ABSTRACT
Surveillance has reached unprecedented levels in recent years. Our awareness of this fact is in no small part due to the actions of whistleblowers such as Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, acting in cooperation with organisations such as WikiLeaks (in the case of Manning) and with mainstream news organisations (in the case of Snowden and his confidant, Glen Greenwald). In what follows, I offer a partial defence of this kind of whistleblowing. I argue that knowledge of the possibility of invasions of privacy is required for our ability to consent to such invasions, and that consent is required if violations of privacy are to be justified. Whistleblowing on digital surveillance is thus justified at least to the extent that it preserves the conditions under which a democratic government maintains its legitimacy (namely, the consent of its citizens).
