In July of 2007 the P-I published a story that exposed how Boeing had repeatedly failed to protect its computer systems against theft and fraud. The reporting relied heavily on information provided to the newspaper by former Boeing auditors Matthew Neumann and Nicholas Tides, who e-mailed internal documents and talked on background about security threats that they felt the company was ignoring and even asking them to cover up. Boeing fired the auditors when it traced the communications between them and the P-I; and the auditors in turn sued Boeing claiming that they were protected under the Sarbanes Oxley Act, if not Whistleblower’s Protection Act. That lawsuit–which was in its first appeal–is over now. And the ruling sets a precedent for other companies who want to keep their failings secret.The P-I

reports Neumann and Tides were found to have been fired legally.The auditors argued speaking to reporters should count because media reports might eventually cause information to be provided to Congress members, regulators or law enforcement, 9th Circuit Judge Barry Silverman wrote for the three-judge panel in Tuesday’s ruling. “We decline to adopt such a boundless interpretation of the statute.”The court essentially ruled that talking to reporters is not protected under the SOA or WPA, which only pertains to giving information to a federal agency or employee.Neumann and Tides argued that since news articles can often spark federal investigations and are often cited by federal agencies when they carry out investigations that, in essence, they were talking to the feds.Boeing, like the judge, disagreed. The company’s spokesperson John Dern said the ruling “upholds the actions that the company took to enforce our policies around protecting information.”Of course, this doesn’t change the fact that Neumann and Tides were right and that Boeing was indeed letting its computer security efforts fall by the wayside, while ordering auditors to fudge the results of their work.The judge’s ruling simply means that pointing out such facts to a reporter isn’t a perfectly legal reason to get fired. Follow The Daily Weekly on Facebook and Twitter.