A federal appeals court has barred the Bush administration from looking into the personal lives of NASA scientists and engineers who have no access to classified information, saying the probes are intrusive and unrelated to national security.
The planned inquiry into the employees’ backgrounds, finances, alcohol and drug use, mental state and unspecified additional issues amounted to a “broad inquisition” with “absolutely no safeguards” that would limit disclosures to topics that are important to the government, said the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
The ruling came in a lawsuit filed by 28 scientists and engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, who were about to be fired in October for refusing to submit to the background checks when another panel of the court issued an emergency order.
The employees “face a stark choice – either violation of their constitutional rights or loss of their jobs,” Judge Kim Wardlaw said in Friday’s 3-0 ruling…
To keep their jobs, employees at the agencies are required to authorize the government to seek information about them from any source, including former employers, landlords, schools and acquaintances. The sources can be asked if they have any negative information about an employee’s work, truthfulness, finances, alcohol or drug use, emotional stability, overall behavior or “other matters,” the court said.
You have to be really careful about those “other matters”.
Bertolucci rules!
And the schmucks who want to oversee every jot of your personal life – can take it and stick it.
Even if the scientists who are fighting this intrusion into their private lives win, they will probably see their careers dead end in retaliation. It sucks to work for the government. That’s why I quit the Air force 18 years ago.
Don
Other matters: Are you religious? Do you think evolution is true? How do you feel about the coming Apocalypse? Or the false science of Global Warming?
Other matters = Voted for the wrong party?
Even the dittoclones have to admit this — the Bush administration is just plain creepy.
No, the dittoheads will simply say that the Bush regime (oops, administration) is simply looking out for national security and that they have a right to look into every aspect of their employees (which of course they don’t).
This is easy to overcome. Just require everyone at NASA to have a security clearance.
This is now the standard of applying for any job. Public or private sector. You either give them carte blanch to check out your whole life or forget it.
Yea, it happens when you try to get an apartment too. I don’t see how the court decision stands outlawing this background check, unless Congress has passed specific civil service laws controlling this. As it is, the workers are on contract with the government, and actually work for Caltech.
The issue remains that this wasn’t a condition of employment when they signed their employment contracts.
Once again, the much-abused Ninth Circuit demonstrates that they are not loyal lapdogs of W&Co.
The only way to stamp out this illegal behavior by government officials is to strictly limit or eliminate sovereign immunity and punish the people responsible for violating the employees constitutional rights. If the government bureaucrats see themselves looking at serious jail time, fines or both they may think twice about what the do.
After all if sovereign immunity doesn’t apply to soldier fighting a war why should it apply to a government bureaucrat violating someones constitutional rights, in this case the 4th amendment. If the constitution is the highest law of the the land shouldn’t it be protected with the harshest punishments for violating it?
Similar to what Ham Radio Operaters faced when trying to Voluteer with the Red Cross:
http://www.arrl.org/announce/ARRL-ARC-bg-check.html
Remember, the Red Cross is a FRONT ORGANIZATIONS FOR THE REPUKE MAFIA AND DISCRIMINATES AGAINST THE POOR !!! Just ask anyone in New Orleans !!!