HOMELAND SECURITY:
NASA Lab Workers Decry New Security Checks
Yudhijit Bhattacharjee
Tightening up. Jet Propulsion Laboratory employees will soon need new identification badges to work there.
CREDIT: COURTESY NASA/JPL-CALTECH |
Aerospace engineer Dennis Byrnes prefers the open work environment at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, to a former job with a defense contractor that required a high-level security clearance. But a new rule requiring federal contractors to undergo an extensive background check before receiving an identification badge has given Byrnes an uncomfortable sense of déjà vu. "I came to JPL to get away from the culture of secrecy," he says. "Now I feel like I'm back in it."
The new rule, which stems from 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.
JPL is managed by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, but its infrastructure is owned by NASA--unlike many Department of Energy labs, which are owned by their contractors. "All of our property is federal property, and the president's directive says individuals working on federal property must undergo the same background checks that have been required of civil servants," says Veronica McGregor, a JPL spokesperson. Under that interpretation, most of the lab's 11,000 workers are affected, and NASA administrator Michael Griffin has made it clear that they have no choice. "If you do not want to surrender the information to allow your background to be checked … then you cannot work within the federal system," 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. One employee of 39 years, technical writer Susan Foster, submitted her resignation after learning of the new policy this spring. Rumblings of protest have also arisen at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, which has a large number of contractors.
Nelson and three JPL colleagues have complained to two former physicists now in Congress, Representatives Vernon Ehlers (R-MI) and Rush Holt (D-NJ), that the new requirement could hurt the federal government's ability to hire the "very best scientific and engineering talent to address our nation's complex technical needs." Holt says the directive is being implemented in a way that undermines "the open and free environment" required for doing science. "There is a real possibility that this rule will discourage scientists from working with the federal government," adds an aide of Holt's. On 21 May, Holt wrote to the Commerce Department, which developed a common standard for the new identification badges, asking the agency to rethink how the directive should be implemented. Commerce has yet to respond.
JPL's McGregor says anyone who objects to the policy "should work that through the court system." Byrnes and his colleagues say they are ready to hire a lawyer and sue the government. Meanwhile, JPL officials expect every employee to have new IDs before the 27 October deadline.
