Keith’s note: the following was sent out to users of the NCCS MSS – NASA Center for Climate Simulation MSS (Mass Storage System) managed out of NASA Goddard: (more below)

OCIO Team, I wanted to provide an update on our current situation and related planning efforts as we navigate significant organizational changes, first starting with my plans. As many of you may have heard, after 35 years at NASA, I have decided to bring my career to a close – but this is not happening immediately. I’ll be here through the end of the calendar year to support the many challenges we are working and enable an effective transition while continuing to partner with you in doing great things for NASA. Now about some of those challenges…

Keith’s note: with regard to commercial solutions to missions being canceled, data archiving etc. – Nice idea. But actually this is a disaster in the making. With the rush to spontaneously cancel a wide swath of missions, there is no transition plan for data recovery or archiving in a structured fashion in place at NASA or by the Administration. It is all chaos. Data will be lost, mangled, parsed, and scattered. So unless dedicated people go out and buy a bunch of 10 TB drives and skirt government regulations and save it on their own, this will become a data diaspora. And thus the loss of these missions will be compounded by this scattered data. This has happened before and it is happening again. I have seen this happen at NASA with my own eyes. Not everything will end up nice and safe in GitHub. Embrace THIS Challenge.

Keith’s note: Mike Witt, NASA’s Senior Agency Information Security Officer (SAISO) and Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) for Cybersecurity and Privacy is leaving the agency shortly. Best wishes, Mike.

Keith’s note: here we go again. A new GAO report: Cybersecurity: NASA Needs to Fully Implement Risk Management is out. Yawn. Once a year GAO, NASA OIG, or some other authoritative body does a review of NASA IT security and they come back and say that NASA is dragging its feet and not dealing with the ever-growing plethora of cyber events that confront us all. NASA writes a letter back saying yea, we’re sorry, I guess you are right but we have an action item to look into this. See you next year. Here are some examples of the past few years: (More below)

Keith’s note: Here we go again. With all the things being cut at NASA, you’d think that the NASA Astrobiology team would at least try and stand up and show their relevance. Guess again.

• The top story on NASA.gov Wednesday night is: “Another First: NASA Webb Identifies Frozen Water in Young Star System“ – Water Water Water 💧🫧💦🌧️ – it is one of the key things that Astrobiology looks for and thinks about. But there is no mention of this “First” discovery at @nasaastrobio or astrobiology.nasa.gov – and the scientific paper is behind a paywall. Update: here’s the paper on astro-ph https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.08863 – NASA still points to the paywall version.
• On Wednesday morning NASA and ESA announced “Webb’s Titan Forecast: Partly Cloudy With Occasional Methane Showers“ – interesting JWST studies of the atmosphere of Titan – a prime target for Astrobiology exploration – especially the $3 billion+ Dragonfly mission. But astrobiology.nasa.gov or @nasaastrobio make no mention. The scientific paper cited in the press release is behind a paywall (again).
• Is Astrobiology As Boring As NASA Thinks It is? (earlier post) – Next to searching for the origin of the universe, searching for life elsewhere in the cosmos is one of the most profound things NASA does. If only NASA would act that way.

Keith’s note: According to this press release “Committee Leaders Demand Answers from NASA on DOGE Access After the Agency Refuses to Comply with Investigation“ specific instances of DOGE employees (who are named) with unparalleled access to NASA sensitive information have been identified. NASA has not been forth coming in their responses to earlier Congressional inquires in this regard. Now Congress wants answers, saying “The information we have reviewed of NASA’s vulnerability to DOGE-related threats is chilling.” Full release and letter below:

Keith’s note: I now have an up-to-date NASAWatch account on Bluesky at @nasawatch.bsky.com in addition to @nasawatch on Twitter.

Keith’s note: In January I noted that NASA had taken the NASA Online Directives Information System (NODIS) offline – so I posted an archive version of what was there before they fiddled with it (see: Someone Is Trying to Erase NASA’s Directives. Oops. We Have Them All). NODIS is now back online – but with lots of changes in according to White House Executive Orders. Well, the DOGE folks aren’t the only ones who know how to code. A NASAWatch reader has done an exhaustive look into what was changed – added, deleted etc. In NODIS “Noticing Changes in NASA NODIS Comparison of NASA Policy Documents Across Two Time Points 2025-01-20 to 2025-03-07“ notes:

• “At the start of the second Trump administration in 2025, NODIS went offline entirely many days , which was unusual. I was curious what changes might have occurred across that gap, but didn’t want to read and try to manually compare 260+ PDfs. No one does. Instead, I wrote some python code to collect and analyze the PDFs available at two different points in time. I figured it would be a good excuse to learn about the Internet Archive and build some skills around programmatic accessing of websites and identifying changes in PDFs.”
• “13 policy directives were deleted entirely with many having a focus on preventing or responding to discrimination. Two of those deleted were replaced by directives with a different name in what is basically a version bump.“

Keith’s note: this memo was sent out by NASA CIO Jeff Seaton, Included is the 5 Things FAQ posted online for NASA employees.

Keith’s note: According to 404 (free subscription required) “Here is NASA’s Contract with Clearview AI“ – “Clearview AI is an OSINT [open source intelligence] platform used to aid in the identification and investigations of persons of interest, by allowing users to search its database of 50+ billion facial images sourced from public-only web sources, including news media, mugshot websites, public social media, & many other open sources,” one part of the documents reads.” … “Previously, NASA told 404 Media that that license was purchased on behalf of the agency’s Office of Inspector General (OIG).” According to Futurism “Clearview’s value proposition is basically to scrape billions of photos from Facebook, Google, and Twitter – without anybody’s consent – and then charge cops to use all that private data to help identify “suspects.” Why does any part of NASA need this technology? Security? Or something new? Who are they watching and how could they use this new software to match this information up with other sources – such as (private) public social media accounts? NASA is not talking about this. Ask your manager. See if they know. Doubtful.

Keith’s update: Now the page is approved and online again. WTF Meta? Keith’s earlier note: Here we go again. Meta has suspended the Facebook NASAWatch page – again for “community standards violations” . They took it down a week ago, denied my repeated protests, then suddenly restored it. It has been online for ~20 years. This is what you have to put up with if you try and get news to NASA people affected by layoffs, DOGE etc. See As DOGE focuses on NASA, Facebook suspends NASAWatch. ‘A curious coincidence’? from the Houston Chronicle on 21 Feb 2025 about the earlier suspension. Oh yes – on the shutdown notice it says “Good news: no violations to show”. So – there are no violations, so why was it taken down for “violations“?

Keith’s note: The NASAWatch page on Facebook has been restored after several unsuccessful appeals made by me to Meta. It was deleted (apparently – and I am guessing) because I was impersonating NASA. It took them 20 years to notice. Thanks to the exposure given by the Houston Chronicle to this deletion, a NASAWatch reader with a connection to META saw that this deletion had happened and the NASAWatch page on Facebook has been restored. Many thanks to both of you!

Keith’s note: some sage advice from a reader: “I’ve been telling everyone at NASA and elsewhere, download all your personnel records, SF-50s; get all your appraisals and download those; go to any other places like employee express (for NASA and some other agencies) and make sure you download all your Leave and Earnings statements. Also, offload and save any emails that have to do with good performance and anything that you can use later. Once you’re out, you won’t have access to any of these things.” Update from GRC: a Directorate level supervisor said the OCIO said “eOPF downloads are being monitored – do not to save it to your agency computer.” Employees were told instead to print it out and were told that NASA will be doing searches on computers.

Keith’s note: Update from NASA GRC: “DOGE has come to NASA Glenn. One contractor has been confirmed fired by DOGE. We’re scouring our WiFi and government computers and software for information. We’ve been instructed to answer DOGE employees with only “Yes”, “No”, or to refer them to our division chief. Everyone here is on the edge of their seat with terror and anxiety as you could imagine.”

Keith’s note: the AI mapping of NASA management and employee structure has started at DOGE. This basic structure is online at DOGE now. Just follow the management tree and you will see that they are mapping out down to the sub-directorate level. They are already mapping employee age, time employed, and salaries. Knowing the tools that they have access to, their raw computer power, and unfettered access, I am certain that by the time they are done they will know quite a lot. And they will not necessarily want to openly share that data – or tell employees what individual information they have. Given the lack of obvious guard rails, this information may well involve various things that the government is not supposed to track – personally identifiable info like social media postings, and conceivably virtually anything you can already get through a basic commercially accessible ID check. And there will be errors that will only be caught after something illegal or inappropriate has been done with that info.

• Oh yes – this website is already creating stir: according to HuffPost: “The website states in tiny print at the bottom that its database excludes information from U.S. intelligence agencies. But an easy search shows that DOGE’s database provides details on the National Reconnaissance Office, the federal agency that designs, builds and maintains U.S. intelligence satellites. Not only are NRO’s budgets and head counts classified, but the prospect of Musk’s tech team meddling in sensitive personnel information is setting off alarms for some in the intelligence community.”

Keith’s note: D.O.G.E. people are expected to be at NASA this week looking through the things that they want to look through. Make sure to hide the alien tech before they get there.

Keith’s note: According to the Washington Post: “The DOGE team plans to replicate this process across many departments and agencies, accessing the back-end software at different parts of the government and then using AI technology to extract and sift through information about spending on employees and programs, including diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, according to another person familiar with the DOGE process, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to describe it. – The Technology Transformation Services section of the General Services Administration, a group established during the Obama administration to make government platforms more accessible and intuitive, has become a key tool of the DOGE.”

Keith’s note: according to a NASA IT outreach agencywide email sent on 6 Feb 2025: “NASA is tracking several executive orders and guidance from the Office of Personnel Management, on of which is titled “Defending Women”. NASA intends to comply with the executive order and guidance, in part, through the action below. … In response to the Executive Orders, NASA has disabled features in id.nasa.gov and Teams that allow users to add pronouns in their display name in Microsoft outlook and Teams.” Full memo below.