. So I can’t really think of any case, except the most extreme, in which at least the US state protections come into play.
I was not aware of any CEA or 80k whistleblower systems. If they have some, that seems good! Is there any place that has more details on them? (you also didn’t mention them in the article you linked, which I had read recently, so I wasn’t aware of them)
Also, for the record, organizational whisteblower protections seem not that important to me. I e.g. care more about having norms against libel suits and other litigious behavior, though the norms for that seem mostly gone, so I expect substantially less whistleblowing of that type in the future. I mostly covered them because I was comprehensively covering the list of things people submitted to the Coordination Forum.
They also wouldn’t cover e.g. capabilities companies being reckless or violating commitments they made, unless they break some clear law, and even then protections are pretty limited.
I’ve heard this claim repeatedly, but it’s not true that EA orgs have no whistleblower systems.
I looked into this as part of this project on reforms at EA organizations: Resource on whistleblowing and other ways of escalating concerns
Many organizations in EA have whistleblower policies, some of which are public in their bylaws (for example, GiveWell and ACE publish their whistleblower policies among other policies). EV US and EV UK have whistleblower policies that apply to all the projects under their umbrella (CEA, 80,000 Hours, etc.) This is just a normal thing for nonprofits; the IRS asks whether you have one even though they don’t strictly require it, and you can look up on a nonprofit’s 990 whether they have such a policy.
Additionally, UK law, state law in many US states, and lots of other countries provide some legal protections for whistleblowers. Legal protection varies by state in the US, but is relatively strong in California.
Neither government protections nor organizational policies cover all the scenarios where someone might reasonably want protection from negative effects of bringing a problem to light. But that seems to be the case in all industries, including in the nonprofit field in general, not something unusual about EA.
I’m not aware of any EA organizations that provide financial rewards for whistleblowers, which seem like they’d be very tricky to administer without creating incentives you don’t want. The main example of financial rewards that I’m aware of is that the US government provides large financial rewards to whistleblowers whose evidence leads to the conviction of some fraud cases.
I think that is correct as far as it goes, but I suspect that the list of things you generally won’t get protection from (from your linked post) is significantly more painful in practice in EA than in most industries.
For example, although individuals dependent on small grants are probably particularly vulnerable to retaliation in ~all industries, that’s practically a much bigger hole in EA than elsewhere. The general unavailability of protection for disclosures about entities you don’t work for is more stifling in fields with a patchwork of mostly small-to-midsize orgs than in (say) the aerospace industry. Funding centralization could make retaliation easier to pull off.
So while the scope of coverage might be similar on paper in EA, it seems reasonably possible that the extent of protection as applied is unusually weak in EA.
Agree, although those incentive problems could potentially be mitigated by limiting compensation to losses (e.g., loss of job, grant opportunity, an estimate of lost reputation) incurred due to good-faith whistleblowing activity that met specified criteria.
My understanding is that UK law and state law whistleblower protections are extremely weak and only cover knowledge of literal and usually substantial crimes (including in California). I don’t think any legally-mandated whistleblower protections make much of a difference for the kind of thing that EAs are likely to encounter.
I checked the state of the law in the FTX case, and unless someone knew specifically of clear fraud going on, they would have not been protected, which seems like it makes them mostly useless for things we care about. They also wouldn’t cover e.g. capabilities companies being reckless or violating commitments they made, unless they break some clear law, and even then protections are pretty limited. So I can’t really think of any case, except the most extreme, in which at least the US state protections come into play.
I was not aware of any CEA or 80k whistleblower systems. If they have some, that seems good! Is there any place that has more details on them? (you also didn’t mention them in the article you linked, which I had read recently, so I wasn’t aware of them)
Also, for the record, organizational whisteblower protections seem not that important to me. I e.g. care more about having norms against libel suits and other litigious behavior, though the norms for that seem mostly gone, so I expect substantially less whistleblowing of that type in the future. I mostly covered them because I was comprehensively covering the list of things people submitted to the Coordination Forum.
An alternative take on this (I haven’t researched this topic myself): https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/LttenWwmRn8LHoDgL/josh-jacobson-s-quick-takes?commentId=ZA2N2LNqQteD5dE4g