Posted on 02/03/2017 9:19:59 AM PST by shove_it
Federal employees worried that President Donald Trump will gut their agencies are creating new email addresses, signing up for encrypted messaging apps and looking for other, protected ways to push back against the new administration’s agenda.
Whether inside the Environmental Protection Agency, within the Foreign Service, on the edges of the Labor Department or beyond, employees are using new technology as well as more old-fashioned approaches — such as private face-to-face meetings — to organize letters, talk strategy, or contact media outlets and other groups to express their dissent.
The goal is to get their message across while not violating any rules covering workplace communications, which can be monitored by the government and could potentially get them fired.
At the EPA, a small group of career employees — numbering less than a dozen so far — are using an encrypted messaging app to discuss what to do if Trump’s political appointees undermine their agency’s mission to protect public health and the environment, flout the law, or delete valuable scientific data that the agency has been collecting for years, sources told POLITICO.
Fearing for their jobs, the employees began communicating incognito using the app Signal shortly after Trump’s inauguration. Signal, like WhatsApp and other mobile phone software, encrypts all communications, making it more difficult for hackers to gain access to them...
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Every single RAT needs to be purged from our government - including local governments and school boards.
The goal is to get their message across while not violating any rules covering workplace communications,
...
That may be their goal, but it still sounds like insubordination.
I think, and hope, that after Trump gets his whole cabinet in, he’ll take off the gloves and clean house...
He is going easier than some expected so he can get his cabinet in...
This is insubordination...fire them FOR CAUSE !!
Wrong answer.
Post 4 has the correct answer.
Time to go through a stack of new applications.
Fire them all, immediately!
I don’t know about govt. agencies, but in my job, I am not allowed to download ANY devices or apps that are not relevant to doing my job.
Certainly not any that would prevent my company from seeing what I do or search for on them.
First of all, this has been going on a lot longer than Obama. Liberals are attracted to government jobs in the same way teachers and professors are attracted to their lifetime status. These same people often thwarted George W. Bush - particularly at State - but Bush essentially did nothing.
Second, how is this even remotely legal. Federal open records law specifically prohibits any actions that serve to conceal the activity of governmental agencies, national security and classified data notwithstanding. Therefore, what these people are doing is expressly prohibited under federal law as it shields government actions from any open records request.
Third, every employer has the legal right not to have their employees covertly acting against the employer’s best interests. That’s what they are getting paid for. To act in such a subversive manner is legal grounds for disciplinary action up to and including dismissal, regardless of whether you fall under the civil service system or not.
Shut these people down - now - and permanently.
I remember some police officers I knew getting told not to carry their personal Nextel cell phones because the “Push-to-Talk” feature was being used when they didn’t want stuff going out over the official radio net, which was monitored. It’s the same principle.
Uhmmm......That’s against federal law as it pertains to the federal records law.
Early retirement. Use of government networks for personal e-mail and social networking, while not expressly prohibited, often are not allowed to connect to the wider Internet. They can then do their acts of subversion on their own time. And their own personal computers.
A couple of attempts to access blocked sites should generate a message to the person's supervisor. It happened to me, but I was doing fieldwork on an audit where firearms were being purchased. I contacted IT as to the work I was performing, and there were no further issues.
Dailycaller has some info on legality:
http://dailycaller.com/2017/02/02/epa-employees-are-using-encryption-technology-to-hide-resistance-to-trump-but-is-it-legal/
But is it ‘work related’ to oppose the Department on one’s own time and devices?
Obviously not! It’s Firt Amendment!
However the info in the messages may be illegal for other reasons: confidentiality rules. So encrypt it.
Encryption is a much more difficult problem than people realize.
If they start talking in Pig Latin I think I’d laugh
The president does have the authority to issue an order to federal employees : no unapproved encryption. And rhis is needed also for FOIA compliance )
Yes, yes it is a crime and cause.
CRIME is the word here folks. It is a violation of civil law under the FOIA.
As a former Federal Employee I’m fairly sure doing that is grounds for dismissal.
Talk about digging your own grave! Stupid people are stupid.
There. Fixed it.
Handling, transporting or transmitting any privately encrypted material from a government facility or property, or using government equipment to do so, is espionage, and punishable as such.
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