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NASA Requires JPL Scientists To Give Up Right To Privacy
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."
... look here NASA Employees Fight Invasive Background Check (Posted by CowboyNeal on Fri 31 Aug 01:04AM). Looks like wiring issues seem commonplace.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
These guys are scientists, not super secret spies. Besides, a clean slate is no guarantee a rocket scientist isn't going to go psycho after getting dumped and stalk his ex. Also sets a horrible precedent for other top-tier science fields.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
What do they want to do when no one signs this? Fire every scientist? Not going to happen.
Good for them for standing up. My bets are on NASA changing the policy. The people at JPL are irreplaceable in the short term. I would think it would take decades to replace a seasoned JPL engineer with a new comer. I'm sure NASA knows this and isn't about to fire a bunch right out.
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
All of this is done in the name of "protect[ing] personal privacy."
If that doesn't shed light on the fact that this is complete and utter nonsense, I don't know what will. As the article pointed out, that's Newspeak if I ever heard it.
I got a catholic block.
Having worked in the military and civilian worlds on sensitive and not-so-sensitive projects involving technology, this is not really news. This is a consequence of working with the government, and frankly, it doesn't bother me all that much.
Heck, you wouldn't believe the background checks I went through for the FBI. In the end, while maybe not ideal for the potential employee, I find nothing significantly reprehensible about the process.
Good for them for standing up. My bets are on NASA changing the policy since the people at JPL are irreplaceable in the short term. I think it would take decades for a newcomer to become as productive as a seasoned JPL engineer. I'm sure NASA knows this and isn't about to fire a bunch right out.
heh having said that, woe unto any grunt sys-admin or underling thinking their moral stand is going to mean anything when there's 30 in line behind them to gladly take their place.
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
I mean, background checks like this probably would have exluded most of the scientists who came over from Germany for the Manhattan Project.
When I was a young man I had, like many kids, aspirations of becoming an astronaut or otherwise working in the space exploration industry. My goals began to change as I watched NASA go from the world's best research agency (IMHO) to a politically correct institution lacking any cohesive vision.
Let us not become the evil that we deplore.
Easy fix indeed. Given the approach this country has taken to its scientists, I wouldn't be surprised if what you suggest will be exactly what happens - the scientists rebel, and promptly get fired en masse. Why? Because nobody cares.
Railroad workers, airline workers, even taxicab drivers - when any of these professions strike, it is felt immediately by the general population, so there is a push to resolve the issues amicably, so that they could return to work.
If all scientists in the US... not just the NASA rocket scientists... stop working RIGHT NOW... the vast majority of the population won't know, and the majority of those who know, won't care.
Why? Because nothing that these people do affects us EVERY DAY. Thus, they're not important. Which is why a post-doc at a top-tier academic institution, will be making <$32'000/year.
Doesn't the government do this anyway? I thought it was called the Patriot Act?
I'd be surprised if any of them haven't already had all of the records examined by the government.
How can Americans really be concerned about this?
-Try getting a job for the US Postal Service or even try to enlist into the US Military; -There are significant background checks, waivers, and forms required.
Waiving certain 4th (and probably 5th) Amendment privacy rights are part of said employment for the government. If you do not like it, leave the job.
Much of what JPL does is subject to espionage and/or industrial espionage not to mention they certainly need access to classified information and technologies (for example: the positions/orbits & maneuverabilities of US Spy satellites and other 'stuff' in orbit), consider JPL's missions and its history: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/fact_sheets/jpl.pdf
If you can't pass the background checks, get a job elsewhere. It should be a privilege to work for the JPL and the cutting edge research and technological achievements it creates. Besides, this is a US Government entity, not a civilian corporation.
Your rights to privacy CANNOT be more important than National Security. Even IF said employees can't see why.
I'd wager that the Janitors and Maids in the White House MUST PASS a thorough security clearance to perform their 'non-classified' work as well. And someone at a higher pay grade likely has very good reasons for the security requirements as they are, and rocket scientists need background checks too.
As an expert at abusive management during the failing days at Krispy Kreme, this sounds like they want the employees to quit. I've seen this happen too many times.
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.
That reminds me of my last company. Several people complained that they had to submit to cavity searches each day after work. ;)
Of course, it was not until much later that they found out the guy giving them was in no way affiliated with the company.
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.
Don't mind the extra X. Alex
Of course, the background checks are being conducted by his old bosses.
Some likely things that would be found among these 28:
7 are having electronic-only relationships or affairs in a MMORPG
3 are furries
2 use slide rules when planning their order at McDonald's
4 only wear glasses in public and at work (to look smarter)
5 Either dance or do karaoke very badly
1 wears diapers (but only for play)
Even if they had worked in defense, doesn't the US defense forces have a policy of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" when it comes to sexual orientation?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism - but who are we afraid of now? 50 years later? Some Taliban "freedom fighter" adding an IED to the next Mars Rover?
Gimme a break.
When I was in the military and needed a Top Secret security clearance in order to use radio encryption gear, this was standard stuff. They ask sexual orientation and credit history to be sure that no bad guys can blackmail you into giving them information. They do personality tests to be sure you aren't crazy. They ask for detailed family histories, and the names and phone numbers of 10 of you closest friends, and they interview those people in person to make sure you are who you say you are.
Why would JPL scientists need this level of clearance? Maybe their work involves access to military technology?
Were it made ten years later, I'd suspect this to be great viral advertising for the movie Gattaca. Unfortunately, it's not -- it's just another step towards abolishing personal privacy. One small step...
Oh definitely not affecting our every day lives.
I know you don't exactly drink Tang every day, but exactly what percentage of the United State's population do you think is affected by weather satellites?
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
You work for the government, you live off of the taxpayers, you're owned by the government. If you want privacy, go get a real job. Otherwise, stop whining.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
Don't leave a job unfinished - two down but many more to go!
Sometimes I really wonder what has happened to the good old "Western Democracy"?
Grewing up in the former "Eastern Block", in the shadow of the former Nazi state, Western Democracy sounded like a pretty good deal.
I just wonder, what the hell has happened to those principles? Wasn't the reason for fighting WWII and the Cold War to preserve the good old "Western Democracy"?
I must have missed something lately: when was good old Western Democracy declared dead? By whom? Has the public ever been informed? I mean, when did the public discussion and consent took place to retire good old "Western Democracy"?
What was it replaced with? This NASA stuff sound way too familiar from history, but not under "Western Democracy"...
28 senior NASA scientists and engineers, including Mars Rover team members, all updated the "foes" section of their Facebook profile this afternoon.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Or, one of his gamma ray experiments goes haywire, and whenever he gets angry, well, you wouldn't like him when he's angry!
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
I've been to JPL a couple times when I worked on some Mars Odyssey related stuff, and security is kind of tight for the whole facility. One of the software engineers in our lab is a Pakistani citizen and he wasn't even allowed to come to a party we had there once.
To my knowledge, there's little classified work that goes on there, but I'm sure there's sensitive stuff... it's literally rocket science. These background checks sound a little too intrusive for a bunch of science geeks, though.
I would like to remind everyone here that NASA is NOT a civilian space agency, it a branch of the Department of Defense and if you read the charter you shouldn't be surprised at all about this.
Why do people apply for jobs at a organization, and yet have NO CLUE about who they are working for?
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
all that data gets stolen? I bet max 2 years.
it's essentailly 1984 ** 10
If this kind of crap is going on, the country will snap!
About 50 years ago, it was Russia in top repression, searching people's luggage entering their borders, secrete police on the next corne; now US is severely going there and Russia is coming up again - not even talking about muslim countries, Far East or South America.
Maybe it's global warming heating some heads too much so they start to malfunction.
Freedom? Yukk, my ass!
p/Just imagine that Simon guy saying, You call THAT data! Get out of here!"
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
They're probably trying to avoid a repeat of the whole "astronaut with diapers travels 1,000 miles to beat up other astronaut's lover" fiasco, which itself was misreported to the hills. This would not be the best way to go about it — sanity is one of those things that you can probably assume (to the point that they can still function in their job) for 99.5% of the general population.
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
Sure there are no guarantees, but some heavy-duty background checking does cut down on wierdos.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
My bet is that the govt. already started these investigations, without permission, and is now trying to preempt any potential fallout by coercing NASA employees into signing consent forms. It certainly would be in line with other recent illegal spying activity. Oh crap, I think I just added myself to the no fly list...
Welcome to the world of security clearances. NASA routinely works on things that have a sensitive nature, if for no other reason than "technology export concerns". Why is this even news?
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
The problem is that the Bush-Ashcroft era had a tradition of firing homosexuals, this in turned encouraged people to hide their homosexuality, which creates potential blackmail material. Thus this practice of the government persecuting gays in government jobs and the military is a giant potential threat to national security.
(insert standard diatribe about clueless slashdot editors and even-more-clueless slashdot readers/commentors)
1. JPL is not the government
2. the scientists this would have applied to are the subset of JPL employees who do not work with classified material
3. many of this subset of JPL employees specifically elected years ago not to work with classified material because they didn't want to go through the clearance processes
4. all the way back in October the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit blocked (URL:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/06/AR2007100601372.html/) this directive thereby obsolescing the portion of submitter's summary claim that these scientists were in danger of being fired at any moment for not having signed the permission slips by the due date.
I am sure the 'Russian Federal Space Agency' or the 'European Space Agency' would be interested.
They need a union
It seems to me that both defence related and/or national security related projects would require this kind of action. However what a lot of posters are missing are the opportunities for industrial espionage possible when working for NASA, particularly in the highly lucrative aerospace sector. One might argue that economic interests are also the national interest and hence subject to national security considerations. However, not knowing much about NASA in general, I wouldn't know where you should draw the line.
This is just another excuse conservatives cooked up to start firing scientists. They start there, move on to the guys researching Global Warming, etc etc.
Conservatives HATE science. So OBVIOUSLY they are going to target organizations like NASA, the CDC, etc. The only scientists conservatives have room for is Christian Scientists.
we already have a documented case of one of THEM around the bend and threatening somebody else. no cases known among JPL, where the equipment works better than bid.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
politics. I think that's why people don't 'support' scientists. Blue-collar workers are often less affluent and not as highly educated. Unfortunately, that makes a scientists best hope for support, well...other scientists. Which is a shame because a lot of the trouble science is having effects us much more broadly and supporting science is really a way to support ourselves.
Quack, quack.
and are now subject to being fired despite a decade or more of exemplary service.
Awesome idea! Do away with your best hires because of some silly policy, and wait for foreign space agencies to hire them for their uncommon expertise, experience and insight! If there's something that we've learn during the past years, it's that loyalty and malleability are far more important than competence anyways!
You just got troll'd!
The rather important point that you missed is that the administrators who came up with this lame policy depend on the scientists et al to administer over. If there's no scientists, engineers, and technicians, you don't need administraters to oversee them.
The real problem, it would seem, is that the overwhelming majority already signed the forms without giving it any real thought, leaving the few sensible individuals who were even remotely proactive about watching out for their privacy rights to fight alone.
"Your honour, I didn't commit an armed robbery, the clerk just voluntarily gave me the money after I pointed the gun at him"
Seriously, if this thing is voluntary, I'd really like to know what isn't.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
What there is is a right of protection of privacy against UNSANCTIONED invasion by government, corporations, individuals, etc.
The issue then is whether the depth of investigation is sanctioned. The government being the body that determines "sanctioned", they can change it.
The JPL people have the right to walk out. Since those at JPL such as the Mars Rover team are academics employed by universities first, and working *AT* a NASA facility, they would lose nothing by doing so, but NASA would lose operation of several programs. NASA doesn't have the trained employess or contractors (or funding for the latter) to take over those operations. Since they're primarily science programs, it makes no sense to alienate the scientists running them.
It does not violate any "rights". It IS a very stupid move. It only makes sense if NASA is planning to take sensitive DoD project operations into JPL. If they do that, not assuring security would lead to fubars such as what's gone on at Los Alamos.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
...to behave like the military. What you seem to be saying is that you're making money off of both areas, so it doesn't matter to you if the government becomes fascist.
This reminds me of some political purges of other supposedly-apolitical professional bureaucracies like the DOJ. I hope nobody at JPL is a Democrat.
Decide for yourself what this is all about. The intent of the process becomes clearer when you read the form in question.
http://www.opm.gov/forms/pdf_fill/SF85.pdf
INSTRUCTIONS
--------
Purpose of this Form
The U.S. Government conducts background investigations to establish
that applicants or incumbents either employed by the Government or
working for the Government under contract, are suitable for the job.
Information from this form is used primarily as the basis for this
investigation. Complete this form only after a conditional offer of
employment has been made.
Giving us the information we ask for is voluntary. However, we may
not be able to complete your investigation, or complete it in a timely
manner, if you dont give us each item of information we request. This
may affect your placement or employment prospects.
Authority to Request this Information
The U.S. Government is authorized to ask for this information under
Executive Order 10577, sections 3301 and 3302 of title 5, U.S. Code;
and parts 5, 731, and 736 of Title 5, Code of Federal Regulations.
Your Social Security Number is needed to keep records accurate,
because other people may have the same name and birth date. Executive
Order 9397 also asks Federal agencies to use this number to help
identify individuals in agency records.
The Investigative Process
Background investigations are conducted using your responses on this
form and on your Declaration for Federal Employment (OF 306) to
develop information to show whether you are reliable, trustworthy, and
of good conduct and character. Your current employer must be
contacted as part of the investigation, even if you have previously
indicated on applications or other forms that you do not want this.
Instructions for Completing this Form
1. Follow the instructions given to you by the person who gave you the
form and any other clarifying instructions furnished by that person to
assist you in completion of the form. Find out how many copies of the
form you are to turn in. You must sign and date, in black ink, the
original and each copy you submit.
2. Type or legibly print your answers in black ink (if your form is not
legible, it will not be accepted). You may also be asked to submit your
form in an approved electronic format.
3. All questions on this form must be answered. If no response is
necessary or applicable, indicate this on the form (for example, enter
"None" or "N/A"). If you find that you cannot report an exact date,
approximate or estimate the date to the best of your ability and indicate
this by marking "APPROX." or "EST."
4. Any changes that you make to this form after you sign it must be
initialed and dated by you. Under certain limited circumstances,
agencies may modify the form consistent with your intent.
5. You must use the State codes (abbreviations) listed on the back of
this page when you fill out this form. Do not abbreviate the names of
cities or foreign countries.
6. The 5-digit postal ZIP codes are needed to speed the processing of
your investigation. The office that provided the form will assist you in
completing the ZIP codes.
7. All telephone numbers must include area codes.
8. All dates provided on this form must be in Month/Day/Year or
Month/Year format. Use numbers (1-12) to indicate months. For
example, June 10, 1978, should be shown as 6/10/78.
9. Whenever "City (Country)" is shown in an address block, also
provide in that block the name of the country when the address is
outside the United States.
10. If you need additional space to list your residences or
employments/self-employments/unemployment or education, you
should use a continuation sheet, SF 86A. If additional space is needed
to answer other items, use a blank piece of paper. Each blank piece of
paper you use must contain your name and Social Secu
Let's see, NASA launches rockets which are themselves capable of being turned into flying bombs. Some of those rockets carry spy satellites, and even the ones that carry civilian payloads often are powered by reactors containing plutonium...
I for one don't want drug addicts and political fanatics controlling those devices.
And besides, scientists are a bunch of whiny self-important prigs anyway. A cavity search or two would do them some good.
Remember - suspicion breeds confidence!
Huh?
Neither of these make much sense. You're not going to get blackmailed for having bad credit, and people aren't blackmailable for things they don't keep secret. So the question about sexual orientation is never going to give an answer you can use to determine if someone's open to blackmail. If someone's openly gay, they'll say "gay". If they're secretly gay, and thus open to blackmail, they'll answer "straight". 90% of the population will also answer "straight".
Sounds like the justifications are there to support inexcusable practices, not because they have any validity.
the highest things in NASA are the salaries, followed by corruption and then comes the pioneer space probes
It's obviously new and forced. They want current employees to sign. That's changing the game on a captive work group and is second cousin to contract violations.
Then again, this is an abusive administration that lost it's mind long ago. Is ripping down posters from the gift shop at gunpoint crazy enough for you? How about tyring to deny the big bang and global warming? Yes, that's crazy political censorship of scientists. The investigative powers demanded here go hand in hand with that. When scientists say things that go against the immediate financial interests of the administration or it's corporate allies, public smear will be part of the punishment. There is no place for this kind of screening outside of classified work and even there a credit history and interview of a few friends is about as good as you can do.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
http://www.sheep101.info/
Where I work, they wanted extensive background checks this year for everyone who has a company car or gets a car allowance, "for safety purposes." Home addresses for the last 5 years, authorization to get police and insurance reports...
Practically everyone either balked or just ignored the request. Nothing happened.
http://www.sheep101.info/
What next- daily anal probes to ensure loyalty for all federal jobs?
Niel Stephenson was sadly quite an accurate visionary...
Having poor credit doesn't mean you're more likely to be susceptible to blackmail, but it does make you more likely to be susceptible to bribery. The logical way to make your employees less open to bribery is to ensure they have plenty of money, by paying them a lot.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
politics. I think that's why people don't 'support' scientists. Blue-collar workers are often less affluent and not as highly educated. Unfortunately, that makes a scientists best hope for support, well...other scientists. Which is a shame because a lot of the trouble science is having effects us much more broadly and supporting science is really a way to support ourselves.
It's not just politics. Americans in general are extremely anti-intellectual and anti-science. Those blue-collar workers you refer to don't just not understand why supporting science is important, they actively dislike scientists and other highly-educated people.
Well I don't see any problem here. They should have no trouble at all finding a job in any high tech industry they wish to work in. Not only that, but I think they'd probably earn MUCH MORE working for private industry than for the government. Are you kidding me? Do you have any idea how many industries, like aviation, industrial automation, etc., would dish out millions to get their hands on some more qualified engineers and scientists? I still think they should play the lawsuit lottery and try and make a few million more in damages to be paid by the government. It's not right that the government does this kind of stuff. First it's NASA JPL scientists. Then it's people working for any part of the government. And then it's people working in any business that services the government (which is just about every business there is) and then it's everyone. Next thing you know, the law will read like the EULA of the Borg from Regmond:
We have to be protected against the threat of Hugo Drax.
You actually allowed a colleague to be treated in that way, shameful.
never let a man put his dirty how-do-you-do into your bajingo
includes snooping into sexual orientation
;-)
What, did some scientists get suspiciously over-enthusiastic about the Uranus Penetrator Probe project?
Table-ized A.I.
Question for a laywer in the crowd? How valid is a contract if you are forced to sign it under threat of being fired? I think this is the angle they are working on. They are trying to collect data to show that the contract was force on them, then even if they do sign the contract in invalid. That is the route I'd take. Make them go almost all the way through the motions of firing for cause, then final sign the paper then later try to get all 22,000 contract invalidated.
It seems that no one here knows this, so I will point it out. If you work at JPL and you read your paycheck it does not come from NASA. It comes from Caltech. Caltech is a private university. They own JPL and contract JPL's services to NASA. JPL employees are not NASA employees even if they do mostly work on NASA projects under contract.
So there is good reason why a presedential order may not apply to someone who works for a private university
I hope all of my fellow slashdotters will forgive me for tagging along on a post that has no relevance to what I am going to say, but I have inside information, and I hope to get this post up in the list. A friend of mine works for the justice dept in LA county.
I almost never post AC, but I am posting AC this time because I don't know how much of this is public record.
One of the guys who works at JPL is currently 'confined' for child rape. His third offense, I believe. ( One was a ten year old boy. One was a 12-year old at knifepoint. ) But there is a progam called conrep ( CONditional RElease Program ) in which a person is allowed to live and work outside of prison, with his home and car and whatever subject to random unanounced searches whenever the parole office wants to.
Anyway, he is out, and working at JPL, and currently contesting his supervised status in court. I suspect that this may be what triggered it.
jewish....
/., to mark your silly post informative...
the cambridge spy ring.... homosexuals
you need to put less faith in that "flyer, around 1991" you saw....
leave it to
What do you think happens when a few hundred men work on a project for that many year ? Many fall in love with each other. Especially since many of us were shy guys that had never dated girls and repressed our homosexuality, and for once we bonded closely with another person. Additionally, some reason it seems that rockets attract gay men. This inquiry at JPL is being done not because of top secret work, but because just after I left two guys were caught jerking each other off in a clean satellite room and got cum on some 100 million dollar satellite.
One of the guys who works at JPL is currently 'confined' for child rape. His third offense, I believe.
The first two of these violent convictions should be easy to point to and would have resulted in dismissal. No one needs your permission to look up a criminal record because many of your rights end on conviction.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Other NASA centers are being forced to do this as well, and the employees are getting pissed off. See this blog for JSC employees that are fuming: http://hspd12jsc.blogspot.com
... refused to sign by the deadline and are now subject to being fired despite a decade or more of exemplary service.Walk away. If you don't want to sign, don't. These large companies/organisations only win because people whinge and bitch, and then rollover like good little puppy dogs. Don't let them win. If you've become an important part of the company/organisation, they won't let you go. Either that, or find an employer that doesn't do this. Send a message loud and clear.
.
I worked for the BLM, Department of Interior and anyone with administrative access to workstations or servers had to go through the same SF-85 FBI check. I'm sure that this idiocy is going on everywhere in the Federal system. An interesting side-effect is that the FBI/OPM is is so far behind that many prospective employees take other job offers before their investigation is complete. Many positions are going unfilled and this adds to the government's sluggishness. The ID card program is a spectacular failure and only confirms the incompetence at the top.
The man's right. It is the most logical thing to do. It's got some tradition. I can vaguely remember this being one of the main reasons why the pay of judges was increased sharply in Britain in the early 19th Century or something. Oh I'm useless when I'm stoned.
How dare you be so modest!! You conceited bastard!!
I can't believe what I am reading...and most of it is labeled Score 5: Insightful!! Not the case.
First of all, the "nation of sheep" comment is never more ironic than when applied to an this article + crazy knee-jerk bloggers.
a) Please tell me who thinks that NASA and JET PROPULSION LAB security checks are a bad idea?! Are you guys even thinking straight? Sure, lets not have background checks for a job involving flying huge TANKS OF FUEL in the air above all the countries on Planet Earth. Good idea, surely America is just a small country, not the richest target in every a$$hole's mind. Only the geniuses behind 9/11 could figure out the whole GIGANTIC FLYING GASOLINE MISSILE plan, not just some lowly l33t5p33k peeps.
b) I'm sorry, this job is not a monopoly. Meaning, the people aren't exactly being held hostage. If they don't want to have a security investigation, they can leave. If they don't pass, they will be fired. Why is this so evil to computer nerds?? My job requires an SCI clearance. But if it didn't, and I was working on project x...and project x became a classified project (which happens) then they will have to switch to another project. If there are no unclass projects, then SORRY. that's the Free Market Economy that you idiots alternately defend and attack from the comfort of your Gamer Chairs.
c) sorry i just threw up in my mouth a little.
Bet they don't talk about those with Nazi backgrounds or family history. NASA was founded with Nazi scientist personnel captured during the war. They had Nazi crossed out on their papers following their transfers. Going from gunning you down to running your town.
...are going to have less overt/covert background checks for people they hire to work on the highest tech rocketry and satellite stuff?
I'm not defending these obtrusive new background checks, but having a hard time believing other large nations wouldn't have quite similar policies.
Near as I can tell, nearly all high tech R&D is "dual use", or has the potential. And espionage is just as much for economic gain as it is to maintain military advantage, the two are completely interlocked now. War is business and business is war, hot, cold, or otherwise.
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/ 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).
Can you still get in if you have a history of working for despotic regimes, membership of far right political organisations, links to slavery and forced labour and previous employment developing terror weapons?
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
Geeze, with a record like that.... maybe those characteristics SHOULD have been used to keep him out of his position!
If you can't say something nice, make sure you have something heavy to throw.
Rockets don't just go to space, you know. Sometimes they carry explosives, and your science geek may wind up helping his home country aim them. The most terrible weapons were created by science geeks.
This is one more reason why there won't be a manned Mars mission by 2031, as discussed several days ago. This obsessive American need to probe into the private lives of people. This has a long history of from the days of the early 1950s, the McCarthy Witch Hunt era, and before. Americans in any position of authority are still obsessed with knowing the details of private lives of those working for them. No one else demands loyality oaths, or urine tests.
... ;
This is not completely fair to the Americans, though. In most other countries, the leaders of an business or community simply assume that they can ask about personal details from anyone working for them. They just ask and then fire people indiscriminately according to their whim. It's because the USA has such a wide variety of people from so many cultures and backgrounds that limits to inquiry of personal lives and arbitrary firing because of personal lifestyles have become so public and necessary.
In other countries, if you're different, then you're very limited in opportunities. People simply accept it as the natural order of things. This mentality keeps the society 'in order', but it also limits its potential for growth by denying opportunities for success to large groups of people for nonsensical or overwrought reasons.
It's been a long hard road for the outside groups in the USA to smash barriers, but it seems that they can do it (eventually) more in the USA than other places. Here is a brief bigotry 'shit list' and a time frame of when the group suffered the most discrimination:
First Nation peoples 1620 - ; the Native Americans are pretty much still massively down, maybe next century
Africans 1650 - 1965 ; the African-Americans have traditionally been the most oppressed, even now only half are middle class in the USA. Advances made after the Civil War were repressed until the Civil Rights protests of 1950s and the end of legal segregation in 1965.
Irish 1840 - 1920
Italians 1890 - 1940
Jews 1880 - 1950 ; The educational achievements of Eastern European and Russian Jews and the Shoah defeated anti-Semitism in the USA by 1960.
Asians 1880 - 1975 ; The repeal of the Asian Exclusion act of the 1920s brought millions of Asians to the USA between 1975 and the present. Now considered the 'model minority'
Hispanics 1840 - 1995 ; Massive immigration from Mexico and Cuba leading to bilingual acceptance in the USA. Process is still far from complete, but discrimination is much less than 50 years ago.
Leftists 1900 - ; discrimination against political progressives comes in cycles. 1919, 1950, 1970, and 2004 were peaks in the cycle against the left in the USA.
Sexual Minorities - 1995 ; GLBTg people have always been discriminated against harshly, until their economic prosperity and strong political organization lead to ending (mostly) legal discrimination.
Cannibus and intoxicant users 1919-1932 for alcohol drinkers, 1935- for marijuana users 1980s- other drug users - legal discrimination is still active and strong. Millions of drug users imprisoned in the USA. Urine tests and mandatory employment termination prevasive throughout the USA
Genetic discrimination - mandatory DNA testing and job termination based on genetic disposition is rare in the USA.
Music taste - denying employment and educational benefits to people who have been found using P2P file sharing is still rare, but is becoming the fastest growing form of discrimination in the USA. Widespread legal restrictions
anyone who voted for bush, you caused this sort of calamity.
real republicans want less government.
This administration wants more power and more government and less oversight.
wow, you bush voters sure were stupid. I think anyone who voted for bush should be forced to get a tatoo on their forehead saying so.
Then we can publicly ridicule them like they deserve.
They're using their grammar skills there.
You got it right.
Fuck you, too, asshole.
That's nothing new... Medical doctors have been required to sign those sorts of unlimited waivers to personal privacy and waive all rights against slander for quite a while now. The most recent waiver I saw essentially granted every single member of a hospital (including the janitor) to go through the doctor applicant's entire medical record, all past job records, and make any statement they wanted whether it was true or not, without any restrictions against slander. Basically every law protecting employees or job applicants passed in the last 200 years were explicitly waived, as a pre-condition to even being interviewed for the job.
To put a fine point on it, a contract lawyer who reviewed this waiver stated flatly that anyone who signed it was an idiot. Yet this was a "standard" waiver agreement for an entire medical staffing agency per the requirements of their clients (the hospitals).
Hey I'm just pointing out that you're the type of scum bag who allows the racist oppression of others and does nothing. You're an enabler of fascism, like a good order following German when the Jews were being rounded up. You probably cross picket lines and see no problem either. You fucking Ayn Rand reading subhuman lickspittle. It's you who are fucked, little coward.
never let a man put his dirty how-do-you-do into your bajingo
You're not too bright, so in future you should not give your opinion as it's offensive to those with intelligence. Maybe you should be hanging some nooses or burning some crosses with your chums.
never let a man put his dirty how-do-you-do into your bajingo
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.
And it *HAS* to do with president Bush. He's the one who issued the directive in question.
This looks very much like a civilian version of a PRP program. Personnel Reliability Program is a self-monitoring system i which all the people in sensitive positions. Medication is typically limited to aspirin. Anything else, including allergy medicines, is only allowed under supervision from certain doctors, typically flight surgeons. Odd or self-destructive behavior is supposed to be reported and anyone operating outside their "peak" is supposed to be removed from sensitive duties.
This is a security precaution which you might see referred to under two different operational aspects, surety and security. I won't get into the differences but the concepts are that only the proper people should have access to something and that what is supposed to happen happens when it is supposed to happen.
Purchase of precursor components is controlled and monitored (pseudophedrine, "dual use" products, etc.). This is expanding more into raw tech and related research. It is the responsible thing to do.
So much of the discussion in this thread seems confused on the concept of employeement. A "job" does not "belong" to the employee. The employee occupies the job as long as it benefits the employer. The root of the word employee is employ, to use. In this case, the employer has decided to increase security. If you are an employee and won't accept the change, quit or be fired. That's true of any other job. It has happened everywhere as smoking has become prohibited in offices, racial and sexually intimidating behavior has been prohibited, etc.
Some security classifications specifically prohibit non-citizens from having access. NOFORN is common with most NBC. Access to one aspect does not dictate authorization to other parts. (See the reply which mentioned a Pakistani who was prohibted from certain types of meetings.)
Changes in security procedures like this are not cheap to implement. Most likely, the nature of the activities at JPL will be changing or JPL has been found to have a serious lack of security. Maybe there is some combination of the two. Think of the Soviet mathematician whose work was the basis for a lot of the stealth technology developed in the U.S. What had been an esoteric curiosity became a critical security issue or how narcotics have become more restricted over time.
The problem is : they are not doing classified stuff. And AFAIK their results are public domain. Blackmailing them would be like to blackmail linus torvald and require a copy of Linux.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Almost 7 years have passed since 911, and our government, military, and intelligence community have proven themselves, in endeavors foreign and domestic, incompetent to the core. A large portion of this has to do with the overall quality of people who work in "clearspace." Requirements for higher clearance clearances are so stringent that the people who are most likely to make it in tend to be the least educated, the least well-travelled and cosmopolitan, the least curious, the least unusual, and the least ambitious. This is because these qualities require a certain degree of risk-taking, and the government does not want people who take risks. However, one wonders why the government has become more stringent with their security clearance requirements, and why they have expanded them to seemingly innocuous areas such as JPL. If the clearance process has played such a major role in the US's colossal failures by discouraging qualified applicants or excluding them outright, then one would think that they would make the process more inclusive. After all, in WWII, a heavily WASP-dominated government, whose upper echelons often quietly nurtured a current of anti-Semitism, did not prevent Jewish scientists such as Oppenheimer or Feynman from working at Los Alamos. It seems to me that the most reasonable explanation is that the stringency of the process, especially in times of such high demand, doubles or triples the value of a cleared employee with some government experience. Therefore, a network engineer who would be making 30-40k in the private sector could command a six-figure salary with a defense contractor if he obtained a clearance. While I do not think that there is some collective, malicious, planned conspiracy - a government which oversaw Katrina, 911, and Iraq is not capable of accomplishing such a task - I do believe it is possible for a group of people to collectively defend their interests when the cost of defending them is minimal. Jim Crow segregation in the South, for example, worked so effectively because all whites needed to do was say "no", and reinforce the message with an occassional lynching. Cleared employees who advocated making the requirements for entry any less stringent would be devaluing themselves. In this kind of world, a background investigator, who is often little more than a thug with certification, can destroy the career and life of a NASA scientist, who has given up years of his life in doctoral studies to advance our understading of the universe.
I'm probably oversimplifying (those people seem to generally love their jobs) but the way I see it the best course of action would be:
Do not give up your right to privacy.
Get fired.
Then take the case to court- because you got fired without just cause.
It will be a high profile case (it already has a bit of media attention) and set a precedent for all cases where bosses try to make you give up your privacy or get fired.
You will most likely win the case.
After winning the case, walk out from NASA and apply for a job at ESA.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
You're being a little harsh there-- he had no control over whether JPL let his colleague in or not. The most he could probably do is also refuse to attend the party. They should have had the party away from the lab to avoid the situation though.
The government puts all sorts of requirements on work related contacts with foreign nationals and access by foreign nationals to gov't facilities, many of which are implemented way too harshly or inconsistently. There's more than one case of a foreign national working at a university designing an instrument component or piece of software and leaving for another job, then being asked to come back temporarily to fix something, only to be told by the gov't that the export license has expired and the person isn't allowed to touch the instrument or software.
Unfortunately it does not work. Persons with either bad drug or gambling addiction will lose all the money given to them.
When looking at the history of WMD use, it then seems more urgent to keep Americans out of JPL:s facilities than Pakistanis.
Remember, during World War 2, Russians managed to penetrate into the Manhatten Project. And if you watch History channel... you can find many incidents like this.
I think end of cold war kinda gave some breathing space to American Intelligence. But now, there is the new space race and terrorists and other political foes. So... there are so many eyes on American activities, maybe far more than the cold war era.
I am not american, but I think it is a part of the american constitution 'not to poke finger in other's private lives' (in short.. privacy). I heard it sparked a controversy by the 'patriotic act' by current bush administration, as its clearly violates the 'privacy' clause in the constitution. If so, how can this NASA activity be legitimate??
(please delight me.. I am not an american citizen)
Having poor credit does not imply that you are more susceptible to bribery. In fact, if coupled with a lie detector test it acts as a predictor of _lawful_ behavior when dealing with future unforeseen financial difficulties (like large medical bills). You are a known quantity if you have been through hard times and behaved within the law (even if you couldn't pay your bills). A lie detector test or profile would have difficulty determining how someone with a perfect record would respond to difficulties--that's why you're supposed to report and track such things.
In general, massive debt, spending beyond ones means, and gambling are risks that can be investigated through credit checks. Massive debt is easily fixed (counseling), but the other ones are the serious issues because paying the employee money doesn't solve the problem. Still, poor credit with lawful behavior provides greater insight into the risks posed by the employee.
I work in the field of security clearances and background investigation for the government. Sounds like (to me anyways) that they are finally trying to force them go through the same background investigations all federal employees are required to go through.
It will either be NAC (Form SF-85P), ANACI (SF-86) or SSBI (SF-86 as well).
It will not deal with political orientation or sexual orientation. There is STRICT guidance about even bringing that up.
Do a google search on Security clearance adjudicative guidelines for the factors they are looking for and what is disqualifying.
The check will go back the last 7 to 10 years, depending on what clearance they are required, and will involve finances (for reliability and vulnerability to bribes or blackmail), foreign travel, foreign connections, personal conduct, law violations, employment history, alcohol and drug use, etc.
I file this under "What do you expect when you work for the feds, quit whining department"
Answering Yes to the question did you ever smoked marijuana may not disqualify you (especially if you didn't inhale!)
...
but answering No while all your friends of University can testify that you did will disqualify you.
Same as being into S&M, going to Las Vegas for the Cirque du Soleil show only, liking pineapple on your pizza,
if you marry a stripper.
Or you can buy missiles for $5000-$60000 (black market cost that Hezbollah has paid - http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/07/20/world/main1821335.shtml etc). Those JPL-caliber (completely made-up term) rockets can run into the millions of dollars per unit...the type of groups that can't support indigenous development efforts probably don't care about reliability all too much. Yes, it's rocket science, but not all rocket science is hard and poorly defined!
Some of the JPL interstellar probes use highly enriched fissile material as energy source. What someone can do with that is much more exceptional than what an FBI agent could do if it stoled a kilo of heroin from one of his heist.
When they come to your house with a blanket warrant, arest you and take your stuff. Don't tell me I didn't warn you.
Liberty.
I just went through the TS process that included a poly. Only two non-control questions, both security related.
The whole process took over an hour, but that was mainly because the polygrapher spent a lot of time making sure that you understand the questions - no ambiguity. You know all of the questions before the tests start. And they don't want you angry, angry makes for bad data. They want steady, with definable reactions to the questions.
A criminal poly may be different, but I've found there are a lot of unfounded rumors about defense polys. People were spreading the rumor at our place that if you failed the poly you lost your job. That wasn't true, you just wouldn't get your upgraded clearance.
I couldn't have put it better myself. National secrets are still national secrets and need to be protected regardless of personal feelings to an individual. A party isn't a good excuse for reversing the need for such a policy.
http://www.opm.gov/forms/pdf_fill/SF86.pdf
This is most likely the form you had to fill out. Good old SF86, striking fear in the hearts of good-folks-who-did-stupid-things-in-college since, well, some time ago!
With the first link, the chain is forged.
Simply because the laws of a society do not recognize basic human rights, that does not make those rights non-existent. It makes the society unjust. For example, in 1950 in Alabama, people of color were denied many civil rights. However that does not mean that Rosa Parks did not have a human right to keep her seat on the damn bus when a white man demanded it.
You are confusing civil rights granted by law and universal rights, granted by one's humanity.
http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html
Article 12. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
Wait dude, its not just the faggots and the Jews, you forgot the rag-heads, dot-heads, and the darkies. And the chicks too... everyone knows a chick can't keep a secret. And like they'd ever be able to land a job at JPL other than as a secretary.
Oh, and you almost forgot racist homophobic fucktards like yourself!
Well said, on many counts. I think it is sad that society is tending in this direction.
I concede that this post may be somewhat off-topic, but I think it's relevant. I spend a lot of time helping to run a large local dance club. It's a slightly unusual organisation, because despite having thousands of members each year, it's a non-profit and run entirely by its members.
For several decades, we have run dancing classes. They're mostly aimed at adults, but we've always had a few older school kids join in, mostly 16-17 but occasionally as young as 14. As long as they were grown up enough both physically and socially to take part, no-one has ever had a problem with this as far as I know. Sadly, we have now concluded that because of all the new child protection legislation that will be taking effect over the next few months, it is safest just to back off any work with under-18s.
To continue, it sounds like as a minimum we would need to have Criminal Records Bureau checks done regularly on all our teachers. Those checks cost money and apply only to our specific activities for a finite time, and we'd have to do them for all teachers since all members can go to any of our classes without booking in advance. The cost of that, to a self-supporting non-profit organisation, is just silly.
But the really silly thing is that several of these dance teachers are in fact school teachers who work with kids all day for their main job, and just teach a bit of dancing on the side. These have already been through full CRB checks and could no doubt produce the relevant certificates, but officially they won't have any validity for us. Moreover, all of our teachers are professionals we've worked with for years, and known personally (in some cases for all of their adult lives) to the organising committee who would be responsible for getting them checked out. From more than half a century of the club's history and probably more than 50,000 people dancing with us, we have had exactly zero cases of child abuse.
Learning to dance is one of the most healthy activities there is for a child's physical, mental and social development. Many do continue into adulthood, and those who find themselves drawn to other things will at least be exceptionally fit, able to learn well, polite, friendly and supportive of partners/team-mates.
I haven't yet worked out how effectively making it impossible for us to help older children to enjoy these benefits in what is demonstrably a very low risk environment serves to protect those children.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Hey, now that there is a potential boom in the space tourism industry, those scientists can flock to the private sector.
Way to go, NASA!
Coderz 4 Life
In 1959 a whole whack of Canadians (many post war British immigrants) moved to the USA after being offered jobs at American aerospace firms, such as NASA. Much of the Mercury and Apollo mission control were Canadians at one time.
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.
My agency is doing this as well. Can't really say that I like feds going through my medical records, and I don't understand why I need to be fingerprinted again.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
This is happening government wide, HSPD-12 is a government wide mandate. Career employees in ALL agencies are not happy about this, particularly in non-defense, non-secure etc agencies.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 has far-reaching implications. I am a state university research professor and receive funding from a NASA project. Even though I am a Co-Investigator on this project, I was told by my own management and University counsel that I would not be allowed access to my own data, should I refuse to sign, and thus cut myself off from my own funding. Fired, in other words. Needless to say, I signed.
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
This line no sig
Plus Richard Feynman. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman
The dinosaurs died out precisely because they were not resilient, i.e. they were incapable of sufficient change.
From M-W.com:
resilient Main Entry: resilient Listen to the pronunciation of resilient Pronunciation: \-ynt\ Function: adjective Etymology: Latin resilient-, resiliens, present participle of resilire to jump back, recoil, from re- + salire to leap -- more at sally Date: 1674 : characterized or marked by resilience: as a: capable of withstanding shock without permanent deformation or rupture b: tending to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change (emphasis added)
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Oh, I forgot to add up the number of times I've been thumb-printed to cash checks
Damn, what kind of checks are you cashing?
This "lie detector" sounds interesting. Do you have any pamphlets, presumably with multiply-reproduced, detailed, double-blind studies published in major peer-reviewed journals, as to their efficacy?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
What I suspect is that JPL is being singled out for a kind of punishment. The present NASA administrator, Mike Griffin, is infamous for violating clear government ethics rules to manipulate and coerce his own personnel and that of major subcontractors. if you do something threatening to his ideas he has no hesitation to call up the CEO of your company and demand that these innovations be silenced. Since most upper management these days have the will of a noodle they will comply to sooth his ruffled feathers. They should be reporting him to government ethics personnel. He is shameless in his willingness to demand that people kowtow to his will. The main problem is that he is a pretty crummy manager and his technical ideas are sophomoric. But he demands loyalty to these foolish ideas under threat of dismissal or loss of contracts. His behavior is that of a spoiled child- which would be laughable if the consequences were not so dire.
There is considerable tension between certain elements of NASA- and JPL is not on the list of teams that NASA headquarters likes. By way of example they were excluded from competition for lunar rovers despite being the absolute center of experience in this technology. Why? So that more favored teams with trivial experience could have a prayer of winning one.
Everyone should know that most NASA activity these days is being manipulated in this way via completely illegal and unethical procurement behaviors. Formal trade studies are manipulated and their leaders are borderline incompetent- many are clearly not neutral and are hardly even shy about their pre-conceived (and mostly dead wrong) notions. THey will defend to the death their decisions even as new data becomes available that wholly undermines their conclusions. Teams are told that they will not be considered in a competition before it even starts- completely in opposition to Federal Acquisition Regs. Why? Because it is clear that they will be the runaway winner and are not on the list of favored suppliers. Winners are often not subject to even the most basic technical oversight to determine if their concept will have a chance in hell of working. This is ignored since they are on the favored list. Of course it MUST work- the idea came from the GODS at headquarters. Strict operational and design mandates are written off in order to allow a loser design to proceed. Often a design feature mandated by some over-enthusiastic NASA engineer is forced into the design by coercion even though the subcontractor KNOWS it will not work. Then after a year's worth of work finally proves this they can remove what was a dumb idea on day one. This costs tens of millions of dollars in redesign and years of time. This only can happen when subordinate NASA personnel mimic their leaders and apply heavy-handed, unethical pressures to the subcontractor.
In other words there are no rules any more. Design definition and optimization are effectively ignored. It is simply the whims of a few rather dumb individuals that guide the design and procurement process. They will be gone- hopefully soon. Believe me most of aerospace industry cannot wait until Mr Griffin and his stooges are history. But the legacy of their incompetence and hubris will linger for decades. Their contamination of the legacy of the free and unfettered exchange of ideas between NASA and its subcontractors and the scientists who are supposedly the purpose behind such things as lunar exploration will take years to clean up.
Mod Parent Up
We have four boxes with which to defend our freedom: the soap box, the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.
I was going to explain the whole story to you, but I'm not in the habit of defending myself to random assholes on the net, so the epithet was all you got. Your response shows you to be the type of person who is so sure they are the final arbiters of all that is right and just that it would've certainly been a waste of time. You know nothing whatsoever of me, and if you did, you would know that calling me an "enabler of fascism" would be laughable if it weren't so damn sad. But you, the original font of all knowledge, have already pronounced your judgment and decided I'm guilty. The cures offered by people of your ilk are worse than the disease.
As to cowardice, you're the one taking pot-shots of people across the internet, big man. If you'd like to arrange a more personal venue to call me a coward, just let me know.
No they don't, they just follow leaders who gain votes by promoting outrage at science's "conflict" with religion.
Everyone knows right-minded people reserve their outrage for businessmen, not scientists.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
You can choose a different job. I know i would.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Yeah, but look who hired him . . . the same sheeple that signed on the dotted line.
What part of "None of them even work on anything classified or defense related." was too hard for you to grasp?
We're all born with nothing.
If you die in debt, you're ahead.
Who are the ones that would complain, quit, or get fired by objecting?
That's right, the ones that like a loose leash and might just bite the hand that feeds them by debunking gov't sponsored media with scientific facts.
Who do you want to keep?
That's right, the sheep that will do whatever their told.
Pretty smart in my opinion...if your goal is to have employees that do exactly what you want them to.
mod parent up
No they don't, they just follow leaders who gain votes by promoting outrage at science's "conflict" with religion.
I disagree. Our "leaders" aren't really leaders, they're politicians. There's a difference. Leaders blaze their own trail, that's why they're called leaders. Our politicians didn't create this conflict with religion (which shouldn't be quoted, the conflict is real), they saw it already in existence, and already a problem in the population, and took advantage of it. Our politicians aren't smart enough or innovative enough to come up with stuff like that on their own.
As for the "conflict", as I said, it's a real conflict, not something made up. The problem is with religion. The religion says the earth was made 6000 years ago, science says something different. Obviously, there's a conflict. Some people will try to argue that this is based on a "flawed interpretation" or somesuch, but that's crap. The Bible is believed by Christians to be the divinely-inspired word of God, and without error (this part is important). This is part of the religion. Now, accepting that the book has no error, you can calculate from it that the earth is 6000 years old or so. If you don't believe this, then you're not accepting that the book is without error. By the same token, if you believe that bats are not birds, and a few other wacky things like that, then you also are not accepting that the book is without error. Now, there may be some Christian sects that don't believe the Bible is without error, and these sects probably won't have a problem with science. But other sects do believe this, and obviously they will have a problem with science. It's an integral part of their religion, just as believing in Xenu and body thetans is an integral part of the religion of Scientology. It all comes down to faith. Do you have faith that your religion is correct, no matter what kind of contradictory evidence is shown to you? Or do you change your beliefs according to the available evidence, and not rely on faith at all, as is done with science?
Everyone knows right-minded people reserve their outrage for businessmen, not scientists.
What's wrong with businessmen? There's a few bad ones in corporate executive positions, but really, they're just taking advantage of a situation created by the shareholders and the boards of directors. These aren't public, elected positions in government; if you don't like these companies, don't buy from them.
Right-minded people should reserve their outrage for lawyers and politicians, if you ask me. They're the ones who are really screwing things up in this country.
Who the f*** decided that sentences on the Internet shall no longer be formatted with two spaces after a period?!
Sorry to reply to a sig, but while I still use two spaces by habit, it's really not supposed to be needed. The two-spaces thing is a hold-over from the days of typewriters and non-proportional fonts. Properly typeset text in a proportional font does not have two spaces after a period, it has around 1.5 spaces. You can see this even in old books and newspapers. Proper typesetting software like TeX will do this automatically, but because we all grew up with typewriters, and then with crappy "word processors", which never properly typeset text, we've gotten used to using 2 spaces.
I am fully aware Europe is a not a single nation, although the EU is approaching that type of organized political structure rapidly. Besides that, oh well, you hate Americans, or give a good appearance of that, despite there being every sort of American out there.. I don't hate Europeans for the record and have never bashed them anyplace. I also would be willing to wager that there are similar background checks run on most scientists everywhere. Not exact, but similar, both that the employee is aware of, and probably some they are not. As to analyzing Martian dust and etc, all high tech gear can be used for multiple purposes usually, but that is an irrelevant side issue, and I was generally speaking obviously, there is a lot of "dual use" with tech gear, even to just the plebeian point that it is usually expensive and might be worth something on the black market say. In other words, it is quite common for employers and governments to run background checks on people, for security/intel purposes and for loss prevention and so on. Quite common in fact. I think it would be a rare company or academic institution or government agency that would just hire someone for some high tech position based purely on their verbal assurance they are who they say they are along with the other particulars.
..drunk ..sounding ramble (sorry, if you were an American I'd call it sounding like a jingoistic dumbass redneck indulging in a little petty flaming, but you not being an american, and obviously quite cultured and refined and genteel and just oozing ultra pure freedom in all directions, you'll have to help this poor person here-me-with the appropriate sort of descriptive phrase (dumbass redneck and etc) translated into the European language of your origin, because I do not know the correct term for you to fit your European continentalality. All for sport and so on.
Anyway, to get back to your rant, if you can *prove* that no other nation in Europe doesn't run routine and extensive background checks on high tech scientific researchers,which I was guessing-"believing" they do, go for it, I'll check out your references. Overt and covert. You'll have to prove your bonafides here though, in public, that you have access to such information, for every nation in Europe, so your allusions can be verified. You must be extraordinarily high ranking to have access to such information, but you claim this is so, by refuting my guess, so let's see the proof. The difference is, I was *guessing*, you are stating/claiming because...no idea, your post is rather more or less just an anti American rant, but you seem to be inferring that because you are not an oppressed American, that somehow what I was guessing at just couldn't possibly be true or something. It's rather a
But.... to each their own. So go ahead, if you would be so kind as to prove your statements, or should I say *allusions by neglect*. If that is too hard..perhaps this from your post "Every single ESA project is automatically by definition an international project."..Well, besides "huh...so what?", foreign nationals are fully involved in a host of US high technology projects, so what does this mean or are you implying ALL the research is completely open in the ESA, anyone can look at it? Or what?? Everything done in the ESA sphere is unclassified and open because it isn't American, or...? Really? And none of the workers go through extensive background checks, because it is by definition an international project? Or what? Perhaps this what makes this just so hard for me to get, because a rambling non responsive rant that says nothing is by definition hard to understand. So, if you would clarify some please. Thanks.
Either way,if you can answer any of those questions or not,to help clear up matters more,feel free, and besides that, have a nice free life! I certainly do my best over here in American oppressed land!
Great oracle say "Those who study others may find themselves studied"
To quote an anonymous alien from A51 "Now they know what it feels like to be watched all the time"
How hard is it for you to grasp that I'm justifying why they don't work on those things? Of course they don't. Why would your government teach foreign nationals how to launch missiles? Just because you don't understand something doesn't mean the rest of the world is as stupid as you are.
I wouldn't want to get my hand sticky beating you.
never let a man put his dirty how-do-you-do into your bajingo