The Hacker's Encyclopedia 1998/hackers_encyclopedia.iso/etc/privacy/urinemak.doc

Text File | 2003-06-11 | 22.3 KB | 416 lines

        The following is an article from HUSTLER magazine, March 1987.

This article is typed in entirely without authorization of HUSTLER
magazine however the article strikes on an issue so important in this
day of diminishing personal freedoms from an overbearing government that
it is felt by this person that all of us who will be faced with this
issue should know what is happening and how to beat it.


                  DRUG TESTING:  THE COMING OF THE BRAIN POLICE
                            by William John Watkins

        It sounds insame, but on October 28, 1986, President Reagan
signed a bill that will make urine a major industry in the United
States.  Thousands of Americans will spend 40 hours a week watching
other people piss into plastic cups.

        There will be tens of thousands of urine takers, urine watchers,
urine testers, urine cops, urine lawyers and expert medical witnesses
specializing in urine, not to mention the urine-cup makers, urine-test
makers and the printers of urine-lab test forms.  Undoubtedly, community
colleges and vocational schools will soon be giving courses in urine
watching, gathering, testing, and offering two-year programs with a
degree in urine.

        This would be funny if it wasn't part of a larger trend toward
random searches of all kinds.  If you've been laughing about it, laugh
while you can; the odds are that you are going to be its next victim.
Mere innocence will not protect you.

        If you like a few beers after work, if you smoke cigarettes, if
you've ever shared a joint or snorted a line of coke at some weekend
party, if you take and recreational drug at all, you could lose your
job.

        If there's anything in your sex life that couldn't be described
on prime-time television, if there's anything in your finances you
wouldn't want the IRS to see, if there's anything at all in your private
life you would not want made public, in fact even if you're one of the
tiny minority who uses no drugs and leads a saintly life, there's still
a chance you could get fired.

        The routine use of urinalysis and lie detectors to test workers
and job applicants is fast becoming a way of life.  More than a quarter
of the Fortune 500 companies, including such giants as IBM, General
Motors, American Airlines and DuPont, test employees of prospective
employees for drug use.  At least half are expected to do so by 1988,
and the National Football League, the National Hockey League and the
National Basketball Association are expected to follow baseball's
example and set up centralized drug-testing programs within the next few
years.

        Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth recently suspended seven
players, allowing them to play only after they paid a fine of 10% of
their salaries for admitted drug use.  Things are much tougher in more
commonplace businesses, where employees are easier to replace than
superstar athletes.  A quarter of the companies in a recent poll
admitted that they would fire any employees who tested positive.

        Those are ominous statistics, considering that almost a third of
all workers tested at a Conneciticut steel mill registered positive for
illegal drugs.  If alcohol and nicotine had been included, the plant
would probably have had to fire its entire work force and start over.

        The really frightening statistic is that according to one study
performed for the Centers for Desease Control (CDC), in some labs two
thirds of the tests were wrong!

        If the Presisdent's Commission on Organized Crime has its way,
not only all federal employees, but anyone working for the more than
15,000 companies who do business with the government will be routinely
tested for drug use.  Combined with the drug-testing programs already in
place, millions of American workers could be tested for drug use within
the next year.  Even if the drug-testing companies estimate of 97%
accuracy is accepted, thousands of innocent workers will be falsely
accused of drug use.

        If the Connecticut statistics hold true for other companies,
millions of Americans will test positive and risk losing their jobs,
whether they use drugs at work or not.  In the case of marijuana, they
will test positive even if they have stropped using the drug as much as
sex weeks earlier, and even if they have simply been in the same room
where it was being smoked.

        None of the Constitutional guarantees against unreasonalble
search and seizure or against self-incrimination will protect them.
Persons testing positive could be fired or forced to enter treatment
programs.

        U. S. District Judge Robert F. Collins has ruled that the U. S.
Customs Service's drug-testing program is an unconstitutional violation
of rights of privacy and of protections against unreasonable search and
seizure and self-incrimination.  It remains for the government agency to
appeal this decision, which could take the issue all the way to the
Supreme Court, a legal body that tends to have a pronounced Reagan
Administration bias.  Even if the High Court does uphold the right of
federal emplyees to urine privacy, this ruling might not apply to
piss-curious employers in the private sector. Activists for whiz freedom
point out that, while they may in fact financially support it, most
Americans do not work for the federal government. *1

        The chances of proving your innocence once you have tested
positive are practically nonexistent, as Juanita M. Jones, a 49-year-old
grandmother of four, discovered.  Ms. Jones, a school-bus aide, tested
positive for marijuana use during mass urinalysis testing of all
school-transportation workers in the District of Columbia.  She denied
using the drug and produced two negative urinalysis tests of her own to
prove her innocence.  She was fired anyway.

        Most test manufacturers advise the use of a second test, costing
$50 to $75, to confirm initial positive results on the $20 screening
tests.  But managers, anxious to save money, generally ignore the
advice.  Some even use "do it yourself" tests that are even more
unreliable than the professional tests.

        The professional labs are bad enough.  In one CDC study some
professional lags were wrong 100% of the time, and gave results that
would have incriminated innocent people tho-thirds of the time.

        The reason for the large number of errors is the test itself.
The most commonly used test, the thin layer chromatography (TLC) test,
is intended as a screening prodedure and is conclusive only when the
results are negative.  If the test is positive, it should be confirmend
by another test, the gas chromatography / mass spectometer test, (GC /
MS), which can be 100% accurate for some drugs.

        In the TLC test, drug residues in urine move different distances
along a lab plate and turn different colors.  Cocaine, for example,
migrates farthest from the source, while morphine is one of the weakest
travelers. However, some durgs such as Darvon and cocaine tend to travel
almost the distance and can lead to a legitimate prescription drug being
misidentified as an illegal drug.

        In addition, the colors the drug residures turn are very
difficult to identify.  According to Dr. Mohammed Abdel-Rahman, Director
of Toxicology at University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey,
"The colors can be very confusing."  Only highly trained and experienced
lab technicians can recognize the subtle differences between some of the
shadings, which tend to run together and cause misidentifications.

        Herbal tea and prescription drugs can trigger false positive
results and, according to Dr. John Morgan, professor of biomedical
education at CCNY, about 95% of the positive results for amphetamines
are due to the misidentification of over the counter nasal
decongestants.

        An even more insidious misidentification occurs in testing for
marijuana use.  Dr. James Woodford, and Atlanta forensic chemist, claims
melanin, which is responsible for the darkness of skin pigment, can
break down in urine into a chemical substance that indicates marijuana
use.  As a result, people with dark skin run a higher risk than those
with light skin of being wrongly accused of having used marijuana.

        They are not the only people who have suffered from false test
results.  In 1984 the Army notified at least 60,000 soldiers that their
positive drug tests may have been wrong because their urine specimens
had been mislabeled or contaminated.  More than 9,000  soldiers were
dishonorabley discharged by the Army before the mix-ups were discovered.

        Most of the falsely accused are less fortunate.  They either
have no money to fight the injustice done to them, or they are only job
applicants and have no legal grounds to sue, since being refused a
job-for any reason-doesn't deprive them of something they already had.

        Motivations for drug testing vary.  According to Dupont's vice
president of safety, health and environmental affairs, Kr. Bruce W.
Karrh, "DuPont has an obligation to provide a safe and healthy
workplace.  The intent is not to terminate people; the intent is to get
them into treatment."

        Altruistic motives notwithstanding, Chicago labor lawyer Mark
Juster's assessment may be more to the point.  "If you've got a drug or
alcohol problem in your factory," Juster says, "it's a good bet you're
losing money."  The loss of money through absenteeism, accidents and
decreased productivity. is a major motivator for drug testing, according
to Peter B. Bensinger, former director of the Drug Enforcement
Administration.  Said Bensinger, "If somebody smokes pot on a Saturday
night, it's the employer's business Monday morning. It's the company's
problem if its absentee reate is 2 and 1/2 times higher, and the medical
costs are out of sight.

        Drug testing seems like an easy way to solve thes problems;
except that the tests measure not what was done Saturday night, but what
may have been done days or weeks before.  The chemical residues of
cocaine, heroin and PCP are still present in the urine three to four
days after use.  Marijuana, which stays in the body's fat cells, can be
detected up to six weeks after use.  Even accurate urinalysis can
demonstrate only that a person has sused one of these drugs, not that
they used them on the job.

        A more accurate way of determining on-the-job drug use is the
Alcohol Drug Motosensory Impairment Machine.  The ADMIT machine,
invented by Dr. S. Thomas Westerman, a New Jersey ear, nose and throat
doctor, measures brain waves to determine if the employee is under the
influence of alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, diazepan, barbiturates or
opiates, or any combination of these drugs.  If any testing is to be
done, the ADMIT machine is probably the best method.  It is accurate;
nobady has to follow anybody into the toilet; it is not painful like a
blood test; there are no samples to be mishandled or mislabeled; and it
does not test what the employee did on his weekend, only if he is under
the influence of drugs at the moment.  Moreover, it is inexpensive at $7
per test, and its results are immediate.

        The big problem with the ADMIT machine is that it will encourage
even more drug testing, which is in violation of the Constitutional
guarantee against being subjected to unreasonable search and seizure.

        The founding fathers were familiar with the occupational
paranoia of cops, and made it illegal to search everybody who comes
along on the off chance that one of them has soething to hide.  "Drug
testing," according to the Ohio ACLU's associate director, Mark levy,
"throws a dragnet over a vast number of innocent people, under the guise
that a few who are not innocent will be found out."

        In addition, random drug testing violates two basic principles
of American law.  The first is the assumption that you are innocent
until proven guilty.

        Moreover, random drug testing not only assumes that you are
guilty until you take a test to prove your innocence, it requires that
you give evidence against yourself if you are guilty, something even
traitors, ax murderers and child molesters are not required to do.

        On the surface it appears that the Constitutional guarantee
against self-incrimination is being violated by every business
conducting random drug test.  For example, when the Nicor Drilling
Company of Wheatland, Oklahoma, fired three of its 200 workers for
refusing to take drug tests, it would seem to have violated their rights
against self-incrimination.

        Yet it did nothing illegal.  According to Douglas Laycock,
associate dean of the University of Texas law school, "With a couple of
exceptions, the Constitution regulates what the government can do; it
doesn't regulate what private citizens can co.  A private employer can
impose whatever requirements he can get away with." *1

        These legal invasions of privacy have no limit.  Illegal drugs
that could get you fired.  Alcoholism causes more absenteeism, higher
medical bills and poorer work quality than any other ailment.

        Alcoholics make up 10% to 15% of the work force.  The National
Council on Alcohlism estimates that addicted workers lose a quarter of
their productivity and cost employers 25% of their annual salary in
absenteeism, sick leave, accidents, and health and disability payments.

        The extra 50% the employer of sober workers gets in reduced
costs and increased productivity is pure profit.  Since Constitutional
protections apparently stop at the plant gate, employers are not likely
to be any more lenient with employees who drink and work than the state
with citizens who drink and drive.

        Nor are you likely to be treated any fairer if you are addicted
to what the National Institure on Drug Abuse ranks as the most lethal
and addictive of all drugs - nicotine.

        Since 25% of all deaths are directly related to smoking, while
on 5% are related to alcohol and 1% or 2% to the abuse of other
addictive substances, an all-out attack on smoking can be expected in
the workplace.  It has already begun in military offices, barracks,
vehicles and aircraft.  The reasons sound remarkably like what has been
said about the dangers of illegal drugs.  "Smoking tobacco," according
to the Department of the Army, "harms readiness by impairing physical
fitness and by increasing illness, absenteeism, premature death and
health-care costs."

        If the company you work for can keep you from having a cigarette
on your break or a few too many beets after work, no part of your
private life is safe.

        Corporations are already testing workers for exposure to the
AIDS virus, and other venereal diseases may become cause for firing.
Companies have already fired workers for their sex lives.  In November,
1981, the United Parcel Service fired Jon Slhoda on the grounds that he
committing adultery because he was living with a female co-worker while
separated from his wife.

        By extension, any of your recreations could become the concern
of your employer.  Employee theft costs companies more a year than drugs
do, and unsuccessful gambling certainly gives an employee a motive to
steal, give away trade secrets or sabotage production.  Faced with such
threats in the past, many corporations have turned to the use of a
technology that almost makes drug testing look practical - the
polygraph.

        Two million people a year are given polygraph tests, and 98% of
them, according to psychologist Benjamin Kleinmuntz of the University of
Illinois at Chicago, are given by private companies to employees.  The
number of employment ploygraph examinations has tripled in the past ten
years.

        There is evidence that the polygraph's chief use is to
intimidate people into confessing.  As Boston University psychology
professor Leonard Saxe, who investigated polygraphs for the Office of
Technology assessment, said, "A good examiner scares the crap out of
you.  It's theater."

        The polygraph is even more inaccurate that urinalysis.  Dr. John
H. Gibbons, director of the Congressional Office of Technology
Assessment, said after his study of the polygraph, found that it called
truthful people liars more than half the time.

        The government's claim that the test is 98% accurate is based on
what has got to be the world record for guilibility.  The figures came
from a study of questionnaires sent to polygraphers in Virginia, asking
them how many of the tests they gave in the past year turned out to be
correct.  Nobody at the Pentagon, of course, considered subjecting the
polygraphers to a lie detector test.

        Nor is the polygraph the worst of the assaults on worker
privacy. Companies have set up hidden video cameras, searched lockers
and cars, frisked workers on their way into work, hired undercover
agents to pose as workers and even threatened to use dope-sniffing dogs.

        Now U. S. Attorney Thomas Greelish wants the government to bave
access to your personal banking records on the grounds that the public
has the right to be protected against drug users.  The hysteria
surrounding the use of drugs in America is so intense that the Marlboro
Township, New Jersey, school board proposed the adoption of a procedure
for conducting strip-searches of kindergarten children.  Chances are
your employer is caught up in that same hysteria.

        If he is, the cup's smaller than it looks; so try not to piss on
your fingers.

             HOW TO BEAT THE DRUG TEST AND WHAT TO DO IF YOU DON'T

        The first thing to do is to find out as much as you can about
your situation.  Ask if you will be fired if you refuse to take the
test.  Find out whether your union or another organized support group
will back you with legal assistance if you refuse and are fired.  Find
out what type of test is going to be used and whether a secondary test
will be used to confirm the first. Find out if your company fires
employees who test positive or if, like many companies, it has a
rehabilitation program.

        If you are one of the millions who use drugs regularly and you
are sure you'll fail the test, there are a few things you can do.  If
you are going to be fired anyway, refuse the test and take your case to
the American Civil Liberties Union.  They are strongly opposed to random
drug testing, but that doesn't mean they'll take your case.  If your
company has a rehabilitation program and doesn't fire first offenders,
take the test.

        If you take the test, there are a few things you can do to pass
it, but none are foolproof.  Most tests are for more likely to see drugs
that aren't there than to miss drugs that are.  To get a false negative
for a marijuana test, it may help to drink lots of water the day before
urinalysis. Empth the bladder early on the day of the test and fill the
bladder again at least an hour before the test.  Drinking diluted
vinegar may help to speed up the body's elimination of cocaine.

        If that doesn't work, your best bet is to contaminate the sample
so the test results will be ambiguous and you can challenge their
validity in court.  The best legal issues are not the Constitutional
ones, but challenges based on contamination or misidentification of the
sample, the set of standards used int the test, the efficiency of the
equipment and the competence of the testers.

        The easiest way to contaminate the sample is to add salt to it,
including sweat.  A sliver is of soap deposited underneath the
fingernail and held in the stream of urine may contaminate the sample
enough to disqualify it.  Foreigh substances in the sample will give a
lawyer an opening to challenge the test results.

        The best way to beat a drug test is not to have to take it.
Your best defense is your union, if you have one.  Make sure that a
clause allowing random drug testing is not included in your contract or
any future contract. If your union leaders feel drug testing is
negotiable, encourage them to make sure that it's not random and that it
leads to a rehabilitation program and not firing.

        Your local legislator is anouther source of prevention.  Oregon,
Maine, Maryland and California are considering legislation to restrict
or eliminate drug testing by private industry.  Voice your opinion to
your state legislator.

        Letters to congressmen could also have an impact, especially to
Representative Don Edwards (Democrat, California), Chairman of the
Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights.  Stress the issue of
unreasonable search and ask what you can do to help prevent random drug
testing.  This will encourage your representatives to respond
specifically to your letter.  Have the letter typed if at all possible;
the most reasoned argument in the world has little impact if it's
written in crayon on yellow paper with wide lines.

===========================================================================

Silent (K)night notes..

*1  Those "quarter of all fortune five hundred companies"that give piss
tests all have government contracts (how do you think they got to be
fortune five hundred in the first place..).  Its just as unconstitional
for the government to have someone on the government's payroll violate
your rights, or for the government to enter in a contract with someone
to violate your rights.

Cincy Bell gives piss tests by the way....  Figures..

Abbie Hoffman wrote a book called "Steal this Urine Test" that is very
intersting reading.  Besides telling your how to avoid, or nullify such
fascist testing, it also provides information on how the amount of drugs
confiscated is vastly exagerated in value.  (When this book was
published, every day in the newspaper you would see a story with a
headline like, "Biggest Drug Bust of All Time, Millions Confiscated".
These stories were wrong.  I suppose as a consequence, the police got
billions of more dollars for enforcement.  The federal government alone
spends about 10 billion a year on "drug enforcement".

Abbie recomends sending bags of piss in the mail to the prez.  Sounds
like a nice idea..


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