In my 50 years as a member of the United States Congress, I’ve seen all kinds of whistleblower retaliation.
And I’ve seen it across all industries.
The United States tech industry’s no different.
These tech companies, sitting in their ivory towers in Silicon Valley, look to silence whistleblowers.
They want to keep these brave men and women from telling Congress, government regulators and the American public about alleged wrongdoing at their companies.
I’ve fought for whistleblowers my whole career.
As author of updates to the False Claims Act, the IRS whistleblower program and many other whistleblower laws, whistleblowers are key to rooting out fraud, waste and abuse.
Recently, I wrote to Open A.I. about their efforts to silence whistleblowers.
To address this, I’m working on bipartisan legislation to implement whistleblower protections in the Artificial Intelligence industry.
Sadly, our witness, Ms. Sarah Wynn Williams, is facing down the barrel of a gun.
Ms. Wynn Williams is a former employee of Facebook, now called Meta.
According to her attorneys, Meta is threatening her with a fine of $50,000 each time she makes a disparaging comment about the company.
This can easily be abused to silence her for telling the truth.
Thank you for bravely being here.
This isn’t the first time I’ve investigated a tech company for exposing Americans’ data and sensitive technologies to our adversaries.
On September 13, 2022, as Ranking Member of the Judiciary Committee, I, along with Senator Durbin, held a hearing on those very issues.
A Twitter whistleblower named Peiter Zatko, testified at that hearing.
He disclosed to this committee that Twitter shared user data to foreign intelligence agencies, including the government of China.
His disclosures made public that the FBI notified Twitter of at least one Chinese agent in the Company.
What’s different here? Well, the Chinese didn’t have to infiltrate Facebook.
Facebook went to China.
Ms. Wynn Williams has disclosed very troubling allegations.
For example, she’s told my office that Mark Zuckerberg and other C-Suite executives at Facebook rolled out the red carpet for the communist Chinese government.
According to Ms. Wynn Williams, Facebook executives agreed to provide the communists in China with access to user data and build data storage facilities in China.
This would obviously involve American data.
Allegedly, Facebook also built censorship tools to block certain content from Chinese users.
According to Ms. Wynn Williams, Facebook also gave the ruling communist party and its People’s Liberation Army briefings on artificial intelligence software.
These briefings were done with the knowledge that they would assist China’s government in advancing its artificial intelligence programs.
These actions have dire consequences.
These disclosures to Congress are exactly how it ought to be done.
This whistleblower, in my view, has done it the right way.
Ms. Wynn Williams, I often say that whistleblowers are treated like skunks at a picnic.
Unfortunately, you’ve experienced that.
Thank you for your courage and bravery in coming forward to Congress.
We’ll be conducting a thorough investigation, and I ask Meta to fully cooperate.
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