Ms Frances Haugen:

There is a very subtle thing happening in our society today that is important for legislators around the world to be aware of and think about consciously when writing their whistleblower laws: technology has always outpaced regulation. This has always been, and always will be, true. We are creative little monkeys and are always looking for new ways to treat the world, and we often get ahead of ourselves. We push too far, realise the consequences of our actions and then pull back a little towards the public good. Technology is accelerating and is getting more sophisticated and nuanced. As I said before, you cannot get a graduate degree in what I have spoken to the members about today; you have to go to one of these places to be trained in-house or acculturated inside it. If we do not have whistleblower protections that are strong and robust, we will face some very large systemic risks to our societies. Technology is getting more powerful and will get farther and farther from the public good before we realise these problems exist. A closed system is not like in days of old whereby you could measure the pollution coming from a factory and talk to the workers about what was happening inside it. The systems in question, however, are opaque technical systems that hide behind our screens. If we do not have mechanisms to protect people who come out and explain them to us, we will face large risks to ourselves.