Washington, D.C. December 27, 2012. The Washington Post published year-end articles that highlighted three ongoing projects of the National Whistleblower Center.

In an article published on December 26, "Top 10 stories in the federal workforce in 2012", The Washington Post cited the scandal involving FDA electronic spying on its own scientists who blew the whistle on agency misconduct. The Post ranked the FDA electronic spying scandal as the number 9 story that affected the federal workforce this past year. The NWC has been actively supporting the scientists who have sued the FDA for whistleblower retaliation and challenged the constitutionality of the FDA's secret monitoring of the scientists' personal and private emails.  As revealed by the NWC and the whistleblower scientists, the FDA targeted the whistleblowers for electronic surveillance by installing secret spyware on their computers.  The FDA captured confidential emails from the whistleblowers' personal and private email accounts (such as Yahoo and Gmail accounts) and the FDA stole the whistleblowers' confidential communications with their attorneys as well as communications with members of Congress, the Inspector General and others discussing the whistleblowers' allegations of serious wrongdoing by the agency.

Washington, D.C. November 29, 2012 - On November 5, 2012, the National Whistleblower Center filed a briefing paper/amicus brief with the Internal Revenue Service addressing key questions of law governing the IRS Whistleblower program. The brief, linked here, addresses the issue of "collected proceeds" under the IRS whistleblower law. The "collected proceeds" issue impacts hundreds if not thousands of cases in which the IRS must determine whether a whistleblower is entitled to a reward based on monies obtained by the U.S. government related to tax violations.

November 27, 2012
By Samuel Rubenfeld

President Barack Obama signed new whistleblower protections into law, the White House said Tuesday.

The law, known as the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act (pdf), expands protections for federal workers who blow the whistle on misconduct, fraud and illegality.

Washington, D.C. November 27, 2012. President Barack Obama signed into law today the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act (WPEA). Whistleblower attorneys working pro bono with the NWC played an instrumental role in passing this Act. NWC's Executive Director Stephen Kohn testified before the Senate Homeland Security Committee and David Colapinto testified before the House Government Oversight hearing in support of the bill.

The bill contains important advances including an expanded definition of "protected disclosure" and permits whistleblowers to collect compensatory damages.  Kohn and Colapinto worked for over two years to successfully block three "poison pills" that had been inserted into the law. These "poison pills" would have permitted the MSPB to summarily dismiss cases without a hearing, repealed existing protections for FBI whistleblowers and permitted the executive branch to fire whistleblowers for reporting "minor" violations of law.