inconvenient science

As a sad comment on the state of my life, the acronym HSPD-12 actually means something to me. As a sad comment on the state of the world, it means a great deal more to a bunch of folks working out at NASA JPL.

A good chunk of this brought to you by the Los Angeles Times opinion piece by Tim Rutten.

After 9/11, the Bush administration engaged in a great deal of Security Kabuki. A great many bad decisions were made which shunted giant piles of money into the hands of countless contractors and NGO's to do things that might be simultaneously nice examples of how not to do security as well as an endangerment of our basic freedoms and liberties. This is the usual corporate welfare that we all know and love.

One thing which transpired was the passing of HSPD-12 (Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12) which was supposed to standardize the badging process for all employees and contractors of the federal government. Boring. Or so you would think.

Most agencies (including the one that I work for) more or less ignored the directive, which made me quite happy since it looked like a real pain in the ass. Unfortunately NASA Administrator Michael Griffin directed Caltech (who holds the contract to run JPL for NASA) to make sure that all of it's employees were in compliance. Such a word never holds well for anything...

Form 'SF85' and 'SF85P' were send out. Not signing them meant terminating your employment. Signing them allowed:

• That the release form on the SF85 or SF85P authorizes an investigator to obtain "any information" on you from schools, residences, employers, criminal establishments, and any other sources, and that the investigation is explicitly "not limited"?
• That each of the neighbors, supervisors, and references you are required to provide will be sent a questionnaire asking about your "mental or emotional stability," "financial integrity," and "abuse of alcohol and/or drugs," among other things?
• That SF85 remains in effect for two years, whether or not you stay at JPL? In other words, federal agents can use your SF85 release as permission to investigate you for two full years, even if you are no longer affiliated with a federal agency
• That the new rules prevent JPL from issuing retiree badges?
• That the official SF85 and SF85p forms describe the process as "voluntary," but that jpl will terminate your employment if you don't fill it out?

In addition:

Investigators wanted license to seek information as to whether "there is any reason to question [applicants'] honesty or trustworthiness." At one point, JPL's internal website posted an "issue characterization chart" -- since taken down -- that indicated the snoops would be looking for "patterns of irresponsible behavior as reflected in credit history ... sodomy ... incest ... abusive language ... unlawful assembly ... homosexuality." (We'll leave it to others to explain a standard that links incest with unlawful assembly.)

A copy of the "issue characterization chart" can be found here. This is some really sad shit. I can go on and on about of freaky it is that the right wingers are all control freaks obsessed about everybody else's sex lives, but I will not. I prefer to look at this as blackmail pure and simple. Why would I think such a thing?

Many at the lab believe that there's more than governmental overreaching at work here. They point out that Griffin is one of those who remain skeptical that human actions contribute to global warming, and that some of JPL's near-Earth science has played a critical role in establishing the empirical case to the contrary. They see the background checks as the first step toward establishing a system of intimidation that might be used to silence inconvenient science.

Inconvenient science. Really says it all.