Whistle-blowing Scientists (Trying To Prevent Dangerous Products From Reaching The Market) Sue FDA For Snooping On Their Personal Email Accounts

Privacy

from the shameful-suppression dept

Last year, we wrote about the federal whistle-blowing act, which was designed to give protections to federal employees who blow the whistle on federal fraud and abuse. For reasons that still aren’t clear, that bill was killed by a secret hold by either Senators Jon Kyl or Jeff Sessions. That fact only came out due to an amazing effort by the folks at On The Media, who kept hounding all 100 Senators to find out who would possibly kill such a bill. Recently, On The Media revisited the topic, noting that there was a new version of the bill. The report also talks about just how vindictive the government has been against whistleblowers. Even as President Obama has insisted that whistleblowers are important and should be protected, that’s not what’s happening in real life, with many getting stripped of their responsibility and demoted — all for daring to point out waste, fraud and abuse. The worst example to date, remains the horrifying story of Thomas Drake, who was threatened with 35 years in jail in a bogus vindictive lawsuit against him, due to his blowing the whistle on a bogus NSA project.

More evidence of the insane lengths the federal government will go to against whistleblowers has been revealed in the form of a lawsuit from a group of FDA scientists and doctors. The group had been trying to blow the whistle on fraud and abuse in the FDA, in the form of approvals for medical devices that didn’t actually meet health and safety standards. The scientists reached out to Congress to blow the whistle… and in response, the FDA started spying on their personal emails. Yes, it does appear that these scientists were accessing their personal Gmail accounts from work computers, and using them to work with Congressional staffers to craft their whistleblowing complaint, but does that give the FDA the right to spy on their personal communications? The doctors, via their lawsuit, believe the answer is no.

The FDA is defending its actions by claiming that this whistleblowing involved “improperly disclosed confidential business information about the devices,” and it wanted an investigation of the doctors involved. That sounds ridiculous. Or, perhaps, all too typical. It seems clear that the FDA bosses just didn’t like the fact that some folks there blew the whistle on what they were doing and took vindictive actions. This is exactly the kind of thing that a Whistle Blower Act should protect. That it doesn’t do so already is really a shame.

Filed Under: email, fda, free speech, privacy, safety, whistleblowing