The FDA used its sophisticated network monitoring tools to reconstruct emails and documents sent via an external unauthorized email account, and ultimately the scientists who were bypassing FDA content filters were fired. Now they are suing the FDA for “spying on them” and doing so “secretly” despite the fact they see this every time they boot their FDA workstation:

(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.

From the WaPo here:

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.

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.

Scientists who violate an obvious monitoring policy really have no legitimate complaint. Don’t want to be monitored? Use an SSH tunnel- at least until you get caught doing that too.


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