Security Obsession Drives 100 Scientists from NASA: Top Security Clearance Needed to Steer Curiosity

Do you really think that NASA is a Glass Dome? Do you really think that NASA do not manipulate any single data/image (before the public release) that come from Space/Moon/Mars? Well, this astounding article, will change your thought, on NASA, and its real deal. This incredible new truth, inside of NASA, refutes what many people belive: "NASA is a rigorously non-military, scientific agency which not only publishes all its findings, but which invites the active participation of scientists from around the world". And this is false!
This fundamental article puts in evidence the incredible and the paranoic secrecy obsession that encircles the Space missions and what from they it could gush. "Every single data" must be scrupulously sifted and to pass through the censorship of military/intelligence, before the public release.

Source: www.thiscantbehappening.net...

Thanks to the zealous wackos at the Department of Homeland Security, back in 2007 during the latter part of the Bush administration an order went out that all workers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena--an organization that is run under contract to NASA by the California Institute of Technology, had to be vetted for high security clearance in order to continue doing their jobs. Never mind that not one of them was or is engaged in secret activities (NASA is a rigorously non-military, scientific agency which not only publishes all its findings, but which invites the active participation of scientists from around the world). In order to continue working at JPL, even scientists who had been with NASA for decades were told they would need a high-level security badge just to enter the premises. To be issued that badge, they were told they would need to agree undergo an intensive FBI check that would look into their prior life history, right back to college.

[...]Not surprisingly, many scientists and engineers at JPL took umbrage at this extreme invasion of their private lives. Neighbors and old colleagues and acquaintances, ex-spouses, etc. were going to be interrogated about their drug-use history, their drinking habits, their juvenile arrest records, their sexual orientation-all those things that prying agents like to get into when doing a security clearance background check--as if they were applying for positions in the CIA or the Secret Service.

[...]Robert Nelson, an astronomer who spearheaded an effort to prevent this pointless security effort, together with 27 other angry JPL scientists, sued JPL and the federal government in federal court. They lost initially at the district court level but won a permanent injunction at the Ninth Circuit Appellate Court. That could have been the end of it, but unfortunately, the Obama administration appealed, and in 2011 when their case got to the Roberts Supreme Court, which rarely meets an invasive government security demand it doesn’t like, the scientists lost.


[...]Take Amanda Hendrix. She tells ThisCantBeHappening!, “I left JPL after 12 years (and with a good position and lots of opportunities) because I was very unhappy about the new badging requirements, particularly since they didn't make sense to me for scientists like myself who require no access to top-secret-type materials. It was extremely disappointing to me that an institution like JPL would subject their long-time employees to such measures in order to keep their jobs.”

[...]Not everyone who quit over this issue was a scientist. Susan Foster, a senior science writer at JPL, began her career there working as a secretary in 1968, even before the first Apollo moon landing. She says she quit solely because of the NASA requirement that she submit to a “waiving of my Fourth Amendment rights or be denied access to the facility” where she had worked for 44 years. She is currently unemployed and looking for work.

[...] There are no secrets at JPL, except perhaps for the temporary one about what it was that the Curiosity rover discovered in its early soil sampling on Mars (and that proved to be not worth all the secrecy either!).

I want to be clear: This thread is not against NASA, but against WHO really RULE the NASA.
As I daid several times, I respect any NASA Member: researchers, scientists, astronauts and employee. They are absolutely very brave, smart and maybe frustrate for this kind of paranoic secrecy on their work.

We have got to reign in our government, it has stepped so far out
of its designed purpose and abused so many of the privileges that
we allow it I cannot even consider how we could fix it.....

Something is gonna have to give, this paranoia they harbor is going
to destroy this country, honestly i have to wonder how bad mental illness
is in our government, the level of paranoia they are inundated with
must be at a level classifiable by mental illness......

Blargidy blarg blarg. I wonder if this planet will ever get over its own
ego and start thinking as a collective of humans and not adversaries.

Maybe the NSA knows the scientists MIGHT see something on Mars we arent supposed to see YET...

reply to post by Arken


the problem is in a nut shell people have no clue what they give away just talking about work in general. i have worked in a critical data center for a very big very well known company that supplies people with power I'm sure you can guess the name. While connecting patch panels I thought I would take a picture of the data center to use in my digital resume. Funny thing is I'm a information security major and should have known better. That one picture when I realized what I had on it could create a pathway for hackers its showed switches "the brand" its showed labels ect lol while small it could be enough to help some hacker. I deleted it quickly. Imagine working for nasa and having the Chinese, Russians and every other country trying to steal your data all the time. How do I know these countries are doing this I have met someone who was the head of data security at JPL in a lecture he told the class its normal. Like i said information security major

you need to think about the way countries act with uncovered information. Think about this scenario someone social engineers a way into the network with a high clearance. The find top secret data on a lets say new satellite they steal it then build a satellite with the capabilities to hold lets say a warhead instead of a high powered camera.

Care to name the "100 scientists"?

reply to post by Arken


What does security clearance for NASA employees have to do with pictures or other data coming from NASA projects? You're making an unwarranted leap of logic here.

reply to post by Arken


Great find Arken!!
S&F for you.
God this is all pure madness.

Very interesting topic ... !

I'm usually careful when coming across long articles such as this where not a single external source is indicated. The details & name references, however, seem to speak for the fact that there's something to it.

Whatever the case, I see an indirect link to Grotzinger's famous proclamation ('One For The History Books'), after some new data came in when he was interviewed by journalists.

And you all know what happened: they 'pulled' him back and suggested to rephrase the statement, which he then did a few days later:

As for history books, the whole mission is for the history books, That’s not to rule out the possibility of truly big news. It won’t be earthshaking, but it will be interesting.

It's just one more indication that there's a big difference between findings of the science team and the official public information policy of NASA/JPL. If even the 'chief scientist' is not allowed to use his own words, how can we be sure anybody else is allowed to do anything without official approval?

I suspect that Grotzinger's statement was probably the most frank & honest piece of information with regards to this mission up to now!

reply to post by Arken


Thanks Arken, again you showed us something really significant. This is a solid confirmation that there is something going on which they do not want us to know.

Maybe this information can contribute to break the walls down. The panel of ex-congresmembers which attended at the citizens hearing for disclosure should be aware of this NASA BS.

Originally posted by Arken
Source: www.thiscantbehappening.net...

Thanks to the zealous wackos at the Department of Homeland Security, back in 2007 during the latter part of the Bush administration an order went out that all workers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena--an organization that is run under contract to NASA by the California Institute of Technology, had to be vetted for high security clearance in order to continue doing their jobs.

I starred and flagged because this was interesting but ... also bolded the important part.

If anything, this sort of vindicates ownership of NASA pre-2007 a little doesn't it? Since this should have been in place much much earlier otherwise?

Unless the theory is that this was just an opportunity to make things more official. Still very interesting though.

Rubbish. This is a NOT "solid confirmation that there is something going on which they do not want us to know." It IS solid confirmation of government bureaucracy run amok.

The OP distorts the truth of the matter somewhat. Everybody at NASA, down to the lowliest contractor (regardless of whether or not they needed a security clearance) had to fill out that same paperwork. Was it an invasion of privacy? Yes. Was it necessary? Probably not. The JPL scientists were morally right to take a stand, but those who didn't did not experience any change in their lives. Federal agents didn't show up at anyone's door to interrogate family members about past drug use, etc.

The worst part was that all of the employees' personal information went into a database with no apparent expiration or clear oversight. I know one person who was laid off as a NASA contractor and went on unemployment for an entire year before she found a new job with a different contractor supporting the Air Force. The first job did not require a security clearance, but the second did. She experienced a significant delay receiving that clearance because she filled out her new paperwork with her married name. The old personal information in the database was in her maiden name, and the geniuses who designed the system had made no provision for name changes in the software. Logically, the old information should no longer have been in the database because she hadn't been a government employee for quite some time. It should have been necessary to submit a new form.

People who believe that NASA is involved in some big conspiracy of secrecy (or is even capable of doing so) have no first-hand experience with how the agency really works. If they knew the truth, they would be angry for an entirely different set or reasons having to do with government waste and inefficiency.

Just look at who had a hand in helping the build of NASA. Sure they say NASA is not militarized at all but c'mon who are you kidding? President Eisenhower who was a 5 star General in the Army & a Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces. You can't tell me this guy wanted NASA as a civilian program.

Originally posted by Arken
Do you really think that NASA is a Glass Dome? Do you really think that NASA do not manipulate any single data/image (before the public release) that come from Space/Moon/Mars?

No, they're all "manipulated" before public release; raw fits files aren't of much use to the average joe. You can, however, get the raw data if you want it. NASA is incredibly transparent about that, far more so than any other space agency in the world. In fact, amateurs help with downloading the raw realtime beacon data from the STEREO spacecraft!

This fundamental article puts in evidence the incredible and the paranoic secrecy obsession that encircles the Space missions and what from they it could gush. "Every single data" must be scrupulously sifted and to pass through the censorship of military/intelligence, before the public release.

That's not what it says and that's not what it's about. It puts in evidence to the incredible level of paranoia that the government has that terrorists are going to walk out of NASA carrying information that could be used to build weapons. It's the same reasoning behind the decision to go all hardcore with ITAR regs and shut down the NASA Technical Reports Server.

reply to post by Arken


Arken, for what it's worth, when I was involved with mapping the NASA 'Apollo Lunar Landing Missions', everyone working on the project had a Top Secret clearance with a SCI caveat (Sensitive Compartmented Information); TS/SCI. The policy was that the Agency reviewed controlled what was released to the public, and not individual employees - that was drilled in you head. There were consequences to pay if you 'talked'; even after retirement. I strongly suspect that JPL does indeed have TS/SCI compartmented information in 'some' divisions, if for no other reason most satellite data is usually highly classified.

With the recent disclosures of TS/SCI information by Snowden, I suspect that they will clamp down on security clearances in all the agencies, even more than in the past.

Anyone else remember that the same technology to land a Buick on mars, is the exact same tech that could land an ICBM into a critical target.

Even Russia still has missile and launch failures, arguably one of the most advanced space nations BTW, so yea I could see why people who work at such places would require security clearance.

A clearance could potentially prevent someone who could be otherwise susceptible of black mail from being in a potsition to have information other nations or companies may want.

reply to post by HomerinNC


Right.. I was thinking the same. Or they don't want them to know curiosity is in a desert on earth somewhere. But I don't believe that. I think it's on mars and something else is there. I've heard of people seeing mysterious flashes of light on mars through telescopes.

Originally posted by digital01anarchy
reply to post by Arken

 

the problem is in a nut shell people have no clue what they give away just talking about work in general. i have worked in a critical data center for a very big very well known company that supplies people with power I'm sure you can guess the name. While connecting patch panels I thought I would take a picture of the data center to use in my digital resume. Funny thing is I'm a information security major and should have known better. That one picture when I realized what I had on it could create a pathway for hackers its showed switches "the brand" its showed labels ect lol while small it could be enough to help some hacker. I deleted it quickly. Imagine working for nasa and having the Chinese, Russians and every other country trying to steal your data all the time. How do I know these countries are doing this I have met someone who was the head of data security at JPL in a lecture he told the class its normal. Like i said information security major

you need to think about the way countries act with uncovered information. Think about this scenario someone social engineers a way into the network with a high clearance. The find top secret data on a lets say new satellite they steal it then build a satellite with the capabilities to hold lets say a warhead instead of a high powered camera.

edit on 9-7-2013 by digital01anarchy because: (no reason given)

A satellite that holds warheads, right that is the worst thing that could happen with stolen information. I often wonder how all this secrecy will work itself out when the idea is to fuse countries together into blocks. How exactly is secrecy to the utmost going to work in the EU with regards to space exploration? This sounds more like a need to know basis structure like the military employs than a scientific structure of peer review like what NASA is supposed to be.

Since when did NASA, (N)ever (A) (S)traight (A)nswer tell all anyway? NASA moved to Langley, Langley is CIA. That should be obvious. The spy satellites controlled by National Space Administration look down , the science ones look out.

NASA, Langley

The controversy began in 2004 when NASA, then under the direction of Michael Griffin, ordered all scientists working at JPL to undergo comprehensive, open-ended background checks ? beyond the standard pre-hiring reviews for federal employees ? or risk losing their jobs.

NASA maintains it was following an executive order from President George W. Bush, who issued the rule to tighten security following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Yet Bush's original order did not mention background investigations; the staff at NASA headquarters added them later.

Other departments covered by Bush's tightened rule, such as the Department of Energy, did not institute similar checks for scientists doing unclassified research, the NASA scientists say. Agreeing to these background checks would hand the government free rein to investigate every aspect of their lives, including their financial and medical records, they argue.

[emphasis added]

Source