FDA email snooping
Agency officials began the electronic monitoring operation on their own.
The software used to track the F.D.A. scientists, sold by SpectorSoft of Vero Beach, Fla., costs as little as $99.95 for individual use, or $2,875 to place the program on 25 computers. It is marketed mainly to employers to monitor their workers and to parents to keep tabs on their children's computer activities.
"Monitor everything they do," says SpectorSoft's Web site. "Catch them red-handed by receiving instant alerts when keywords or phrases are typed or are contained in an e-mail, chat, instant message or Web site."
The F.D.A. program did all of that and more, as its operators analyzed the results from their early e-mail interceptions and used them to search for new "actors," develop new keywords to search and map out future areas of concern.
The intercepted e-mails revealed, for instance, that a few of the scientists under surveillance were drafting a complaint in 2010 that they planned to take to the Office of Special Counsel. A short time later, before the complaint was filed, Dr. Robert C. Smith and another complaining scientist were let go and a third was suspended.
In another case, the intercepted e-mails indicated that Paul T. Hardy, another of the dissident employees, had reapplied for an F.D.A. job "and is being considered for a position." (He did not get it.)
-- ERIC LICHTBLAU and SCOTT SHANE and Andy Lehren
Posted in Health.