A survey of U.S. government scientists by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) was flagged as spam at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Computer Security Incident Response Center. UCS's Center for Science and Democracy director has attributed the low response rate at EPA and other agencies to a "culture of fear":
A periodic survey of U.S. federal scientists by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) caused a bit of a kerfuffle at U.S. EPA last month. For the ninth time since 2005, the science advocacy group sent out a survey to more than 63,000 federal scientists across 16 agencies to gather information about what's happening inside the federal government in relation to scientific integrity. Andrew Rosenberg, director of the Center for Science and Democracy at UCS, said his staff reached out to the agencies to let them know the survey was forthcoming: a memo EPA apparently missed.
"The unannounced, unauthorized, and perhaps illegal message found below this message was sent to me today," Brian Melzian, an EPA oceanographer in Rhode Island, wrote in a Feb. 12 email to EPA's Computer Security Incident Response Center (CSIRC) and others obtained by UCS. [...] Melzian continued: "Finally, if the message found below is legitimate and not bogus, these organizations have been grossly negligent and incompetent for distributing this message without first being authorized and approved by EPA." Rosenberg said while UCS did inform EPA the survey was coming, he is not required to do so and it's up to the agencies to choose whether and how they inform employees about it.
[...] While the survey will remain open for another couple of weeks, the response rate so far has been low — a fact Rosenberg attributes to fear of retaliation. "It suggests the climate and culture for scientists is really fearful," he said. "The culture we've seen more broadly in this administration has been either dismissal or hostility toward science." A spokesman for EPA said it didn't make sense to him that employees would be afraid to fill out the survey since it is anonymous but declined to comment further.
As of March 2, response rates for EPA hovered around 2 percent, with 296 completed surveys, compared with NOAA's response rate, which was 4.1 percent with 460 completed surveys. Still, in 2015 NOAA's response rate was 19.6 percent with 2,388 completed responses.
(Score: 0, Troll) by cocaine overdose on Friday March 16 2018, @07:58PM (8 children)
Also, Rosenberg sounds like a huge cunt to deal with. I can imagine no one wanting to deal with him. Either he's being melodramatic about his over-glorified MENSA-clone, or shit's really fucked. Either way, I'm not inclined to donate a tax-deductible "gift" that highlights "$50" as the base for a group I've just today only heard about. And the name sucks, unions have a god awful connotation and concerned makes them seem like the PTA or soccer mom-led committees. Or even the fucking HOA. "Home Owners Association?" More like: I was gonna make a play on words, but I've lost interest.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Friday March 16 2018, @08:35PM (7 children)
No kidding. The survey was announced, didn't need to be authorized, and is almost certainly not illegal. If it offends you so damn much, just delete the email, dude.
I can imagine this guy being someone who takes politics way too seriously and starts arguments with anybody who has the gall to disagree with his opinions. It's those damn liberals trying to convince my coworkers to commit treason again!
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 4, Interesting) by tangomargarine on Friday March 16 2018, @08:41PM (4 children)
Oh, whoops -- I actually meant to refer to the Brian Melzian mentioned in the second paragraph. The guy who received the email and reported it, not the one who sent it.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by cocaine overdose on Friday March 16 2018, @09:00PM (3 children)
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday March 16 2018, @09:12PM
Yeah I read the summary like 4 times before I could figure out what was going on either.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 17 2018, @12:03AM (1 child)
Maybe we if you were ODing on cocaine all the time you'd be able to decipher these cryptic "quotes" that are all the rage these days (I hear even kids in school are using them now).
(Score: 2) by cocaine overdose on Saturday March 17 2018, @12:10AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @11:40PM (1 child)
Sending seems legal. The EPA operates a mail server, so, one presumes that sending them a mere email is not computer abuse. It could fall afoul of the CANSPAM act, since it certainly is spam.
Merely reading the email is legal.
Responding might not be legal. Here, the government employee seems to be using government-provided resources for an obviously non-government purpose. It's like mining Bitcoin or browsing porn at work.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday March 19 2018, @03:37PM
Is that actually illegal, or merely against the rules of the organization/department/whatever? They can fire you over it I imagine, but a lot of jobs you can get fired without a reason given, too.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2, Troll) by jmorris on Friday March 16 2018, @08:15PM (2 children)
So what? Union of Concerned Scientists IS a hostile political organization who government workers should not be working with while on the clock. So if their firewall is blocking them it is functioning properly.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Saturday March 17 2018, @03:45PM
Somewhat more moderately, you always have to ask whats the cause and effect. There seems to be no effect. What is the real purpose of this survey? If they're just going to make up politically biased fake news headlines anyway regardless of any results, why help provide data, or why complain if the data isn't being provided? I mean, for political reasons we already know what the only acceptable conclusions of the survey will be, and the resulting headlines. This is no different than running a survey of tobacco company executives asking if smoking is a great idea.
For example of other pointless motivations for running a survey, I once worked at a place with low morale. They surveyed us to claim they cared. They didn't, of course, and did absolutely nothing with the survey results and changed nothing, but surveys ARE cheap and at least some morons likely felt more loved by taking a survey.
Another funny about anonymous surveys, I took one as a 24 year old engineer at a utility company, and the results published back to the employees were granular enough to show 100% of 24 year old engineers in a six person department (aka, me) thought we needed more interdepartmental cooperation or WTF it was exactly. I pointed that out in public during the survey discussion results meeting that the survey was not anonymous and we were lied to, and that really pissed off management. That place had 80 IQ diversity hire managers trying to herd cats over 140 IQ engineers, it wasn't a bad place to work so much as ridiculous on a daily basis. We had diversity hire managers who were illiterate in our field, which was funny when they read powerpoints during presentations, people in charge of highly technical things they couldn't even read or pronounce much less actually lead or manage. The only thing keeping that place afloat was government granted monopoly privs, LOL.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday March 18 2018, @06:04AM
Seems to me the UCS has been wrong on nearly every issue they have chosen to pontificate about for the last 30 years.
Not quite as the bulletin of the atomic Scientists an their doomsday clock, but close enough.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @08:23PM
whether the spammers pose as Nigerian princes or Concerned scientists
(Score: 3, Insightful) by lgsoynews on Friday March 16 2018, @08:30PM (1 child)
They miss the point. When you work in an organization where fear and ass-covering rules, people start being afraid of everything, even if it's completely irrational.
Plus, it's already hard enough to get people to participate to anything, because the bigger the organisation, the stronger the apathy, as anybody who has ever worked in a big org knows (yes, I have). If you add fear & uncertainty, do you REALLY think that answering surveys will be the most important thing for your "headcount"? (I use that ugly "headcount" word on purpose because all big orgs have that dehumanization going, sometimes to an amazing extent).
Don't expect people who are treated badly to be involved with their company/organization.
(Score: 1) by Goghit on Sunday March 18 2018, @03:19AM
I agree with you. I saw this during the Harper regime in Canada; it's not paranoia if they really are out to get you. Upper management might be mouthing platitudes like this spokescritter but there's far too many middle management vermin in an authoritarian regime that will fuck you up if you're not careful. A number of us switched to using our home emails for associations, professional development, casual professional chat-chat, and anything that else that wasn't directly goverment science business.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @08:31PM (2 children)
This is totally 100% obviously spam.
Also, even if it isn't a computer security problem, it looks like one. Any employee who would answer it is an employee who would fall victim to phishing or click to install malware. Some of those employees can be trained to be a tad more secure, and some of them are worth the cost of training, but the others need to lose their computer access. If they can't do their jobs without computers, then they get fired.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 17 2018, @02:55AM
Yeah, who cares if the EPA loses 80 % of its scientists. It's not like the environment matters to anyone. I'm happy to breathe whatever chemicals come out of exhaust pipes and drink the water as long as it's less yellow than piss.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Saturday March 17 2018, @03:33PM
Has anyone seen that in real life? I vaguely remember that from a PCI/DSS comsec class along the lines of some phishing attack being fill out 19 totally innocent looking survey questions for a chance to win a gift card (you know, like a vendor survey) and after 19 questions that are boring and corporate ("We are considering a rainbow color sock puppet for our new corporate mascot, please rate this decision from 1 to 10") then there's one random question like "to prove you're a human and not a bot automatically clicking checkboxes for more chances to win, please enter your building's security door keypad code in the text box below, don't worry all responses are anonymous (LOL, they aren't)"
(Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Friday March 16 2018, @09:06PM
Are you in the market for any of the following (check each that applies):
* Russian bride
* Flashlight
* Cannabis Oil
Do you get your tax invoices from Fedex, UPS, DHL, ABC News, or the IRS?
Is there a warrant out for your arrest?
If we wanted to sell you something, what would the best strategy be?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @09:29PM (2 children)
of Trumpenfuhrer and his brownshirts.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @10:13PM
The EPA is full of horrible people.
Start with them being government workers who care about your success less than the workers at the post office, department of motor vehicles, or tax office at any level of government. These are people whose job is to be an impediment to getting shit done. This is the opposite of making America great.
Then, they are all a bunch of tree-hugger activists. They are kind of like Greenpeace or the Sierra Club, but with real authority.
Who would want such a job? It's only the worst of the worst. These are people who are not fit to make you a burger. Some of them may be fit to scrape gum off of sidewalks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 17 2018, @03:02AM
Careerism reveals its downside. Especially when the boss dislikes people like you and enjoys firing them.
(Score: 3, Funny) by VLM on Saturday March 17 2018, @03:50PM (1 child)
Its boomer to still believe in democracy and LARP it matters. Possibly the department has retiring boomers getting replaced by somewhat more reality based younger people.
Its kinda like coupons, which were a riff off ration books during WWII, so the concept of coupons sold REALLY well to WWII-generation people, and younger folks are often WTF about coupons. Especially when there's too many layers of abstraction, so the sale on the facebook page if you follow the company so they can spam you is called a coupon, and a coupon is a ripoff of 70+ year old wartime ration books, which were probably an abstraction of something even older.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Saturday March 17 2018, @07:42PM
I modded you funny because of this:
You're hilarious. :)