The sheer width and breadth of snooping that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has engaged in to monitor its employees’ communications is disturbing on several fronts.
A chronicled how the agency intercepted personal e-mails and followed messages as they were being drafted, line by line. In all, more than 80,000 pages of documents were amassed.
The idea was to track down suspected leaks of confidential information involving five scientists, but the effort was an exercise in overkill that is sure to make other potential government whistleblowers think twice before speaking up.
If we didn’t know better, we’d think we were witnessing something akin to the Soviet Union’s surveillance state.
Ultimately, the spy software the agency used captured information involving 21 FDA employees, members of Congress and their staffs, journalists and others who were allegedly involved in dispensing negative and defamatory information about the agency.
And in a Keystone Kops moment, the agency’s contractor posted the trove of documents on a public website — including confidential information involving the employees and the very sorts of trade secrets the FDA ostensibly was trying to protect.
What a mess.
The spy operation stems from ongoing frustrations the brass at the FDA had with a small group of its scientists.
The scientists claimed at the FDA were allowing medical imaging device designs to be approved even though the equipment was delivering dangerous levels of radiation to patients.
These scientists spoke up in an effort to protect the public. It’s important to keep in mind that the , which looked at the situation, determined there was enough concern to open a full investigation into the scientists’ claims.
Their right to speak up — their responsibility to do so as professionals — should not be inhibited.
However, we do allow as how confidential documents involving the design of imaging devices and proprietary information submitted by companies ought to be protected. Surely, there must be a middle ground.
And certainly there must be a better way for the FDA to safeguard such confidential information without casting a net so wide that it scooped up confidential legal documents belonging to the scientists and workplace grievances filed with the government.
The FDA has leeway to keep tabs on its employees, especially those dealing with sensitive information, but it must respect employee rights and ensure it is not ultimately creating more problems than it solves.
