The FDA has been accused of many things. Things including using incorrect or biased statistical data to push through new medication to outright lies to sell other medications. But this time, they've actually been caught trying to spy on some of their top scientists who were attempting to blow the whistle on their corruption and lies. Here's the story. Another reason not to trust this agency. FDA Spying on Scientists
Interesting read. I'm curious to know What means the FDA used to acquire the content of the gmail correspondence. Setting aside the merits of the claim that they were involved in whistleblowing, I'm pretty sure the FDA, or any other employer can legally look at anything transmitted across their networks or stored on company equipment. Assuming their GMail sessions were encrypted, and assuming the FDA folks don't have access to a means to crack ssl, that would leave only four options I can think of. 1) Their spyware monitored and saved cached browser data from the GMail sessions 2) Their spyware pulled the contents of the decrypted HTML documents directly from browser memory. 3) They setup a man in the middle to proxy the Gmail sessions. 4) Their spyware worked as a keylogger, and they used the captured passwords to logon to GMail and poke around looking for dirt I'm fairly certain that only in the case of scenario #4 will they be guilty of a crime related to invasion of privacy. I'm pretty sure all of the other activities are perfectly legal, whether it is the FDA or some other private employer. The article alleged that #4 is exactly what happened, though nothing in the linked articles and whistleblower reports makes that clear at all.
Only time will tell on this one. I just found it interesting as I've read articles before about former scientists and doctors of the FDA and their shady practices, including more support of certain meds and companies than others depending on how much is made in a certain sector. I don't really trust all they do. Some things are good, while others are just downright atrocious.
Keyloggers are used as part of many administrator monitoring packages - it is stepping over the line to use credentials gathered in this way to sign into another service. You missed out the "they were watching you at the time and took a screenshot of the evidence" option.
Screen recording and playback. Seems like a very network traffic/diskspace intensive way to monitor work PCs, especially if you have a lot of employees, but yah, that would do it. Legally too. Enough to make you paranoid, isn't it.