Whistle-blowing Scientists (Trying To Prevent Dangerous Products From Reaching The Market) Sue FDA For Snooping On Their Personal Email Accounts
from the shameful-suppression dept
Last year, we wrote about the federal whistle-blowing act, which was designed to give protections to federal employees who blow the whistle on federal fraud and abuse. For reasons that still aren't clear, that bill was killed by a secret hold by either Senators Jon Kyl or Jeff Sessions. That fact only came out due to an amazing effort by the folks at On The Media, who kept hounding all 100 Senators to find out who would possibly kill such a bill. Recently, On The Media revisited the topic, noting that there was a new version of the bill. The report also talks about just how vindictive the government has been against whistleblowers. Even as President Obama has insisted that whistleblowers are important and should be protected, that's not what's happening in real life, with many getting stripped of their responsibility and demoted -- all for daring to point out waste, fraud and abuse. The worst example to date, remains the horrifying story of Thomas Drake, who was threatened with 35 years in jail in a bogus vindictive lawsuit against him, due to his blowing the whistle on a bogus NSA project.More evidence of the insane lengths the federal government will go to against whistleblowers has been revealed in the form of a lawsuit from a group of FDA scientists and doctors. The group had been trying to blow the whistle on fraud and abuse in the FDA, in the form of approvals for medical devices that didn't actually meet health and safety standards. The scientists reached out to Congress to blow the whistle... and in response, the FDA started spying on their personal emails. Yes, it does appear that these scientists were accessing their personal Gmail accounts from work computers, and using them to work with Congressional staffers to craft their whistleblowing complaint, but does that give the FDA the right to spy on their personal communications? The doctors, via their lawsuit, believe the answer is no.
The FDA is defending its actions by claiming that this whistleblowing involved "improperly disclosed confidential business information about the devices," and it wanted an investigation of the doctors involved. That sounds ridiculous. Or, perhaps, all too typical. It seems clear that the FDA bosses just didn't like the fact that some folks there blew the whistle on what they were doing and took vindictive actions. This is exactly the kind of thing that a Whistle Blower Act should protect. That it doesn't do so already is really a shame.
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Filed Under: email, fda, free speech, privacy, safety, whistleblowing
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As a former network admin I had to deal with this fine line quite a bit, but I also believe there is a fair amount of precedent stating that the company owns the network and thus can 'snoop' on any traffic on that network.
Additionally it would be good to get a look at the employee policy manual. Many companies explicitly state that employees have not expectation of privacy while using company computers/networks. Maybe that won't stand up in court, but that alone could thwart them.
I support what these whistle-blowers are doing, but they should have used their personal computers/mobile devices, not work computers.
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Every company I worked at had these policies, though few ever acted upon them (at least not that I am aware).
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Since the organization owns/administers the local workstations, this isn't considered a broken chain of trust. The ethics of what is done with that information are an entirely different matter, and here there be dragons.
Are employees specifically aware of this capability? (I would suggest the standard "we can monitor anything" message is insufficient given the expectation that https connections are encrypted and reasonably secure.) Are exceptions made for banking sites and such? If not, how will the information gathered be secured? Tons of other issues are raised to the point that some organizations find it easier to just block https and be done with it.
If the organization somehow obtained and was using the employee's gmail password without the employee's knowledge, that violates plenty of laws, and any organization taking that approach could (rightly) be in deep doo-doo.
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How they did it
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Many, if not most, government agencies outlaw or discourage the use of personal laptops while at the government facilities. Smartphones are prohibited in any sensitive areas as well. There are some facilities where employees are told to leave their smartphones and other personal devices in their cars.
Then again, the warning banner specifically says that they can monitor everything done on their systems. Best bet would be to drive your car outside of the fence and use your smartphone there, or use your laptop/desktop at home.
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The problem may not be snooping on the network, but rather a keylogger or screen scraper installed on their work computer. If that's the case, then a VPN wouldn't help anyway.
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Company Time
Email, Facebook, forums, browsing habits... all that's going through corporate networks and firewalls. Doing anything "secret" at work just sounds like they're trying to get caught.
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Whistleblower
"improperly disclosed confidential business information about the devices,"
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So whistleblowing is fine, as long as you only use publicly available information to do it?
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well
Because as you clear corruption from lower levels, people are free to start whistleblowing on higher lvl massive (and slightly illegal) payments that businesses have been paying for years to ensure they get government contracts......
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So, doctors who try to prevent illness (which should be all of them) are now considered a liability by the current medical system? I guess that makes sense, from an amoral pill-pusher's point of view.
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http://www.cjfe.org/resources/features/dr-shiv-chopra-dr-margaret-haydon-and-dr-g%C3%A9ra rd-lambert-2011-integrity-award
They were ultimately dismissed for insubordination.
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