The Gerald Eastman Case
I find it embarrassing to admit that I wasn’t even aware of this lawsuit involving a former Boeing employee and his use of classified documents until Eve brought it up in Competitive Intelligence last week. (Thanks, Eve!) The case has now at least temporarily ended in a mistrial, according to Mr. Eastman’s blog. This case reminds me of the frightening book by Fred Alford on the fate of most whistleblowers, and is a sad and scary reminder of the fact that corporations own an increasing amount of society’s information, and classify and control that information as they see fit. You might call it the dark side of knowledge management.
Presumably my concerns about this are also colored by the fact that my father, a lifelong employee of The Manville Corporation, died of mesothelioma. What if Manville had also been able to prosecute those employees who brought forward the information the corporation had had for years about the health effects of asbestos for “information theft”?
