Independent New Hampshire Journalism · Northfield, NH

A Gag Policy Is Not a Law. How to Tell the Public What You Know, and How GSR Protects You

New Hampshire calls every official the people’s agent and lets public employees speak. Some records are still locked by statute, and no newsroom can promise perfect safety. Here is the whole system, the worst case included.

New Hampshire settled who works for whom in 1784. Part I, Article 8 of the state constitution puts it in one sentence: “All power residing originally in, and being derived from, the people, all the magistrates and officers of government are their substitutes and agents, and at all times accountable to them.” The clerk and the commissioner alike work for the people who pay them.

So here is where Granite State Report stands. If you work for a New Hampshire public body and you know the public is being cheated, misled, or put in danger, telling the public is what the people’s agent owes them. A department rule that says otherwise does not outrank the statute that protects you. But some records are locked by law, a few of them under criminal penalty, and anyone who tells you a newsroom can make a source perfectly safe is selling something. This piece lays out the law, GSR’s source system door by door, and the worst case.

Related coverage: What WikiLeaks, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden Exposed, and What It Changed covers the national leak cases. This piece is about New Hampshire public employees and the system GSR runs for them.

The rule a supervisor can’t override

New Hampshire’s public-employee speech law, RSA 98-E, opens with a phrase that ends most arguments before they start: “Notwithstanding any other rule or order to the contrary.” What follows gives anyone employed by the state or a town, city, county, school district, or school administrative unit a full right to discuss in public, as an individual, any government body and its policies. The same section states the other half of the bargain: the chapter is meant to balance the employee’s expression against the employer’s need to protect legitimate confidential records, communications, and proceedings.

A memo saying every outside contact goes through the chief is a policy, and only a policy. GSR made the same point in A Town Policy Is Not a Law: a handbook cannot repeal a statute.

Federal law reached the same answer from the other side. In Department of Homeland Security v. MacLean (2015), a federal air marshal who disclosed agency information to an MSNBC reporter was fired for breaking a TSA regulation. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7–2 that the regulation did not count: in the Court’s words, “the TSA’s regulations do not qualify as ‘law’” under the federal whistleblower statute. An agency rule could not strip the protection. Only a statute, or the executive-order secrecy exception described below, can.

Where the law draws a hard line

RSA 98-E does not unlock everything. Section 98-E:3 says the chapter leaves every law on confidential and privileged records in place, and it names two kinds outright: records of investigations for law enforcement purposes and collective bargaining proceedings. Talking about what your agency does is protected. Handing over a record the law makes confidential is a different act.

Federal law adds criminal lines. Under 26 U.S.C. § 7213, willfully disclosing federal tax return information without authority is a felony carrying up to five years in prison. Paragraph (a)(3) of that section reaches the next person too: anyone who receives return information through an unauthorized disclosure and willfully publishes it commits a felony. That clause binds a publisher, not only the person who leaked.

Classified information is its own world. The federal whistleblower statute, 5 U.S.C. § 2302(b)(8), protects a federal employee who discloses what they reasonably believe shows lawbreaking, gross mismanagement or waste, abuse of authority, or a specific danger to public health or safety. It names no recipient, so it can reach a disclosure to a reporter, but it has two limits: the disclosure cannot be specifically prohibited by law, and the information cannot be required by executive order to be kept secret for national defense or foreign affairs. Classified material has its own lawful routes, the Office of Special Counsel or an inspector general through cleared channels, never an online form, and the Espionage Act, 18 U.S.C. § 793, carries up to ten years for giving national-defense information to someone not entitled to it. The FBI, CIA, NSA, and several other intelligence agencies are excluded from the section; their employees have separate, narrower channels.

Most of what a New Hampshire public employee sees on the job is none of those things. It is minutes, invoices, contracts, emails, and complaint logs, and RSA 91-A, the Right-to-Know Law, already makes much of that the public’s; GSR’s working guide to RSA 91-A explains how. The rule of thumb is short. Public record: share it, or tell GSR exactly where it sits so it can be requested by name. Tax return, criminal investigation file, or anything stamped classified: talk to a lawyer before you talk to anyone else.

What the whistleblower act protects

New Hampshire’s Whistleblowers’ Protection Act, RSA 275-E:2, bars an employer from firing, threatening, harassing, or otherwise punishing an employee for three things done in good faith: reporting what the employee has reasonable cause to believe is a violation of law, refusing to take part in what the employee believes is illegal, and taking part in a government investigation, hearing, or court action about the employer. An employee who is punished anyway has three years to sue, and the court may order reinstatement, back pay, and attorney’s fees.

Public employees get more. RSA 275-E:9 bars a governmental entity from punishing a public employee who discloses, or threatens to disclose, information the employee reasonably believes shows a violation of law, gross mismanagement or waste of public funds, property, or manpower, an abuse of authority, or a danger to public health and safety. RSA 275-E:8 adds a quieter door: the state Department of Labor takes fraud, waste, and abuse complaints from public employees and may not disclose who filed one without written consent, except to police running a criminal investigation.

Read the clauses closely. The reporting clause protects an employee who “reports or causes to be reported” a violation, and neither it nor 275-E:9 names a recipient. Neither mentions reporters, and no New Hampshire decision I located settles whether a disclosure to a newsroom counts. That is a reading of the text, and it is the reason GSR tells anyone whose job is on the line to see a lawyer first.

The GSR system, door by door

GSR runs three entry points. Inside the Building is written for public employees. Nothing to See Here is the document drop box. Send a Tip routes everything else. Inside the Building puts the main warning in bold: the biggest risk to a source is the trail they leave before the reporter ever sees anything. Nothing to See Here and Send a Tip both say, in so many words, that the online forms are not anonymous.

So the system starts on your side of the door. Never use a work computer, phone, email account, Wi-Fi, or VPN. Avoid printing or scanning at work, because copiers keep logs. If only three people had a record, sending it narrows the field to three. Files carry hidden data, such as author names, edit history, and photo locations; a photo of a printout carries less of you.

Then pick the route by the trail it leaves. Mail with no return address leaves the least. Send copies, never your only original, from a mailbox away from home and work, and know that some color laser printers stamp near-invisible tracking dots on every page. Signal comes next: the username GraniteStateReport.09 lets you write without sharing a phone number, end to end encrypted, with disappearing messages. Use a personal phone.

The drop box is convenient, and GSR’s pages say plainly that convenient is not anonymous. It takes any file type, up to 2 GB a file and 50 files a drop, and nothing has to be typed. GSR’s published description says files are stored on the site’s server with its host, WordPress.com, encrypted as they arrive, and the notice emailed to the editor carries counts and sizes only, never file names or anything you typed. The host logs IP addresses, as most websites do; Tor Browser hides yours. Email comes last, because Google keeps a copy and your address rides along.

What happens after it arrives

One person opens it: GSR is one reporter in Northfield. The arrival notice goes to the newsroom’s Gmail and the editor’s personal Gmail, and the files sit on the host’s server. The forms ask how to treat your identity: don’t use my name, contact me first, or name me. Leave the contact box blank and you give GSR no name, though GSR then can’t write back, and your IP address is still logged unless you use Tor.

The core rules are written into GSR’s constitution, which the editor signed on October 15, 2026. A promise of confidentiality is made only by the editor, and once made it is kept. GSR never tries to identify a person who chose to send material anonymously. Information from an anonymous source is verified independently before it is reported.

GSR’s source pages add the working rules. Nothing is published on one person’s word: documents are checked against records and people, and the agency is asked to respond, as the Code of Ethics requires where practical. Names of private people, case numbers, addresses, and anything that could point back to the sender come out first. Documents that hold up go into the Granite State Archive with their provenance.

The worst case: a source is found

Start with what happens on GSR’s side. Someone demands the source’s name, usually by subpoena. GSR’s published commitment is to refuse and fight it. The law gives that refusal real footing. In State v. Siel, 122 N.H. 254 (1982), the New Hampshire Supreme Court held that reporters have a qualified privilege to protect confidential sources in criminal cases, grounded in Part I, Article 22 of the state constitution and the First Amendment, and noted it had already recognized the privilege in civil cases in a 1977 Opinion of the Justices. A criminal defendant who wants a source must show three things: every reasonable alternative was tried and failed, the information would not be irrelevant to the defense, and there is a reasonable possibility it would affect the verdict.

Qualified means a judge can order disclosure when the test is met, and no newsroom can lawfully promise more. New Hampshire has no shield statute, and neither does the federal government: the PRESS Act passed the U.S. House in January 2024 and was blocked in the Senate that December. The strongest protection is information GSR never had, so send only what is needed to check the story.

Publishing is firmer ground than sourcing. In Bartnicki v. Vopper (2001), the U.S. Supreme Court held that a stranger’s illegal conduct does not strip First Amendment protection from speech about a matter of public concern, when the publisher took no part in the illegal act and got the material lawfully. That protects the newsroom, not the leaker. The Court called its holding narrow and left open whether a statute aimed at publishers, like the tax law above, can still be enforced.

A police raid on the newsroom is not the ordinary path either. The federal Privacy Protection Act of 1980 stands in the way, with narrow exceptions that matter.

On the source’s side, the danger for a town or state employee is usually trouble at work, and the statutes above answer it: RSA 98-E:4 suits for damages and fees, RSA 275-E suits for reinstatement and back pay, and Office of Special Counsel complaints for federal workers. Those claims are easier to defend when the employee used lawful records, and a lawyer can spot the traps before you act. Do not lean on the First Amendment alone: in Garcetti v. Ceballos (2006), the U.S. Supreme Court held that statements public employees make pursuant to their official duties are not protected citizen speech. The protection lives in the statutes, and in speaking as an individual.

The hardest case shows how sources get caught. In 2017, Reality Winner, an NSA contractor, sent The Intercept a classified report on a Russian military intelligence attempt to attack U.S. elections. NPR reported that she was caught after the outlet apparently showed officials a copy, which showed the report had been printed and folded, and microdots on the printout identified the exact printer. On August 23, 2018, a federal judge in Georgia approved a plea deal for 63 months in prison, a sentence prosecutors called the longest served for an unauthorized disclosure to the media. The trail ran through the paper and through the newsroom’s handling. The lesson for any newsroom: when an agency is asked to respond, it should get the questions, never the sender’s copy.

Why GSR asks you to speak

Some secrecy is real and earned. A witness’s address, a child’s file, an open investigation: the law locks those for good reasons, and GSR does not want them. Most of what gets hidden is not that. Secrecy kept for its own sake does not keep anyone safe. It keeps the people who pay for government from knowing what they paid for. Article 8 goes on to say that the public’s access to governmental proceedings and records shall not be unreasonably restricted.

Here is GSR’s position, and it is an opinion, signed: a public employee who knows the public is being cheated and stays quiet has picked a side, and it is not the public’s. The people cannot govern what they cannot see. Auditors and reporters both depend on someone inside who will say: this is wrong, and here is the paper.

GSR is not asking anyone to break into a file cabinet, copy what they were never given, or walk out with classified paper. GSR’s source pages say the opposite. It is asking the people who already know to use the rights New Hampshire already gave them. Send copies, not your only original. Use a mailbox that isn’t yours and a phone your employer doesn’t own. If you can’t send a record, tell GSR where it sits, and it can be requested by name under RSA 91-A. If your job is on the line, see a lawyer first; 603 Legal Aid takes civil legal aid intake at 1 (800) 639-5290. GSR is a newsroom, not a law firm, and nothing here is legal advice.

Then tell the people you work for. The record belongs to them. The CIA carved John 8:32 into the lobby of its original headquarters building: “And Ye Shall Know the Truth and the Truth Shall Make You Free.” Even the spy agency put it on the wall. It only works if somebody tells it.

— Dexter Dow, Granite State Report

Fact check

Editor’s note. Statutes are quoted from the New Hampshire General Court and the U.S. Code as published by Cornell’s Legal Information Institute; the state constitution from nh.gov; court decisions from their published opinions; the Winner case from NPR; the PRESS Act record from the sponsor’s office and UPI. Descriptions of GSR’s drop box and source routes come from GSR’s published standing pages. This article explains the law and GSR’s practices; it is not legal advice. Corrections run at the top of this article with what changed and when.