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Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

1335 pointsby neapolisbeachabout 1 year ago

47 comments

alluro2about 1 year ago
Even if it was a suicide, that still doesn&#x27;t mean it was self-motivated. People who care enough to be whistleblowers, would likely care enough about wellbeing of their family or other people - enough to sacrifice themselves once again under sufficient threats and pressure.<p>Or, even more likely, end things not because directly being requested to, but because of having no other way to NOT be forced to back out and cower at the very end, and betray themselves and other people.<p>All of which is unfortunately making it almost trivial for the adversary to steer things into that direction.
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keernanabout 1 year ago
He was scheduled to appear for day two of his deposition testimony the morning of his death. Had he died Sat night instead of Sat morning, the transcript of Saturday&#x27;s testimony could have been read to the jury during trial. Obviously that can&#x27;t happen now and whatever he was going to say in Saturday&#x27;s testimony is lost forever.
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ListeningPieabout 1 year ago
The emotional strain of being a whistleblower and having your colleagues now see you as the enemy is not something I’ve read about, but it must take a toll. A whistleblower, almost by definition, is a hero to strangers and a villain to those they know and work with.<p>Or he was simply executed like in many corporate espionage movies.
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kube-systemabout 1 year ago
A piece of information in this article which is not in that article:<p>&gt; The family says Barnett&#x27;s health declined because of the stresses of taking a stand against his longtime employer.<p>&gt; &quot;He was suffering from PTSD and anxiety attacks as a result of being subjected to the hostile work environment at Boeing,&quot; they said, &quot;which we believe led to his death.&quot;
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vinay_ysabout 1 year ago
Why does a whistleblower need to be identified? Why can&#x27;t it be an anonymous tip to the regulator, who then uses the tip during audits to dig deeper and get to the truth? If they can&#x27;t get to the truth even after being provided a tip, then their audit process is too broken? This whole business of non-anonymous whistleblower has too much power-imbalance and always seems to end badly for the individual.
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torstenvlabout 1 year ago
&quot;Self-inflicted wound&quot;? Obviously the story is still developing but I&#x27;m immediately skeptical.<p>EDIT: Also weird that BBC is already memory-holing that it was a <i>gunshot</i> wound. archive.is has the original.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;wj0LE" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;wj0LE</a>
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mefabout 1 year ago
Anyone know why this isn’t on the front page with 96 pts one hour after submission?
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rmbyrroabout 1 year ago
Is there a flight search service that allows filtering out Boeing planes?
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KingOfCodersabout 1 year ago
Has someone numbers about suicides in cars with guns? This looks fishy to me. But perhaps I&#x27;ve just watched too many mafia films.
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blastabout 1 year ago
The timing is suspicious but that doesn&#x27;t mean it wasn&#x27;t suicide. If he was determined to kill himself there might be several reasons to do it today. Maybe he wanted to cast suspicion on Boeing. Or maybe he didn&#x27;t want to testify - could be tons of reasons for that. I have no idea. Just saying the two events could be connected without it being murder.
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Qemabout 1 year ago
He should have done like Snowden. Got out of the country before exposing material. Shouldn&#x27;t a witness in a high profile case like him been granted some sort of police escort by the court?<p>Guy paid the ultimate price for freedom of speech and informing the public. Wonder if someone will sustain there is no threat to freedom of speech because the lawsuit involved the company where he was employed, not the government.<p>I&#x27;m also reminded of Aaron Schartz, as well as the ordeal Steven Donzinger went through against Chevron. Fortunately survived, but had to serve some prison time[1].<p>[1]. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.independent.co.uk&#x2F;climate-change&#x2F;news&#x2F;steven-donziger-interview-texaco-oil-b2446695.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.independent.co.uk&#x2F;climate-change&#x2F;news&#x2F;steven-don...</a>
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S_A_Pabout 1 year ago
What I don’t understand is how does Boeing expect to make the issues go away? Covering up the problems just kicks the can down the road. They still have shoddy planes out in the world. Is quarterly performance now more important than not having planes fall out of the sky somewhere later on? I guess I’m naive here.
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tenlpabout 1 year ago
Perhaps the &quot;Self-inflicted wound&quot; refers to the injuries he suffered due to his own reporting on Boeing...
jongjongabout 1 year ago
It&#x27;s just crazy to think how much things can change. Boeing was once the pinnacle of innovation; a company which achieved something seemingly impossible at commercial scale and then perfected it to an incredible standard. It&#x27;s just crazy to think that such perfect company could decline to such low standard both on the technical side and ethics side.<p>It looks like a HR problem. They replaced people who are very good at building stuff with people who are very good at politics. But no amount of bullshitting can substitute engineering excellence when it comes to keeping aircraft in the air.
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datadrivenangelabout 1 year ago
Found dead of apparently self inflicted wounds in their car...<p>Sounds very suspect.
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treebeard901about 1 year ago
Change this to Russia and what is your first thought? Another mysterious death...<p>In a way it&#x27;s better to indirectly choke a whistleblower to the point of death than to have to make them shoot themseleves twice in the back of the head on throw themselves off a skyscraper. That sort of thing.
qwertyuiop_about 1 year ago
<i>Well-known Boeing critic and whistleblower John Barnett was found shot to death Saturday in Charleston, South Carolina. According to the BBC, the local coroner’s office said the gunshot wound that killed him was “self inflicted” and that police are investigating. Barnett’s body was found in his truck in a hotel parking lot. He had completed two days of depositions concerning a whistleblower retaliation lawsuit against Boeing. He was found after he failed to show up for his third day of testimony. Boeing told BBC it was saddened by Barnett’s death.</i><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.avweb.com&#x2F;aviation-news&#x2F;boeing-whistleblower-death-deemed-suicide&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.avweb.com&#x2F;aviation-news&#x2F;boeing-whistleblower-dea...</a>
gorbachevabout 1 year ago
Regardless of whether there was foul play or not, it&#x27;s looking pretty bad for Boeing.<p>They, or someone else with a stake of protecting the company, killed someone, or they made someone so despaired he saw no other way than to kill himself.
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edncy33about 1 year ago
Feels like Michael Crichton&#x27;s Airframe
yifanlabout 1 year ago
I&#x27;m just going to take this story at face value, there&#x27;s an infinite number of alternate explanations that I&#x27;d be powerless to talk about.<p>I&#x27;ve had my own (thankfully brief) moments where I&#x27;ve thought about suicide just from the perception that my coworkers, my bosses, the entire world, just does not care about doing the right thing.<p>Mr Barnett worked for the same company for over three decades and physically watched it stop caring about building airplanes. I know that can take a toll, and the stress of martyring yourself to let everyone else know has to be intense.
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falsandtruabout 1 year ago
Is the political safety of the United States on the same level as that of Russia?
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morkalorkabout 1 year ago
There&#x27;s some nasty shades of Karen Silkwood with this story.
komeabout 1 year ago
I always check whether my flight is on a Boeing and tend to avoid them—better safe than sorry! Fortunately, in Europe, most carriers primarily use Airbus, which simplifies things. Essentially, it boils down to avoiding Ryanair, and there are plenty of other good reasons for avoiding Ryanair.
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charles_fabout 1 year ago
Is it me or the &quot;apparent&quot; in the title implies it looks like a suicide but is not conclusively one?
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lofaszvanittabout 1 year ago
Well, I flew once on a 787 Dreamliner and we had to wait around 2 hours, because restarting a system, waiting for experts to arrive, took that much time. At least that was what the pilot told us.
autoexecabout 1 year ago
I&#x27;m not saying that Boeing had him assassinated, but I sure wouldn&#x27;t put it past them. They&#x27;ve already shown themselves to be perfectly willing to sacrifice human lives for increased profits.
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93poabout 1 year ago
I imagine this is going to further the terrible safety culture at Boeing
elzbardicoabout 1 year ago
When “Death by MBA” takes an unexpectedly sinister meaning.
tibbydudezaabout 1 year ago
Her cared too much and clearly it was too much to bear. I wonder how many friendships from former Boeing colleagues he lost because of this.
d--babout 1 year ago
What a strange article.<p>- whistleblower dies<p>Blablabla<p>- self inflicted wound<p>Blablabla<p>- he was bound to testify the next day<p>Blablabla<p>- he was found dead in his truck in a parking lot<p>It sounds like the journalist thinks it was murder but can’t write it cause it’s illegal somehow. The result is a piece that almost reads like a satyrical piece from the Onion.
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aragoniteabout 1 year ago
I wish there were an aggressively anti-clickbait news outlet that writes headlines explicitly designed to preempt and neutralize potential misunderstandings. Imagine editors try to anticipate all kinds of ways a candidate headline might mislead the reader, and rewrite the headline to discourage those inferences — succinctly if possible, verbosely if necessary. For this particular piece such a outlet might opt for something like:<p>&quot;Ex-Boeing Employee Who Reported Safety Issues in 2019 at South Carolina Facility Dies by Apparent Suicide&quot;<p>or even:<p>&quot;Ex-Boeing Employee Who Reported Safety Issues in 2019 at South Carolina Facility — Distinct from the 737 Max Whistleblower! — Dies by Apparent Suicide&quot;<p>To be clear, I don&#x27;t find the headline by The Hill (&quot;Key Boeing Whistleblower Found Dead from Apparent Suicide&quot;) to be especially misleading or clickbaity. It&#x27;s perfectly <i>defensible</i> against charges of intentional misleadingness. But I suspect for many readers it is part of the experience of reading this article to have a moment of realization halfway through to the effect of &quot;Ah, so this is not about the 737 Max whistleblower I&#x27;ve recently read about&quot;. What a breath of fresh air it&#x27;d be to have a news outlet that immediately gives off an impression of <i>honorableness</i> by trying actively and aggressively to avoid misleading its reader by its headlines (rather than focus on how its headlines can be defended from charges of misleadingness)!
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tomohawkabout 1 year ago
Whether it was actually a suicide or murder, this (suing a large organization) is not the kind of thing an individual should take on alone. We are fragile. We can hurt ourselves, and others can hurt us. Without a companion keeping him company and supporting him, either path to harm is too easy.
up2isomorphismabout 1 year ago
&quot;Died from self-inflicted wounds&quot; - Isn&#x27;t there a word called &quot;suicide&quot; for this thing?
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cyphergabout 1 year ago
zero evidence of foul play but, who needs evidence...
hef19898about 1 year ago
The amount of conspiracie flying around in this thread are shocking. Someone committed, as it seems, suicide after years, if not decades, of emotional work related stress. They came forward, publicly, with their concerns. So publicly, that everyone knows who they are, from co-workers over friends and family to the media. That alone adds another ton of stress and pressure. And on top of all of that, they went through a full day of deposition, aka interrogation, and looked at yet, at bare minimum, another day of those.<p>Each single factor mention above can, and did, cause people to commit suicide. And instead of focusing on this, and the fact that a very courageous person with high ethnical standards, is dead (I know that I would <i>not</i> have the courage to come forward the way they did in all likelyhood, and if I did, or didn&#x27;t, I would be in serious emotional and psychological trouble), the self-proclaimed smart HN crowd is thrwong stuff around like &quot;that&#x27;s what corporate securits is there for&quot; or &quot;it could have been a government agency&quot;.<p>Two things:<p>First, for fucks sake, start showing some compassion, not just here but also on other subjects were someone weaker or more vulnerable suffers. The lack of emotional intelligence is the world into a colder place that already is and has to be.<p>Second, stop this jumping to conclusion behaviour, whether it is concerning on-going investigation or stories like, it onpy leads to very wrong conclussions or out right conspiracy theories. Both are embarrassing and expose a lack of curiosity. And <i>no</i>, just because some of the BS theories being thrown around stick sometines, doesn&#x27;t mean all do, or that this way of thinking is working. It just measn that if enough theories are thrown to the wall, by sheer volume, some will stick. Just luck. And we should hold ourselves to higher standards around here, <i>especially</i> in cases of human tragedies.
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arcamoxabout 1 year ago
Is there a pattern? This seems to happen way too often in western corporations.<p>(Here&#x27;s another example, could give you many more: Suicide of VW whistleblower in 2020: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.t-online.de&#x2F;finanzen&#x2F;news&#x2F;unternehmen-verbraucher&#x2F;id_88436986&#x2F;vw-abhoeraffaere-ermittler-gehen-bei-todesfall-von-selbstmord-aus.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.t-online.de&#x2F;finanzen&#x2F;news&#x2F;unternehmen-verbrauche...</a> - use Google Translate).
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scyzoryk_xyzabout 1 year ago
Is this the one where corporate Tilda Swinton hires contract killers to get rid of the whistleblowers and George Clooney figures it out?<p>edit: Michael Clayton was the title
mise_en_placeabout 1 year ago
Eisenhower warned the American public about the military-industrial complex before he left office. We are reaping the consequences of private&#x2F;public partnerships and crony capitalism.
xystabout 1 year ago
Only time will tell if it truly was suicide or a cover up.
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foobarianabout 1 year ago
I don&#x27;t buy the foul play theories. What could this person possibly reveal that is worse that has already come out? They crashed two 737 Max&#x27;s full of passengers for crying out loud.
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falsandtruabout 1 year ago
Hm, this thread once again slid down the top page at an alarming rate, even though the safety of the environment surrounding engineers is a serious concern of engineers. Hacker News is surprisingly dismissive of user interests and votes.<p>Note that even if it is a suicide, it is still a safety problem of the environment surrounding engineers. Since it is Boeing that pressured him until he committed suicide.
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fifteen1506about 1 year ago
So sad he&#x27;s dead :(<p>It&#x27;s infuriating all these untimely deaths.
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richrichieabout 1 year ago
Avowed Bayesian&#x27;s usually leave the room the moment they sense a conspiracy tag coming. It is a very narrow, domain specific tool for analysis.
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wazooxabout 1 year ago
&quot;A self-inflicted head wound&quot;, uh? Like a strong blow on the back of the head maybe? Or two bullets in the brain? Has he been Epstein&#x27;ed?
LinuxBenderabout 1 year ago
I hope the company had no involvement in this. It would be bit futile given such a large audience has seen their employees state they won&#x27;t fly in the aircraft they build. [1] <i>3,716,935 views 4 days ago</i> and Blancolirio&#x27;s assorted incident reports [2]<p>[1] - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Q8oCilY4szc" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Q8oCilY4szc</a> [video][32 mins][john oliver]<p>[2] - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;@blancolirio&#x2F;search?query=boeing" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;@blancolirio&#x2F;search?query=boeing</a>
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bastard_opabout 1 year ago
Ahh, so this is how you protect government-endorsed monopolies worth trillions - shoot the messenger, literally.<p>Now this is getting better than television drama and intrigue!
sirwhinesalotabout 1 year ago
Suicide by 3 shotguns blasts to the back of the head[1]. Many such cases with key witnesses.<p>[1] not actually what happened, but might as well have been.