Both the New York Times [here and here] and the blog Pharmalot [here] have been reporting this week details about the Food and Drug Administration monitoring the emails of employee scientists who expressed concern to Congress that the FDA was forcing employees to approve medical devices that posed unacceptable risks. The monitoring was first reported in a Washington Post story in January, when the employees sued the FDA. According to the NYT, the agency surveilled five of own scientists beginning in 2010, resulting in “80,000 pages of intercepted e-mails and other documents, along with what amounted to an enemies list of 21 ‘actors’ at the agency, in Congress, the news media and academia who were thought to be collaborating to put out confidential information damaging to the reputation of the FDA’s medical device reviews.” The software used by the agency “tracked keystrokes, intercepted personal e-mails, copied documents on personal thumb drives and followed line-by-line messages as they were drafted.” The FDA’s Office of Chief Counsel reportedly approved the surveillance, which was run out of the agency’s “information security section.” As for the scientists' claims about the approved devices, the NYT reports that a “confidential government review in May by the Office of Special Counsel, which deals with the grievances of government workers, found that the scientists’ medical claims were valid enough to warrant a full investigation into what it termed “a substantial and specific danger to public safety.”