Related article:
– FDA hacked into private Gmail accounts of its own whistleblower scientist using covert spy technology (Natural News, Jan. 31, 2012):
The criminal tendencies of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration were on full display today when it was revealed the agency installed spy software and illegally hacked into the private Gmail accounts of at least half a dozen of its own top scientists. Those scientists, it turns out, were the very same whistleblowers who warned Congress about the FDA’s approval of dangerous medical devices that threatened the lives of patients. In response to them taking action to protect the lives of the innocent — something the FDA is supposed to do but has long since abandoned — they were instead subjected to illegal hacking and having their employment contracts with the FDA terminated.
Those six scientists and doctors have now filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court which claims that they were subjected to FDA internal harassment and unjustified job termination. The lawsuit also describes how the FDA hacked into the private email accounts of these scientists, then intercepted their “whistleblower complaints” intended to be seen only by members of Congress.
“The complaint details how the FDA targeted its employees with a covert spying campaign that lasted for two years,” reports Whistleblowers.org (http://www.whistleblowers.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&…). “The [FDA] installed (or activated) spyware on their workplace computers and used other technology that to monitor their password-protected Gmail-to-Gmail communications. Managers used the collected information to learn the identities of confidential whistleblowers and to obtain the details of the public health and safety concerns the whistleblowers intended to disclose to the Office of Special Counsel, Congress and the Agency’s own Inspector General.”
More importantly, documents reveal that the FDA’s own lawyers engaged in a criminal cover-up of evidence in order to obstruct justice and retaliate against the FDA scientists:
“The managers who spearheaded the surveillance efforts were the same managers involved with the wrongdoing and corruption that the whistleblowers were seeking to report. Lawyers at the FDA and HHS Offices of General Counsel, who should have understood that the program breached the employees’ confidentiality, helped FDA managers with their obstruction and retaliation.”
Take action to support the whistleblowers
The National Whistleblowers Center has issued an action alert seeking public support for the FDA whistleblowers. You can use the tools on the page linked below to contact your members of Congress and other recipients in Washington:
http://www.whistleblowers.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&…View the FDA spy program documents
Some of the documents in question have been published by the Washington Post, which you can view by clicking here.
WhistleBlowers.org has also published many of the documents intercepted by the FDA as it hacked into the private email accounts of its own scientists. These include:
• Communications to Congress
• Gmail-to-Gmail Communications
• Screen ShotsView all these documents at:
www.whistleblowers.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1332Whistleblowers.org also released a special news bulletin about the entire story, viewable at:
http://www.whistleblowers.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&…