The National Treasury Employees Union and the American
Federation of Government Employees are fighting a directive
requiring employees of the Department of Homeland Security
to sign a secrecy pledge, calling it unconstitutional and
saying it would harm whistleblower protections and
“cripple accountability,” according to a joint statement.
It said the pledge “appears to allow the government
unprecedented access to employees’ homes and personal
belongings for searches that violate the Fourth Amendment’s
prohibition on “unreasonable search and seizure,” and
because employees are forced to sign the non-disclosure
agreement – pertaining to unclassified information – that
it violates free speech rights.
The unions, which represent more than 60,000 employees in
the department, warned in the statement that any document
can be instantly classified with a stamp, “thus subjecting
any employee who might disclose the information for a
legitimate public purpose to severe sanction.”