"High Court Upholds NASA's Broad Background Checks"

ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:

This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.

MELISSA BLOCK, Host:

NPR's Nina Totenberg reports.

NINA TOTENBERG: Robert Nelson is a senior research scientist at the Jet Propulsion Lab.

ROBERT NELSON: They can ask about who I slept with, who I smoked dope with when I was in college, if I did smoke dope, et cetera. They can ask everything about my entire personal life.

TOTENBERG: And pointing to WikiLeaks, he contends that federal rules barring disclosure of the information are no solace.

NELSON: They can't keep it private. It's just not the way it happens in the information age.

TOTENBERG: Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington.