FDA E-Mail Tracking Included Reporters

Journalists' e-mails were swept into a Food and Drug Administration surveillance dragnet aimed at finding and silencing whistleblowers inside the agency who criticized FDA for laxity in protecting the public. The agency secretly captured e-mails of FDA employees suspected of whistleblowing — but ended up also reading correspondence with reporters, lawyers, and Congress.

• "Vast F.D.A. Effort Tracked E-Mails of Its Scientists," New York Times, July 14, 2012, by Eric Lichtblau and Scott Shane.