A supreme court case scheduled for the Fall of this year will be a landmark case that will determine the rights of those working in the private sector to report misconduct in their firms. At present you are protected if you report misconduct in your firm to the SEC but whether those rights extend to internal reporting - i.e. telling your boss instead of the SEC - is what the case before the court is expected to settle.

Paul Somers, former employee of Digital Realty trust, a data center developer from San Francisco, was dismissed from the firm following his reporting of financial misconduct by a supervisor to company executives. The circuit court agreed with Mr Somers and ruled that anti-retaliation legal protections for whistle blowers extends from SEC reporting to internal company reporting. The ruling was appealed and off to the SCOTUS it goes.

My question is this, where are whistle blowers protected?

I can think of far more cases of whistle blowers being either hunted and prosecuted by the government or simple ignored by the authorities and left to fend for themselves in a hostile environment.

When small networks of people conspire in secrecy to commit fraud or worse how many tools do we really have to stop them and how many of them can be as effective as getting the man with the moral compass to spill the beans?

Perhaps the problem is a freeloader problem, why whistle-blow when you will probably not be rewarded, probably will punished and you will more than likely be conspired against by your colleagues rather than aided and supported. Whistle blowers provide a valuable service, we don't have the means to properly reward them but we can at least try and protect them and send some kind of a signal that whistle blowers are required in a free society.

Further reading:

http://www.newyorklawjournal.com/id=1202783529709/Scope-of-the-DoddFrank-Acts-Whistleblower-Protection?slreturn=20170526114342

https://www.wsj.com/articles/supreme-court-to-consider-how-broadly-a-whistleblower-provision-applies-1498486211?mod=e2tw

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-whistleblower-idUSKBN19H1KT?il=0

https://sputniknews.com/us/201706261054983546-whistleblower-protections-us-court/