Inquisition
One of the most remarkable and satisfying successes in the last ten years has been the Mars Rover project run out of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Flintridge/La Canada, California. Two little robots designed to work for 90 days scuttling across the Mars landscape are still operating four years later, taking pictures and collecting samples. The remarkable part is that those rovers were designed and are being "driven" by scientists and engineers back here on earth. NASA should be proud of the work done by the hard-working folks at JPL. Instead, NASA is busy hounding them. From Tim Rutten's op-ed column in today's Los Angeles Times:
The problem began -- as so many have -- in the security mania that gripped the Bush administration after 9/11. Presidential Directive No. 12, issued by the Department of Homeland Security, directed federal agencies to adopt a uniform badge that could be used by employees and contractors to gain access to government facilities. Most agencies let the directive become a dead letter, too complex and expensive to implement.
NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, however, is one of the Bush administration's true believers, and his first reflex always is a crisp salute. He directed Caltech, which has a contract to run JPL for NASA, to make sure all of the lab's employees complied. The university initially resisted, then caved when NASA threatened to withdraw its contract. Worse, the government demanded that the scientists, in order to get the badges, fill out questionnaires on their personal lives and waive the privacy of their financial, medical and psychiatric records. The government also wanted permission to gather information about them by interviewing third parties.
In other words, as the price of keeping their jobs, many of America's finest space scientists were being asked to give the feds virtually blanket permission to snoop and spy and collect even malicious gossip about them from God knows who.
Investigators wanted license to seek information as to whether "there is any reason to question [applicants'] honesty or trustworthiness." At one point, JPL's internal website posted an "issue characterization chart" -- since taken down -- that indicated the snoops would be looking for "patterns of irresponsible behavior as reflected in credit history ... sodomy ... incest ... abusive language ... unlawful assembly ... homosexuality." (We'll leave it to others to explain a standard that links incest with unlawful assembly.) ... [Emphasis added]
Why on earth would NASA be so concerned with the private lives of the scientists at JPL? After all, less than 10% of the work done at the relatively small lab is classified. Well, Mr. Rutten and the scientists at JPL have a pretty good idea what's behind this witch-hunt.
Many at the lab believe that there's more than governmental overreaching at work here. They point out that Griffin is one of those who remain skeptical that human actions contribute to global warming, and that some of JPL's near-Earth science has played a critical role in establishing the empirical case to the contrary. They see the background checks as the first step toward establishing a system of intimidation that might be used to silence inconvenient science. [Emphasis added]
Inconvenient science: now there's a nasty phrase, but an apt one. There are still people who don't want the rest of the world to know that the sun doesn't actually revolve around the earth, and many of them have been hired by the Bush administration.
One year and three days to go.
The problem began -- as so many have -- in the security mania that gripped the Bush administration after 9/11. Presidential Directive No. 12, issued by the Department of Homeland Security, directed federal agencies to adopt a uniform badge that could be used by employees and contractors to gain access to government facilities. Most agencies let the directive become a dead letter, too complex and expensive to implement.
NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, however, is one of the Bush administration's true believers, and his first reflex always is a crisp salute. He directed Caltech, which has a contract to run JPL for NASA, to make sure all of the lab's employees complied. The university initially resisted, then caved when NASA threatened to withdraw its contract. Worse, the government demanded that the scientists, in order to get the badges, fill out questionnaires on their personal lives and waive the privacy of their financial, medical and psychiatric records. The government also wanted permission to gather information about them by interviewing third parties.
In other words, as the price of keeping their jobs, many of America's finest space scientists were being asked to give the feds virtually blanket permission to snoop and spy and collect even malicious gossip about them from God knows who.
Investigators wanted license to seek information as to whether "there is any reason to question [applicants'] honesty or trustworthiness." At one point, JPL's internal website posted an "issue characterization chart" -- since taken down -- that indicated the snoops would be looking for "patterns of irresponsible behavior as reflected in credit history ... sodomy ... incest ... abusive language ... unlawful assembly ... homosexuality." (We'll leave it to others to explain a standard that links incest with unlawful assembly.) ... [Emphasis added]
Why on earth would NASA be so concerned with the private lives of the scientists at JPL? After all, less than 10% of the work done at the relatively small lab is classified. Well, Mr. Rutten and the scientists at JPL have a pretty good idea what's behind this witch-hunt.
Many at the lab believe that there's more than governmental overreaching at work here. They point out that Griffin is one of those who remain skeptical that human actions contribute to global warming, and that some of JPL's near-Earth science has played a critical role in establishing the empirical case to the contrary. They see the background checks as the first step toward establishing a system of intimidation that might be used to silence inconvenient science. [Emphasis added]
Inconvenient science: now there's a nasty phrase, but an apt one. There are still people who don't want the rest of the world to know that the sun doesn't actually revolve around the earth, and many of them have been hired by the Bush administration.
One year and three days to go.
posted by Diane at 3:55 AM
3 Comments:
Oh good grief. What did we Americans ever do to deserve this bunch? Stupid question. Never mind.
"Inconvenient science."
Yep. That's the ticket. Right up there with "inconvenient Constitutional law."
Nicely written. Some additional background. With respect to knowledge of the geosciences the US tests something like 48th out of 50 of industrial countries. The JPL folks represent a more fundamental threat. They are the one's who don't believe that the cosmos started in October in 4004 BCE! I was presenting some google earth material to a class of Christian Schoolers at a local science museum and was told I could not mentioned anything (anything!) about plate tectonics, evolution, the age of the earth, the age of anything (oceanic circulation, minerals, oil fields, gas fields, etc), that might "concern" the teachers. Connect the dots here to the national level and the JPL action is typical. This is a very major and long running problem for the US.
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