NASA Lab Workers Decry New Security Checks
JUL 07, 2007
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.021264
Science : A 2004 directive issued by President George W. Bush to improve security at federal facilities, requires workers to provide their fingerprints and give the government permission to collect information about their past from “schools, residential management agents, employers, criminal justice agencies, retail business establishments, or other sources of information.” Federal workers have been required to do this for years; the president’s directive extends the requirement to contractors working at federal facilities such as the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
“If you do not want to surrender the information to allow your background to be checked ⦠then you cannot work within the federal system,” NASA administrator Michael Griffin told JPL employees during a 4 June visit.
That message hasn’t gone down well among some JPL employees. “Signing this form amounts to inviting the government to go on an open fishing expedition,” says planetary scientist Robert Nelson.
© 2007 American Institute of Physics
