FDA Spied on Its Own Scientists as Part of a Massive Witch Hunt—Action Alert!
July 16, 2012
This
rogue agency secretly captured thousands of emails that its disgruntled
scientists sent to Congress, labor officials, journalists and even the
president.
The New York Times is reporting
that the US Food and Drug Administration conducted a wide-ranging
surveillance operation against a group of its own scientists in an
attempt to halt criticism of its medical review process. The agency also
had an “enemies list” of sorts that included agency employees,
congressional officials, outside medical researchers, and journalists
thought to be working together to disseminate negative and “defamatory”
information about the FDA.
The FDA used spy software that was
installed on the workers’ laptops that took screen captures, tracked
keystrokes, intercepted personal emails, and even copied documents that
were on their personal flash drives. The surveillance, according to the Times,
sprang out of a bitter dispute between the scientists and their FDA
supervisors over the scientists’ claims that faulty review procedures at
the agency led to the approval of some medical devices that had exposed
patients to dangerous levels of radiation.
FDA’s actions almost certainly
violated the law by seizing information that is specifically protected
under the law. Attorney-client communications, whistle-blower complaints
to Congress, and workplace grievances filed with the government are all
protected information. Six scientists are suing the agency over the
incident.
Some members of Congress were not
pleased by the revelations, particularly since scientists’ private
correspondence with Senate and House staff members was similarly
intercepted.
Congressional review of the FDA is
scant, and most representatives and senators really don’t know how
out-of-control this agency is, or how it acts as executive agency,
legislator, and judge, often running roughshod over the human rights we
take for granted in the US.
In May, Sen. Rand Paul introduced an amendment to control the FDA’s police powers. You may recall last year’s raid of a food co-op by the FDA,
in which armed teams were deployed with guns drawn, and law enforcement
ordered all co-op members out of the store, seizing all the cash in the
register, then handcuffing the co-op’s founder and placing him in an
unmarked car without reading him his rights. Sen. Paul’s amendment
would have prohibited FDA employees (as well as all other Health and
Human Services employees) from carrying weapons and making arrests
without warrants.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to be
arming bureaucrats to go on the farm, with arms, to stop people from
selling milk from a cow. I think we have too many armed federal
agencies, and that we need to put an end to this,” said Paul. “Criminal
law increasingly seems to be used as a tool of our government
bureaucracy to punish and control honest businessmen for simply
attempting to make a living.” Unfortunately, the amendment failed by a
vote of 78 to 15. We clearly have a lot of work to do to educate
Congress about what the FDA is doing.
The idea of a government spying on
its own people—on its own employees in order to silence them and end
dissent—is a profoundly scary one. The FDA’s budget
is about $2.5 billion, though when user fees are added, that increases
to $4.5 billion. A quasi-totalitarian agency that large, and one that is
controlling so much of our economy, cannot be allowed to act in blatant
disregard of the rights of its employees or the laws of the country.
Action Alert! Help us reform the FDA! Go to ReformFDA.org and sign our petition. Make your voice heard in Congress!
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NYT: FDA Engaged in Widespread Spying on Whistleblowers
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) engaged in widespread spying on its own scientists, a New York Times story exposes.
The
surveillance began over a group of scientists "claims that faulty
review procedures at the agency had led to the approval of medical
imaging devices for mammograms and colonoscopies that exposed patients
to dangerous levels of radiation," the Times reports.
The Times explains that the FDA used "spy software designed
to help employers monitor workers, captured screen images from the
government laptops of the five scientists as they were being used at
work or at home. The software tracked their keystrokes, intercepted
their personal e-mails, copied the documents on their personal thumb
drives and even followed their messages line by line as they were being
drafted, the documents show."
Stephen M. Kohn, the Executive Director of the National Whistleblower
Center and the lead attorney for the FDA whistleblowers, says that the
surveillance program described in the Times "was illegal. The story
demonstrated how government mangers used a covert spying program to
interfere with the ability of federal employees to lawfully report
significant threats to the public safety to Congress, law enforcement
officials and the American people. We hope that these public disclosures
will mark the beginning of the end of government spying on employees
who report misconduct to the appropriate authorities."
"It is well established that American citizens do not forgo their
First or Fourth Amendment Constitutional rights when they work for the
government. The opposite is true. The U.S. Supreme Court and numerous
lower courts have recognized the importance of protecting government
workers who expose wrongdoing. These protections are vital to a
democratic society. Government whistleblowers are often the most
important source of information exposing government misconduct,
corruption and the waste of taxpayer money."
"The conduct by FDA managers, designed to undermine a group of
doctors and scientists who reported significant health and safety
violations, is deplorable. Those involved must be held accountable,"
stated Kohn.
Source: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/07/15-1
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