Could always be both, I tend to lean towards it not being an operation to make whistleblowers more confident as you say for this reason: Loose lips are loose lips. Whether or not you went out and intentionally became a whistle blower, or you got caught by an undercover camera, you clearly have loose lips and are thus a massive liability. I can't really see an entity like the deepstate cabal who is willing to kidnap, torture, and kill completely innocent people giving a flying fuck if you say "but I didn't mean to get caught!".

If there is an operation I think much more likely than it being to provide confidence to would be whistle blowers it would be to give it more credibility somehow. Like an official whistleblower could be said to be making it up for some sort of political or monetary gain, but catching someone unaware in an unofficial setting during what they thought was a private conversation is a hell of a lot harder to write off as some planned political attack or someone in it for the money.