teacherone
01-30-2012, 01:29 PM
FDA staffers sue agency over surveillance of personal e-mail
The Food and Drug Administration secretly monitored the personal e-mail of a group of its own scientists and doctors after they warned Congress that the agency was approving medical devices that they believed posed unacceptable risks to patients, government documents show.
The surveillance — detailed in e-mails and memos unearthed by six of the scientists and doctors, who filed a lawsuit against the FDA in U.S. District Court in Washington last week — took place over two years as the plaintiffs accessed their personal Gmail accounts from government computers.
(FDA) - The startup screen on FDA computers warns employees, “you have no reasonable expectation of privacy,” including any communication accessed or sent from the machine. This specific message has appeared since at least December 2010. The screenshot and other materials were compiled by Kohn, Kohn and Colapinto, the law firm representing the whistleblowers, on behalf of the National Whistleblower Center, as part of the lawsuit against the agency.
Information garnered this way eventually contributed to the harassment or dismissal of all six of the FDA employees, the suit alleges. All had worked in an office responsible for reviewing devices for cancer screening and other purposes.[/h]
but what will we ever do without them?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fda-staffers-sue-agency-over-surveillance-of-personal-e-mail/2012/01/23/gIQAj34DbQ_story.html
The Food and Drug Administration secretly monitored the personal e-mail of a group of its own scientists and doctors after they warned Congress that the agency was approving medical devices that they believed posed unacceptable risks to patients, government documents show.
The surveillance — detailed in e-mails and memos unearthed by six of the scientists and doctors, who filed a lawsuit against the FDA in U.S. District Court in Washington last week — took place over two years as the plaintiffs accessed their personal Gmail accounts from government computers.
(FDA) - The startup screen on FDA computers warns employees, “you have no reasonable expectation of privacy,” including any communication accessed or sent from the machine. This specific message has appeared since at least December 2010. The screenshot and other materials were compiled by Kohn, Kohn and Colapinto, the law firm representing the whistleblowers, on behalf of the National Whistleblower Center, as part of the lawsuit against the agency.
Information garnered this way eventually contributed to the harassment or dismissal of all six of the FDA employees, the suit alleges. All had worked in an office responsible for reviewing devices for cancer screening and other purposes.[/h]
but what will we ever do without them?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fda-staffers-sue-agency-over-surveillance-of-personal-e-mail/2012/01/23/gIQAj34DbQ_story.html