Interesting account from Lynn Brewer, an Enron whistleblower, about the problems she faced bringing wrongdoing to light.

One of the big problems, she says, is not just about confronting the resistance inside the organisation. It's also very much about the way society commercialises, even celebrates, unethical behaviour.

Unfortunately, one person's whistleblower can be another person's troublemaker. Witness for instance the way CIA director Porter Goss has made the assertion in the New York Times that that the term "whistleblower" is being misused, and that, for example, whoever leaked information about the president's secret wiretapping program was not a whistleblower, but a criminal.

Being a whistleblower is a dangerous and unforgiving role. Not much reward in it, as whistleblowers from the FBI, national Security Agency, Defense Department and Energy Department are revealing now in their testimony before the House Government Reform National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations Subcommittee.

So much so that committee chairman Chris Shays says the system is broken, indicating the law needs to be fixed to protect national security whistleblowers. You can hear him interviewed on radio here.

True, national security and corporate issues are not the same. But what fascinates me is that with both, similar forces are at work stopping people from speaking out and exposing the problem. The question is how do we fix it?