FDA isn’t the only agency snooping in e-mail

With the Food and Drug Administration’s surveillance of its staff, perhaps “FDA” should stand for the Federal Detective Administration.

Actually, that could be an umbrella agency charged with coordinating all government programs that spy on federal employees. It would be an agency with a list of operations longer than many people realize.

Joe Davidson

Joe Davidson writes the Federal Diary, a column about the federal workplace that celebrated its 80th birthday in November 2012. Davidson previously was an assistant city editor at The Washington Post and a Washington and foreign correspondent with The Wall Street Journal, where he covered federal agencies and political campaigns.

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At the moment, the real FDA is at the top of the list because of disclosures this week about the extent of its internal monitoring of some agency workers. “Spying on these employees was explicitly authorized, in writing, by the General Counsel’s Office,” Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said in a letter to the FDA, as my Washington Post colleagues Ellen Nakashima and Lisa Rein reported Tuesday.

That spying involved what the New York Times called “an enemies list of sorts,” which included tracking employee e-mails to congressional staff and journalists. An FDA statement said the agency “did not impede or interfere with any employee communication to members of Congress, their staff, or the press or with any Congressional investigation.”

Among other things, documents released by the Times indicate the
e-mail surveillance noted “multiple Gmail contacts” with a member of Rep. Chris Van Hollen’s (D-Md.) staff. “The tactics reportedly used by the FDA send a terrible message to those who are prepared to expose waste, abuse or wrongdoing in government agencies,” he said in a Monday letter to Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.

On Tuesday, FDA Commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg sent an e-mail (no word on whether her keystrokes were recorded) to all employees to “reiterate the FDA’s commitment to protecting the rights of whistleblowers who are doing a service by bringing public safety concerns to the forefront.” She also noted the agency’s responsibility to protect confidential information. The monitoring was “limited to the government-owned computers” of five employees, Hamburg said, and the intent “was to determine whether confidential commercial information had been inappropriately released.”

Although the FDA is getting the ink now, it is not alone as it spies on its employees.

In June, members of Congress complained that the Transportation Security Administration was soliciting software similar to the kind the FDA used on employees. The software that TSA wanted would be able to monitor employee computer keystrokes, chats,
e-mails, Web site viewing and other activities, according to Democratic Reps. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi and Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas.

TSA wants software that employees cannot detect or disable, said the letter to TSA Administrator John Pistole.

“It would seem that installation of the type of technology sought in the solicitation would enable TSA to monitor employee communications with the OSC (Office of Special Counsel), the Department’s Office of Inspector General and the Congress of the United States,” the letter said. “It is difficult to see how this serious infringement of Constitutionally protected rights would provide a concomitant increase in the nation’s security.”