2. Confidential sources are the bastard children of official secrecy; in a genuinely open democracy, they would not need to exist. But while governments, armies and police forces continue to conceal truths of significance to the public, the confidential source, the mole, the leaker, are all that stand between the public and a totalitarian society.
3. In order to curtail financial fraud, regulatory bodies, such as in the UK in 1993, may encourage investors and investment industries to report anomalies: "Be a whistle blower, whether you are a private or professional investor, or even if you work in the industry, if you think that there is something fishy about an investment firm, tell its regulator".
4. Whistleblowers are public-people who are prepared to put the interest of others first, even when this might entail considerable personal risk.