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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.
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.
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.
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
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)
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?
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. . . .
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.
What?
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.
p/Just imagine that Simon guy saying, You call THAT data! Get out of here!"
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
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."
How long would it take the average person to realize that the scientists had all walked out, though?
It's not like Tang would disappear, or their car's GPS system would suddenly turn off. It's just that things wouldn't advance. Progress would grind to a halt, but it's not like the immediate "oh shit" effect you get, when the garbagemen don't show up on Monday morning.
Probably the first thing most people would know is when they get told to start learning Mandarin, because their company just got bought.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
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.
You mean this part of the charter?
"The Congress further declares that such activities shall be the responsibility of, and shall be directed by, a civilian agency exercising control over aeronautical and space activities sponsored by the United States, except that activities peculiar to or primarily associated with the development of weapons systems, military operations, or the defense of the United States (including the research and development necessary to make effective provision for the defense of the United States) shall be the responsibility of, and shall be directed by, the Department of Defense; and that determination as to which such agency has responsibility for and direction of any such activity shall be made by the President in conformity with section 2471(e)."
Because it sure sounds to me like they are separate entities, and that NASA is, by the definition of its charter, a civilian agency. That's not to say I necessarily disagree with the background checks, but your facts are wrong.
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!
TODO create witty sig.
First - if they want to look for terrorists they could as well do standard background checks and have a psychometric test applied at you. But these are no simple background checks. They want to have access to EVERYTHING about you, about your past girlfriends, your emotional problems, what's in your closet, what religion you have, etc. etc.
In other words, they want to do a mental cavity search on you and fire you if you don't seem adequate for them. Still don't get it? I'm talking about DISCRIMINATION.
And they're ALREADY discriminating the people who aren't brave enough to fight for their rights. They just want slaves who obey their ruler, not people with ideals to fight for.
And you wonder how Americans can really be concerned about this? Pfft.
You mean Government (or Current Administration) Security then, because the people (NASA workers or not) *ARE* the Nation. You can't secure the nation and at the same time destroy the lives of the very people you want to secure. If you can't balance Privacy with National Security, then you're effectively admitting that there are americans of second category with LESS rights than the rest (and here I thought that ALL MEN were CREATED EQUAL!)
P.S. As a measure of security - just in case you're someone paid by Bush, I'll add you to my foe list unless you allow me to do a complete and transparent background check of you, including e-mail, street address, past aliases and everything. Safe enough for ya?
...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.
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
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.
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.
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
"..Why do people apply for jobs at a organization, and yet have NO CLUE about who they are working for?.."
JPL is not NASA. Got that. If you work for JPL you are not a NASA emplyee.
The following is a quote from the JPL web site.
JPL is a NASA center staffed and managed for the government by a leading private university, Caltech -- and thus we are known as a federally funded research and development center. I believe that this marriage of the government and university worlds lends us a wonderful intellectual infusion to drive our exploration efforts. Caltech anchors us in the world of excellence and academic curiosity, while NASA gives us the opportunity to reach for the stars.
I don't know, it may have been earlier, but I do know that the first security checks (of people not involved in security work) at JPL were during the Reagan administration, and conveniently seemed to weed out those who had been active in the anti-Vietnam movement.
So, if you want a date, January 20, 1980 would probably do as a first approximation.
includes snooping into sexual orientation
;-)
What, did some scientists get suspiciously over-enthusiastic about the Uranus Penetrator Probe project?
Table-ized A.I.
And that's where you (and the government) are way wrong. Our rights are far more important than security because security only exists to protect our rights.
-- Will program for bandwidth
... 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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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 worked at JPL for 5 years.
1. They're not actually federal employees. They're employees of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), working at a federally-funded research and development center.
2. 3% of JPL employees do have security clearance. They do work on secretive stuff. The other 97% do not. They don't even work in the same "building" - the secret buildings have all sorts of extra security measures. Would you think it's reasonable if a large university like UCLA or Harvard required ALL employees to go through the proceduce to get security clearance, just because one lab in one building has some secrets? Cause that's basically what's being asked of JPL employees, most of whom work on entirely public research.
3. The worst part is that the employees are being required to go through the SAME background check that's required for security clearance, but then they're not even being given clearance! All they get is an ordinary badge that gets them in the front gate. All that, and you don't even get anything in return...except to keep the job you've been doing loyally for 20 years.
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