To begin with, we don't tell anyone, so if the whistle-blower doesn't say anything to anyone, no one will know that they have made a disclosure of wrongdoing. As a result, if no one knows there's been a disclosure, the whistle-blower is protected.
There are cases, though, where, for one reason or another, right or wrong, people think they know who made the disclosure. We've seen cases where someone wrongly accused of making a disclosure was a victim of reprisals.
Therefore, it's possible that, if someone thinks someone else made a disclosure—