I agree that it feels wrong to reveal the identities of Alice and/or Chloe without concrete evidence of major wrongdoing, but I don’t think we have a good theoretical framework for why that is.
Ethically (and pragmatically), you want whistleblowers to have the right to anonymity, or else you’ll learn of much less wrongdoing that you would otherwise, and because whistleblowers are (usually) in a position of lower social power, so anonymity is meant to compensate for that, I suppose.
How do you determine who counts as a whistleblower? The generic definition refers to anyone who discloses insider information with the intent to warn others about potentially illegal or unethical misconduct. By this definition, Kat is a whistleblower because she revealed information about Alice’s history of dishonesty (assuming of course this accusation is correct).
They’re accused, not whistleblowers. They can’t retroactively gain the right to anonymity, since their identities have already been revealed.
They could argue that they became whistleblowers as well, and so they should be retroactively anonymized, but that would interfere with the first whistleblowing accusation (there is no point in whistleblowing against anonymous people), and also they’re (I assume) in a position of comparative power here.
There could be a second whistleblowing accusation made by them (but this time anonymously) against the (this time) deanonymized accuser, but given their (I assume) higher social power, that doesn’t seem appropriate.
Ethically (and pragmatically), you want whistleblowers to have the right to anonymity, or else you’ll learn of much less wrongdoing that you would otherwise, and because whistleblowers are (usually) in a position of lower social power, so anonymity is meant to compensate for that, I suppose.
How do you determine who counts as a whistleblower? The generic definition refers to anyone who discloses insider information with the intent to warn others about potentially illegal or unethical misconduct. By this definition, Kat is a whistleblower because she revealed information about Alice’s history of dishonesty (assuming of course this accusation is correct).
They’re accused, not whistleblowers. They can’t retroactively gain the right to anonymity, since their identities have already been revealed.
They could argue that they became whistleblowers as well, and so they should be retroactively anonymized, but that would interfere with the first whistleblowing accusation (there is no point in whistleblowing against anonymous people), and also they’re (I assume) in a position of comparative power here.
There could be a second whistleblowing accusation made by them (but this time anonymously) against the (this time) deanonymized accuser, but given their (I assume) higher social power, that doesn’t seem appropriate.