Security at JPL
I go to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena two or three times a year these days, though in the past it has been as often as 6-8 trips per year. JPL runs the Cassini mission to Saturn, and twice a year the Project Science Group (PSG) meeting takes place at JPL. The PSG is the forum for the exchange of information between scientists and engineers and project managers running the mission. Here is where we discuss things such as the shape of the extended mission, the priorities for spacecraft resources, the prioritization of observations, and the resolution of difficult conflicts on how to run the mission. Because Cassini is an international mission, there is a signficant fraction of the PSG membership that are not U.S. citizens. JPL is run by the California Institute of Technology (CalTech), one of the premier universities for science and engineering. This makes it technically a university environment, but it has a special arrangement with NASA that makes it almost like a NASA center. As such, new requirements from the Department of Homeland Security are being imposed on everyone who works at JPL (roughly five thousand employees) as well as contractors and regular visitors (such as myself) who want to keep their badges that allow access to the lab without going through a cumbersome admission procedure and being escorted around the lab by someone who certainly has much better things to do. These security restrictions, among others, are gradually building an iron curtain around American academia and threatening to isolate the U.S. and stifle scientific collaboration across borders.
A group of JPL employees has filed a lawsuit against NASA and CalTech because the new requirements for a badge require employees to forfeit essentially all rights to privacy. Since I’m not a JPL employee I don’t think I have grounds to join the lawsuit. I had been waffling about whether to sign away my rights and get the new badge. I’ve now decided to keep my privacy and add to the ridiculous hassle of handling visitors at JPL in the hope that it will help make the case that it’s a total and ridiculous waste of time to have these badging requirements.
September 6th, 2007 at 9:54 pm
I don’t have a lot to add to what you’ve said here, other than I agree completely. (Which I only add for the benefit of other people reading this.) There are quite a few of us, including all of CICLOPS in Boulder, who are deeply concerned about this and set against signing away our privacy like this. Thank you for blogging about it and getting the word out.