Whistleblower Protection Blog : Whistleblower Lawyer & Attorney : National Whistleblower Legal Defense and Education Fund : Whistleblower Protection, Fraud Claims : Washington DC

Today Lindsey Williams and I spoke with the Executive Board of Local 689, Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU).Local 689 represents employees of Washington DC's Metro system. Lindsey is the Advocacy Director of the National Whistleblowers Center (NWC). We spoke about the National Transit System Security Act (NTSSA) of 2007, 6 USC §1142.

I have been looking forward to this opportunity for a long time. For too long, I have read local media stories about how Metro employees were too afraid of retaliation to raise concerns about safety. This can't be right, I thought.  There is a new law designed specifically to protect transit workers from retaliation.  It was a law that came out of a concern for the role that safe public transit plays in our national security.  Congress passed it as part of enacting the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.

You can read the FAQ I prepared on NTSSA, together with my collection of web links, newspaper stories and blog posts. Everyone on the Board signed up for the NWC's Action Alerts. In our discussion, we noticed that NTSSA could be the sole remedy for transit workers who are fired during their probationary period for refusing to drive in unsafe conditions. Also, union grievances can be faster than the Department of Labor process. Still, it was obvious to all of us that workers' advocates need to know about all the tools in the belt to decide which ones might be best for any particular case. We agreed to continue talking about steward training to make sure that all Metro employees learn about their NTSSA rights when they face retaliation. I thank Jackie Jeter, President of Local 689, for the invitation to speak.

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Fair Game is a new feature movie about the Valerie Plame affair. Naomi Watts plays Valerie Plame. Sean Penn plays her husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson. I am having trouble containing how much I appreciate this movie, so let me start with the facts:
In the buildup for the Iraq War, the Bush Administration was eager to claim that Saddam Hussein was building nuclear weapons. At the time, Valerie Plame was an undercover operative for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) working on counterproliferation. She was running operations around the world to find reliable sources of information about the funding and development of weapons of mass destruction. She has developed a most sensitive source to get information from an Iraqi scientist. Her bosses ask her if she can get her husband to help them check out a claim that Saddam was buying yellow cake uranium from Niger – one of the poorest countries in the world. Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, knew the area and had contacts in Niger. He agrees to check it out. The amount of uranium at issue would have filled a convoy of trucks. It would have been noticed by everyone around and left a long paper trail. Wilson goes to Niger, visits his contacts, talks to the witnesses, and inspects the records. Nothing indicates any sale to Iraq. He makes his report. Then he is stunned to hear President Bush claim in the 2003 State of the Union Address that, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
Joe Wilson (pictured with staff and interns of the National Whistleblowers Center) checks out whether President Bush could have been referring to any other African country other than Niger. He learns that the White House staff was relying on the same report that Wilson himself had checked out. He learns that the White House took out the claim from a speech President Bush gave in Cincinnati, but it popped back into the State of the Union Address. After the US invades Iraq, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice claims that if anyone in the government had reason to doubt the President's claim about Saddam's uranium, then it would have to be some staffer in the bowels of the CIA. Wilson knew this was wrong, and he felt compelled to call on his government to redress it.

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A "key logger" is a computer program that keeps a record of every keystroke someone types on a computer. Hackers can use key loggers to infiltrate a computer system, or to steal someone's identity. They might use a key logger as part of a computer virus, and once a computer is infected, the hacker can receive a report of every keystroke entered from that computer -- passwords, Social Security Numbers, content, anything.

Now, some employers are having key loggers installed on all their computers so they can monitor what their employees are doing. What better way is there to find out who the whistleblower is, and what that whistleblower is reporting? Don't think that just because you work for a small employer, you should be protected from such snooping. Key loggers can be installed by any employer who knows how to call a computer technician who can install it.

I recently learned about an employee who used an office computer to renew a vehicle registration. Six weeks later, that employee received a letter from the state bureau of motor vehicles. The letter informs the employee that the computer used for the registration "had been compromised with software that allowed capture of each keystroke." The letter goes on to explain how the key logger was detected by the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), and reported through the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC). So, do you want to know if your boss is using a key logger?  Wait for your official break time. Then, use your office computer to renew your vehicle registration. Allow six to eight weeks for delivery. Perhaps then you will receive a written finding from the government that your computer is infected with a key logger. Either way, it is not safe for employees to use office computers for any confidential communications.  I recommend against using the office computer to communicate with your lawyer, with law enforcement, or for any personal communication. The boss could find out about it.

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Maria Aran is the chief of staff for the Miami district of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), a part of the Department of Homeland Security. When she discovered that a sub-office had mishandled hundreds of sensitive documents, she made a report for the agency's security office. When she sent that report, she inadvertently also sent it to 300 agency officials around the country. (Anyone else ever get surprised that an email was sent by "reply-all"?) Soon thereafter, Aran's bosses wanted to involuntarily transfer her to another agency. Aran complained to the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) which requested an emergency stay of the transfer.  The Merit System Protection Board (MSPB) granted that stay for 45 days. Andrew Becker of the Center for Investigative Reporting writes in today's Washington Post (p. B-3) that OSC is nearing the end of its 45-day investigative period. MSPB stays to protect whistleblowers were unheard of during the prior administration. While we appreciate this stay, we also long for President Obama to appoint a permanent Special Counsel who will have the support and staffing to seek more protections for whistleblowers.

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