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NASA Employees Fight Invasive Background Check

Posted by CowboyNeal on Thu Aug 30, 2007 08:04 PM
from the watching-the-watchmen dept.
NASA Space Privacy
Electron Barrage writes "Longtime JPL scientists, many of whom do not work on classified materials, including rover drivers and Apollo veterans, sued NASA, Caltech, and the Department of Commerce today to fight highly invasive background checks, which include financial information, any and all retail business transactions, and even sexual orientation."
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  • Pointless (Score:4, Funny)

    by GWLlosa (800011) on Thursday August 30 2007, @08:07PM (#20418789)
    Because the rover drivers might use the rover to suicide-bomb.... something. That crater over there, maybe?

    • Re:Pointless (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ookabooka (731013) on Thursday August 30 2007, @08:12PM (#20418835)
      We must not underestimate the bounds and abilities of the terrorists, they may have infiltrated any and all parts of our government, and it our responsibility. . nay, our duty, as freedom-loving Americans to find them and bring them to justice. These background checks are only a preventative measure, to ensure that government employees have the utmost integrity and loyalty. So long as nothing suspicious shows up on these reports government employees have nothing to fear, we must all sacrifice something in the battle against terrorism.

      (I pray that I never hear anything like this. . .)

      • you missed one... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by schwaang (667808) on Thursday August 30 2007, @09:06PM (#20419269)

        [NASA Administrator Michael Griffin] said that it was a "privilege to work within the federal system, not a right"

        • Re:you missed one... (Score:4, Interesting)

          by kimvette (919543) on Thursday August 30 2007, @09:25PM (#20419433) Homepage
          Actually, since it is a government job, and there are equal opportunity laws, if someone is the most qualified and wants the job, it IS a right.

          • Re:you missed one... (Score:5, Interesting)

            by Iron Condor (964856) on Thursday August 30 2007, @10:51PM (#20420105)

            Actually, since it is a government job, ...

            It isn't.

            JPL is a division of Caltech. JPL employees have a contract with Caltech and receive a paycheck that says Caltech. Much of the funding comes from NASA (but by no means all of it and the proportion has been shrinking), but the employees at JPL are not civil servants and they are not NASA employees.

            Add to this that the people at JPL never signed a contract that said that there will be background checks (but now there are, suddenly, and they're a requirement for continued employment) and you might see where the uproar is coming from...

            • Re:you missed one... (Score:5, Informative)

              by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 30 2007, @11:36PM (#20420427)
              I might add that any contractor at any NASA center is subject to this equivalent of a personal cavity check. We recieve no official clearance for turning over our secrets, only the "privilege" of working for a company that contracts to NASA. (Or subcontracts, for that matter)

              Contractors are being screened first, actually. Civil Servants have already had a background check, so to resolve the glut of overdue checks, the government is hiring one of Bush's friend's companies to do all the screening. And once they do their screening - unlike any background check in the private sector - the information is available to any government agency complying with HSPD-12.

              Which, I believe, despite Griffin's protestations, is only NASA at this point.

              Posting anonymously for obvious reasons. I work at Ames.

              • Re:you missed one... (Score:5, Insightful)

                by PopeRatzo (965947) * on Friday August 31 2007, @06:42AM (#20422561) Homepage Journal
                Wait a minute. It was OK for a Bush appointee with an associate's degree in political science to get a job editing the work of an esteemed NASA climate scientist, but the FBI has to talk to the neighbors of the guy who works for a contractor, who works for a contractor, who works part time for a company that does contract work for NASA?

                OK. Just wanted to be sure.

        • How costly a priviledge? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by FuzzyDaddy (584528) on Friday August 31 2007, @09:20AM (#20423575) Journal
          I recently turned down a senior level engineering position at a company because of what I felt were onerous and ridiculous "intellectual property" clauses - the gist of which were that the company owns anything I create during my employment, whether related to my work or not, even if done on my own time with my own resources.

          I recently was on a plane coming from a trade show and I got into a long conversation with the guy next to me, who worked for this company at about the same level as I was applying for, and also in engineering. I told him I had turned down a job offer and that the IP clauses in the employment were one of my main concerns. His response was "But isn't that the industry standard?"

          This is a phrase I hear from most people when I tell them this story. Yes, it may be the industry standard. But it's an industry standard because no one complains about it, or protests it, or turns down jobs because of it. The thing is, it mostly affects the most talented, energetic, and entrepreneurial engineers - who might actually create something of value outside of normal business hours.

          I applaud these people for pushing back. Sure, working in the federal system is a "privilege". But the employers have an obligation to run the federal system in a way that produces the best results for the country. If you treat your employees like mechanical cogs, to be inspected and tuned and replaced, your not going to get those kinds of results.

            • Re:Pointless (Score:5, Insightful)

              by plague3106 (71849) on Friday August 31 2007, @08:30AM (#20423169)
              Your right, because when an additional fine was proprosed for not wearing a seatbelt, it was accepted as that, and it never went from an additional fine to something that you could be pulled over for all by itself. Also like the DUI laws, no one ever would continue to lower the limit to the point where you can be jailed for not even being drunk. And the PATRIOT 2 act will rollback some of the absurd police powers.

              You may call it a logical fallacy all you like, but then you're ignoring history. Give a little power, and more WILL be taken.

  • Medical records? Finances? Sexual life? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nbarriga (877070) on Thursday August 30 2007, @08:14PM (#20418851)
    How the hell asking those kind of things helps prevent terrorism?(which is the stated goal according to the article) And anyway, even if it did help I wouldn't agree.

  • For additional information... (Score:5, Informative)

    by oringo (848629) on Thursday August 30 2007, @08:18PM (#20418891)
    http://www.hspd12jpl.org/press.html [hspd12jpl.org]

  • Levers (Score:5, Informative)

    by pete-classic (75983) <hutnick@gmail.com> on Thursday August 30 2007, @08:23PM (#20418939) Homepage Journal
    If you peruse my website and/or posting history you'll see that I'm against almost everything the government does. That said . . .

    I held a TS with SBI once upon a time. The main reason for background checks, as I understand it, is to ferret out any levers that could be used against you by hostile agent. Too much debt? We'll get you out of trouble if you give us info. Cheating on your wife? With a man?! It would be a shame if we had to call her. Think of your kids.

    It's not that they're morally judging you, its that they're making sure that you're not unduly susceptible to influence.

    It's not fair, but it's not about fairness.

    -Peter

    • held a TS with SBI once upon a time. The main reason for background checks, as I understand it, is to ferret out any levers that could be used against you by hostile agent. Too much debt? We'll get you out of trouble if you give us info. Cheating on your wife? With a man?! It would be a shame if we had to call her. Think of your kids.

      It's not that they're morally judging you, its that they're making sure that you're not unduly susceptible to influence.

      This is a BS excuse. Anyone wanting to blackmail someone can always either dig up a truth, or manufacture a lie, that is good enough to "get the job done."

      Want to make someone look like they're on the take? Deposit 20k in their bank account in cash. Then, a week later, before they get their bank statement, meet and greet them, and tell them what you've done, and how "gee, its going to look like drug money - do this shit for us, and we'll "fix it"". Better yet, make a lump-sum payment on their mortgage for them, when they're swimming in debt over their heads.

      Want to make someone look like they're cheating on their spouse? Photoshop to the rescue. Especially if you have some unshopped pictures of the victim and the "sex object" elsewhere - for example, approach them in a restaurant, sit at their table for a minute asking for directions, and getting them to make a sketch.

      Want to make someone look like a pedophile? Dump pics on their computer at work. (boot off usb, copy pics to drive, mission accomplished. Worst-case scenario, you'll have to connect the drive's cable to another machine as a slave for a few minutes).

      There are ALWAYS ways to blackmail someone. If NASA believes that these sorts of background checks really work, they've been breathing too much vacuum.

        • Oh, come off it. Sreening for "levers to blackkmail" actually makes it EASIER to blackmail someone first, by validating the whole "you can be blackmailed for this" experience, and second, by putting that information where it can be stolen by a mole. 50 years ago, people could be blackmailed for having sex before marriage. Now, who gives a shit? Its about time we grew up on the rest of the blackmail issue - that you can only be blackmailed for something if society continues to see it as a dirty little secret.

          Honestly, its time for the US population to stop thinking like Miss Carolina and just grow the fuck up. Nobody gives a shit if you're gay, lesbian, bi, or straight, or you cheated on your spouse, or you have debt, or you used illegal drugs, or you have a Britney Speares collection. Nobody. And the sooner the government makes this their official position, and sends a clear signal to the rest of society, the sooner blackmail for this sort of crap will no longer be possible.

          Of course, the odds of that happening with Idiot Bush in charge are nill.

  • The real issue (Score:5, Insightful)

    by edwardpickman (965122) on Thursday August 30 2007, @08:53PM (#20419169)
    The biggest problem with our current administration is they have never been after the "terorists" as the call them their real agenda is findling the "enemy". For them the enemy is anyone who doesn't agree with them. That does include terrorists but it also includes many of their own people, Republicans that disagree on specific issues. NASA has been a thorn in their side lately because a few have complained about supressing facts and have spoken out in support of global warming. I think this is far more about towing the party line than about terrorists. They want dirt on everyone. There's an underlying paranoia in everything they do. Freedom isn't about free to think like they do but that's the interpretation. It's not whether potential terrorist can influence them but can the government yank their chain when they need to. We live in very scary times and it's not the country I grew up in. In some ways it was actually far more conservative but ironically there was far more freedom in the 60s. We're increasingly under a microscope and knowledge is power and it's always about power. The factions in Iraq claim it's about religion but even the factions are dividing into smallwer and smaller sub groups fighting among themselves but at it's heart it's about power and control.

  • Corporates do that too (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 2Bits (167227) on Thursday August 30 2007, @09:00PM (#20419225)
    It's not just government agencies, and not after 9/11 either. This kind of practice happened even before 9/11 in corporate world.

    In early 2001 (pre-9/11), the investors pulled out of our company and we went belly up. Two weeks later, I got an offer from a new startup, developing high-end IDS. I would be the second software engineer there. The offer was really good, with a good amount of stock options, and 3 weeks vacation. Except one thing: the background check.

    The wording of that agreement was amazingly terrible. It is more than invasive. I kept that page until two years ago, finally threw it away with other junks. Basically, it stated that the company could do any background check, any time, on any thing, including but not just my previous and future phone logs (including personal phone), email log (including personal email), bank accounts, trading accounts, 401K, IRA, credit card expenses, credit check, newsgroup, web postings, .... yada yada. Whatever you can name it, it's on that piece of paper. The whole piece of paper is filled with these items. And the funny part was, for some checking, I had to foot up the expenses too, although it didn't say which ones.

    I didn't sign, and went to the president, had a nice and polite discussion with him. I told him that I understood their concern about security, but this agreement obviously went overboard. I don't mind "normal" background check, but not those mentioned there. He also agreed that it went a little too far. So he asked me to re-word it so that I could accept. I rewrote the agreement, using standard background check format and wordings from other companies which I could accept. The president thought it was fine with him.

    But the corporate attorney, with the support of the investors, didn't want to hear about it. He said that engineers and technical people had too easy an access to implement backdoors in the system. It is this way, or the highway.

    I chose the highway. The company recruiter (external hired recruiter, actually) kept calling me for two months, but I already started working at other place for almost two months by then.

      • Re:That is nothing (Score:5, Funny)

        by dr_dank (472072) on Friday August 31 2007, @12:22AM (#20420713) Homepage Journal
        Nobody who has done this has told me exactly what the questions are, but they have suggested that they are extremely invasive.

        You'll be pleased to learn that the question regarding homosexuality has been softened up.

        Old question: Are you now or have you ever been a homosexual?

        New question: Are coffee, salmon, and moccha foods or colors?
  • It seems that NASA is implementing PIV-II. Those smart cards mentioned in TFA look like those mentioned in the FIPS-201 standard [nist.gov].

    Basically, everyone getting a PIV card has to pass a background check. However, it seems that asking those scientists and engineers about all that data mentioned in TFA is a bit excessive. The standard has an informational appendix (appendix C) that specifies what sort of checks should be done. It even specifies two levels of checks for different security levels. Looks like someone got a little bit too anal when deciding what checks to do. The checks mentioned in FIPS-201 seem reasonable, though. Can anyone that knows about background checks explain what they are exactly?

    The cards themselves seem pretty good. It is pretty clear that the designers of FIPS-201 cards do not trust the wireless interface, making all biometric/sensitive information available only on the wired interface, unlike those e-passports every government is promoting. Pretty interesting reading material.

  • This happened once before (Score:5, Interesting)

    by whiteyonthemoon (774423) on Friday August 31 2007, @03:26AM (#20421717)
    When everyone was paranoid about communism, JPL ran background checks on all of the members of the "suicide squad", the scientists who started the rocketry program at Cal Tech, basically the first people in America to get anywhere with rocketry. They didn't like what they found (some members were actually communists (Weinbaum, Summerfield), others just too into the occult(Jack Parsons, friend of Alister Crowley)), so they took away their clearances(revoking clearances:rocket scientist::excommunication:Catholic), and lost their experts.

    One of the people who had their clearances revoked was the first "Robbert Goddard Professor of Jet Propulsion" at Cal Tech, Dr Tsien. I'm sure I don't have to explicitly mention that he was a total genius. They arrested him and then wouldn't let him leave the country for five years so that his scientific knowledge would be obsolete. As soon as he was allowed to, he moved back to China.

    In China Tsien was very well respected (respecting intelligence is an archaic custom of some Asian cultures), he became Chairman Mao's tutor in science, and went on to supervise the development of China's ICBM program. So when the US gets nuked by the China, we'll have American paranoia to thank.

    That's one thing that the US can make better than the Chinese ever will. We are great at making enemies out of friends.

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