| Comment Number: | OL-10509538 |
| Received: | 3/15/2005 4:04:07 PM |
| Subject: | Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Request for Comment |
| Title: | National Security Personnel System |
| CFR Citation: | 5 CFR Chapter XCIX and Part 9901 |
| No Attachments |
Comments:
I work at the US Army Field Support Command in Rock Island IL as a contract specialist. I've been one since 1985. In Spring 04, I was reading during breaks and lunch at news and commentary websites such as Antiwar.com, you know, minding my own business, being a free citizen in a free country, all that stuff... So, anyhow, one day in April, I showed up to the office and told my supervisor that I had to visit another building on the Rock Island Arsenal campus. When I returned, I and the people in my office found that my assigned CPU had been confiscated by parties unknown. Shortly thereafter, my lay-in-the-weeds supervisor accused me of looking at "terrorist" websites. I never saw that CPU again and I lost most of my work templates, saved documents, etc etc. For about 2 months thereafter, I (a bicyclist) was subjected to daily knapsack checks (unload and repack everything) by security staff at the entry gates. I was not allowed to ride my bike on the Island during weekends; I was turned away by security staff. I finally raised hell at the entry gate and reported the security treatment to this supervisor, because I was late to the office. Within a half-hour, I received a back-channel message from a reliable source. That source reported that my supervisor (Mr. Elmer Fudd, a well-known lay-in-the-weeds type) had contacted the Island security services and ended the daily security stops and that, heavens to Betsy, he had never meant for the daily checks to have taken place. Never mind that Mr. Fudd had been hare-brained enough to have uttered the word "terrorist" in the Post-911 world, in front of a security official who manages security business on an Island filled with armed forces tenants and active duty soldiers. Like I said, I never saw that CPU again, but I am still here. Why? There was never anything dirty or evil on that CPU. Nor was there ever any adverse action taken with regard to Mr. Fudd's accusation that I was viewing terrorist websites. Nor was Mr. Fudd ever taken to task by his managers for having pulled off such an extreme act without delivering any results. Here then, we have an example of a manager who acted in a totally arbitrary manner and with total immunity and impunity. So now I read that -- under NSPS -- I am considered a "deployable asset" and that gleefully-immune arbitrary actors like Mr. Fudd can send me anywhere -- at the drop of a helmet -- even though someone else more qualified might suggest themselves for the same duty. In other words, NSPS will give petty actors like Mr. Fudd the chance to act even more arbitrarily and with even more impunity than ever before. Perhaps some of your weaselly managers might comment, "Well, good, people like you should be sent away and worse." To which I would reply, "Don't bother me with your half-assed grumblings about the true meaning of liberty, Der Kommissar." So, what is the moral of this tale? The moral that an arbitrary manager will glean from the passage of NSPS is this: If at first you don't succeed (in screwing someone over), try try again... THIS is the Pandora's Box that you DoD court jesters will open if NSPS gets passed. So what will it take until you betrayers open your eyes? -- some poor schlub attempting suicide because his or her Elmer Fudd sent them off to Timbuktu?