This issue is a left over from the Bush Administration. George Bush issued a presidential directive called Homeland Security Presidential Directive #12 (HSPD12) whose stated intent was to create a more uniform ID system to allow Federal employees to access Federal facilities. Note, and this is critical and often ignored, the employees in question are NOT engaged in ANY secret or sensitive work nor have access to places within Federal facilities where such work occurs. These are just average employees, students, academics and contractors engaged in NON-secret, NON-sensitive work. There is nothing wrong with Bush's original directive. Where it all went wrong is how the Bush Administration chose to implement it. This was at the peak of the Republican culture of fear and surveillance, so Bush's crew decided to implement the process in the most intrusive way possible. My wife and her fellow NASA scientists and various NASA facilities, including JPL, were presented with a form that in effect asked them to sign away their right to privacy, giving the government permission to investigate ANYTHING and EVERYTHING about them including their medical history and personal life. I would assume people on the left and right would agree that this is an excessively intrusive, not to mention costly, way to treat employees who have no contact with sensitive or secret matters. The implementation led to objections, and in some cases lawsuits, within places like the Department of Education, Bureau of Land Management, and NASA. The lawsuit with perhaps the most widespread impact is JPL Employees vs. NASA, Department of Commerce, and Caltech. This case pits some of America's top scientists and engineers against the US government bureaucracy in defense of the basic right to privacy in America.

I have covered this case almost from the beginning, since my wife brought it to my attention with a stack of printed out emails from NASA scientists discussing this. You can read the details in the following articles:

My Wife Faces Homeland Security Part I: Homeland Security Presidential Directive #12

My Wife Faces Homeland Security Part II: The Suitability Matrix

My Wife Faces Homeland Security Part III: The Resignation Letter

And the most recent info on the case, where it headed for the Supreme Court, can be found here.

And it is in the Supreme Court that the US Attorney General's office gets it wrong, essentially making a major error in how facilities like JPL function. This comes from the JPL scientists who are fighting the case:  read more »

In 2007 I came home from a long day at work followed by the Friday Happy Hour at my place of work. I was very tired and a tad tipsy. My wife greets me with a huge stack of printouts and tells me "You have to blog about this."

She never asks me to blog anything, so I knew it was big, but I was not ready to face anything that would take so much brain power. I said I'd look at it later, but my wife wouldn't let me brush it aside. I started reading...and knew if I could get permission to quote what I was holding I'd have an extremely important story. My wife handed me printouts of extensive email discussions among NASA scientists who were facing violations to their Constitutional Rights by Homeland Security, specifically Homeland Security Presidential Directive #12 (HSPD12). The discussion was mainly at the Jet Propulsion Lab in California but the Civil Rights violations were starting to be implemented at my wife's place of work, the Goddard Insitute of Space Sciences (GISS) in NYC.  read more »

Many of you will remember by blogging about my wife's potential run in with Homeland Security. This took the form of a NASA-wide, potentially Federal government-wide, ID system that would have been unacceptably intrusive. I discussed this in a widely read, three part blog that covered Homeland Security Presidential Directive #12, the very intrusive and potentially anti-gay Suitability Matrix, and a Resignation Letter. I also did a few followups on the court challenges to Homeland Security. The whole series was a testament to just what was wrong with Republican Bush America and why we so desperately needed a change.

Well, it seems the threat has been stopped in the Ninth Circuit Court. This comes from the plaintiffs in the case against Homeland Security's intrusive tactics:  read more »

The saga of government intrusion into the private lives of government workers continues. Congress is now taking up the issue of Homeland Security Presidential Directive #12, a directive intended to, quite reasonably, standardize ID cards in government facilities to include contractors and students.  read more »

Today an appeals court in California handed a bunch of NASA scientists a victory that is a victory for the civil liberties of all Federal employees and contractors. At stake was the privacy of all NASA scientists and contractors and potentially all Federal employees and contractors. It all stems from a reasonable attempt by Homeland Security to standardize the procedure for obtaining ID cards that allow access to Federal facilities (Homeland Security Presidential Directive #12). The method of implementation required even low-risk employees and contractors (including my wife, a grad student studying climate) to sign a blanket waiver giving the Federal government permission to investigate all aspects of a person's private life, including finiancial and medical records, or risk losing the right to enter their place of employment with the government.  read more »