NASA Requires JPL Scientists To Give Up Right To Privacy 446
Markmarkmark writes "Wired is reporting that all NASA JPL scientists must 'voluntarily' (or be fired) sign a document giving the government the right to investigate their personal lives and history 'without limit'. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists this includes snooping into sexual orientation, mental & physical health as well as credit history and 'personality conflict'. 28 senior NASA scientists and engineers, including Mars Rover team members, refused to sign by the deadline and are now subject to being fired despite a decade or more of exemplary service. None of them even work on anything classified or defense related. They are suing the government and documenting their fight for their jobs and right to personal privacy."
good for them (Score:4, Interesting)
As an expert in abusive management... (Score:5, Interesting)
Say, if I was really callous and sociopathic, and I wanted to scale back operations and cut costs, I wouldn't fire or lay off anyone. I would require the employees to do things they wouldn't tolerate, but seem "necessary and proper" for their jobs. I'd switch reporting to 4:00am so that reports would be ready for management, give 3 hour lunches to people who live too far away to commute home for lunch, or other highly inconvenient tasks or requirements.
When they quit, you didn't have to report to investors you were scaling back operations, just that you couldn't fill the positions. Then you could cut the positions and claim better productivity.
If I wanted to scale NASA's budget back, and not catch tons of flak, I would do this. When the researchers refused to comply, I could just say "They're a security risk, we're all about security after 9/11, so you can't work on 90% of projects." When they quit, or I fired them for not complying, I could just say "We have a shortage of qualified engineers, we can't fill these positions."
And when nobody cared anymore, I'd scale back operations and cut the positions, shrinking the budget. It's a great way to handle a budget crisis and cut without making it look like one.
What if (Score:4, Interesting)
Why are these investigations even needed? I mean, will he be fired, for example, if Joe Scientist is gay? Libertarian? Doesn't read the bible? Anti-bush? Anti-war? Prefers german Cars? Doesn't believe in Santa Claus? Prefers Pepsi? Etc.
Re:Welcome to every sensitive government job ever. (Score:2, Interesting)
Normally I tend to lean a little to the right on most issues, but this bothers me.
It's one thing for this level of investigation for people in law enforcement, at any level, that have the right to arrest and detain people. And also have the right to shoot under certain circumstances.
But for the rest of the government workers I don't see the need and believe that it is a violation of privacy. I have no problem with a thorough background check and an annual re-cert, if you will, but going to the extreme serves no purpose.
Some people will crack after a divorce and some will sell secrets. You find these tendencies with a psych. exam, as normal spats with spouses or even sexual orientation cannot be correlated with the "evil doers".
Re:If you don't like it, leave your govt. job. (Score:5, Interesting)
Given that this position is a philosophical one, I would argue that a need for national security over personal privacy indicates a fundamental flaw in either:
1. the nation's gov't, or
2. the society that exists within that nation's borders.
But it certainly is not an absolute.
I signed it (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:If you don't like it, leave your govt. job. (Score:1, Interesting)
If you punt my rights, there is nothing left to secure, not at the personal level, and certainly not at the National level!
Re:Western democracy (Score:3, Interesting)
So, if you want a date, January 20, 1980 would probably do as a first approximation.
Re:Easy fix (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:LPL is not NASA. (Score:3, Interesting)
Doesn't matter. My paycheck comes from CSC, but I still hold a NASA contractor badge, which is the only way I have access to the NASA facility. Same with Caltech employees.
JPLers, BTW, have something of a reputation with other NASA centers as always having to be different. Personally, I wish them luck in this case. FWIW, I signed the forms. You pick and choose your battles, and when I found out we didn't have to sign a medical release, it wasn't worth arguing for me.
Re:Very Inappropriate (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Sounds like standard security clearance stuff.. (Score:5, Interesting)
This kind of invasive crud is becoming rampant in our society.
Recently the American Radio Relay League (ARRL) published a notice to the nation's radio amateurs advising them of a similar situation. Many hams are routinely involved in emergency communications support for the American Red Cross (ARC).
Without stating a position for or against, the ARRL advised potential communications volunteers to read very carefully any documents they might be asked to sign before volunteering.
It turns out that the ARC had recently implemented a policy of requiring background checks for all volunteers. The checks were outsourced to an outfit called MyBackgroundCheck.com http://www.mybackgroundcheck.com/ [mybackgroundcheck.com] which does the same kind of malarkey. The ARRL pointed out that, if you went to the web page to sign up for the check, you would be authorizing not only a criminal history check, but also credit and "lifestyle" checks. The nature of a "lifestyle check" was not specified (worst of all possibilities), but it can easily be guessed what it entails.
Again, the ARRL did not take a position on whether individual hams should go along with the terms, but only advised careful reading and consideration before authorizing investigations of such vague or unspecified scope. Personally, I have crossed the ARC off my list of organizations I will either volunteer for or provide financial support for.
It is my understanding that the ARC has backed off on the requirement for communications volunteers and restricted the requirement to "permanent" volunteers only. Sorry -- too late, too little. You shouldn't even have considered the scheme in the first place.
Now that I'm retired, I expect never again to be tested for drugs, smoking (quit thirty-five years ago anyway), use of alcohol nor to submit to intrusive examinations of any kind. I had to pee in a cup to be hired by IBM, but never again except as required by law. And certainly never when my intent is only to help some organization. If they feel a need to pull this crud on volunteers, then, as far as I'm concerned, their pool of volunteers is way too large.
i also quit helping with the youth group at my church over this kind of stuff. When the San Francisco archdiocese decided anyone who came into contact with kids had to be fingerprinted, that was where I drew the line. If my twenty-five years of involvement with the kids was not good enough to trust me, then a lousy set of fingerprints was superfluous. I told the youth coordinator that, if the policy was implemented, then she should look for another volunteer to drive kids to retreats, because I would refuse to comply with the policy. They did, so I won't
As she said, "It's a stupid policy anyway -- why are they bothering the catechists and helpers and not the priests, where the offenses against kids have occurred?"
By the way, I have already been fingerprinted five times for hiring on with a railroad for five summers, once more for hiring on permanently, once more when entering the military, once more to apply for a state teaching credential and one last time to sign up for the Block Parent program (police- and school district-sponsored) so little kids could have a safe place to go if injured or bullied outside of school hours.
Enough is enough!
Oh, I forgot to add up the number of times I've been thumb-printed to cash checks or to get my driver's license renewed (that was three days ago).
Re:Public Record. Re:INSIDER INFO (Score:2, Interesting)
The first conviction should be easy to find if anybody bothered to look. But apparently nobody did. Or they didn't look back far enough ( the original criminal offense was in 1979 ). Or they only looked in LA county ( the offense was in Escondido )
The process of handling subsequent offenses is rather convoluted. If a person is out on some variation of conditional release, when he is charged with a repeat offense, often the DA agrees not to prosecute if the defendant agrees to forfeit the conditional release. In other words, everybody agrees that he is guilty of the second offense, he goes back into a mental hospital for the criminally insane, but without a formal criminal trial and conviction.
Also, the current case is a civil petition for confinement, not a criminal one.
So, even if the JPL personnel office does check for criminal convictions, they could easily miss the first because it is 28 years ago, and the later ones because they are civil actions.
But, however they overlooked it, I guarantee you that they did. I've talked to someone who has firsthand knowledge of the current trial. The facts are simple: He is a mentally disordered sex offender, he is under the supervision of the county for those offenses, and he works at JPL.
Re:Sounds like standard security clearance stuff.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Welcome back! (Score:1, Interesting)
Anyhow, we still have national privacy laws that make illegal for any entity, including the government, to demand full disclosure of personal information without a warrant, so... come on back to Canada!
As the Beasty Boys said it, "Ain't no time like the present to get back into Aerospace full bore!" or something like that...
Seriously though, this reminds me of how the US government hung Robert Oppenheimer out to dry after he busted his balls creating the first atomic bomb. History has proven he wasn't a "commy". Nope, he was just a human like the rest of us. Werner Von braun, however, was reported by manyy to be a war criminal and yet he stayed on at NASA for a very long time. Keep a potential war criminal, fire a bunch of people who are likely to live some of the most dull lives imaginable. Hey, makes sense to me! Activity like this really helps show how twisted the USA government is - and how out of step with its population it is as well.
Don't feel bad down there, it's not all cake and ice cream in Canada, but at least we still have functional privacy laws. You're all welcome to join us - we also have a negative birthrate (Hey, I've added to it, but I'm only one man!) so the more the merrier.
Coming soon to a Gov't Agency near you (Score:2, Interesting)
As far as I can determine, HSPD-12 applies to *all* Gov't. agencies that supply computer network support. Now, imagine trying to get a foreign national on such networks for international collaboration...
Your tax dollars (US citizens only!) are now being spent investigating me and all my colleagues, so that we can continue to have the NASA computer accounts we've already held for years.
GammaRay Rob
Re:Very Inappropriate (Score:1, Interesting)
As someone who works with (not for) JPL/NASA, I know personally this is false. There are often secret weapon related technologies that are used in planetary exploration. For example, details about what radiation hardened CPUs exist and what the exact specs are both classified. We were given ballpark numbers and told not to tell anyone. I also had the distinct feeling they were lying, but I wasn't sure about what. The numbers were good enough for what we needed to know. CPUs are just one example. There are most likely secret details about cameras, antennas, gyros, and more.
Having access to these space war technologies saves JPL a fortune and is make-or-break for a number of instruments and missions. However, that's why some people in JPL have clearance and others don't. I do agree that doing security like checks on people without clearance is wrong.