Crazy 9th Circuit Court Blocks JPL Secuity Efforts

I can't resist, one more security article. I've been giving the government and military officials a hard time lately for all the security problems they have been having. And just when I thought government I.T. security was nonexistent, up pops a company trying to do the right think and running into opposition from our own government.

Reported by Jason Song, of Los Angeles Times in his article, Court bars new background checks for JPL workers. Jason reports:

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday issued a temporary injunction blocking a federal government directive that would require new background checks for employees at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

A group of 28 JPL scientists to stop the investigations, which they said amounted to a blank check for the federal government to look into such areas as their sexual orientation and consumer histories.

The employees had been facing the potential loss of their jobs unless they met a Friday deadline to comply with the directive by filling out questionnaires and signing a waiver allowing the investigations.

A U.S. District Court had upheld the background checks Wednesday.

"This ruling shows we're not going to let hysterical fear and innuendo undermine the Constitution," said attorney Dan Stormer, who represented the JPL scientists.

Calls made to JPL's La Cañada Flintridge offices were not returned Friday. But NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said in June that the background checks were part of a post-Sept. 11 security update and that the agency was intent on carrying them out.

In its order, the 9th Circuit judges wrote that they had not had time to review all of the case material but noted that the JPL employees had raised serious legal and constitutional issues and showed the "probability of irreparable harm."

JPL has tried to do the right thing, in requiring background checks for all their workers. After all this is the Nation's Jet Propulsion Lab not the neighborhood McDonalds, JPL workers deal on a day to day basis with some of the nation's most sensitive secrets. How could even the nations most liberal Federal Circuit Court block JPL's efforts to check the backgrounds of their employees.

Los Alamos could have learned a thing or two from JPL on this point when they endangered the nations Nuclear secrets when they didn't check the background of some of their employees closely enough.

Sphere: Related Content