Is whistle-blowing working?

Whistle-blowing is in the news. The recent release of the film Official Secrets (with a powerful performance by Keira Knightley) is based upon the true story of Katharine Gun, a British intelligence specialist working at GCHQ, whose job involved handling of classified information. In 2003, she received a memo from the US National Security Agency containing a directive, namely, that the United States was enlisting Britain’s help in collecting compromising information on United Nations Security Council members in order to blackmail them into voting in favour of an invasion of Iraq. Ms Gun was outraged by this email, as she considered (correctly) that this would lead to war in Iraq. She made a copy of the email, took it home, deliberated for several days, then made the decision to leak the memo to the press. This whistle-blowing act did not end well. Following the publication of the leaked memo, Ms Gun was arrested and charged under Section 1 of the Official Secrets Act. She was initially held in custody, spending several nights in a police cell, and the case eventually came to court in February 2004, giving Ms Gun almost a year of torture: however, the case was dropped within half an hour of its opening because the prosecution declined to offer evidence, the reasons for this being unclear.