The objectives of OSC Watch are to expose US Office of Special Counsel lawbreaking since 1989 in failing to protect, as required by 5 USC 1214, the 10,000 or more federal employees who sought its protection from prohibited personnel practices (PPP’s) - not limited to whistleblower reprisal type PPP, but including the 11 (of 12) types of PPP for which OSC has jurisdiction - particularly the 3000 or so who subsequently filed whistleblower appeals at MSPB; along with MSPB’s enabling lawbreaking failure since 1989, per 5 USC 1204, to conduct oversight of OSC’s compliance with 5 USC 1214;

Frequently Asked Questions

OSCWatch.org

Q. I want to contact OSC Watch
A. Register using the ‘Tools’ menu at the bottom of the right-hand side-bar to comment on individual articles and blog entries or sign-up for a free anonymous account on the talk-back forum, here and tell us your story.
Q. I want to remain anonymous and I am using PGP, how do I send you my public key?
A. Registered users of the talk-back forum can send private messages to each other and to the volunteer force of administrators behind this site. You can cut and paste your PGP public key as plain text into these private message sessions and exchange secure e-mail details from there.
Q. What is PGP?
A. Pretty Good Privacy was developed by David Zimmerman as a way to send information which both the sender and recipient can be sure has not been viewed or altered by a third party en-route. By encrypting a message using the recipient’s public key, which only the recipient’s private key can decrypt, e-mail text and e-mail attachments can be sent “in the clear” across public networks, such as the internet, without being human readable to anyone who does not have the private key or the private key pass-phrase. It was once calculated that to “crack” the strongest prime number cypher PGP can utilize would take one of the world’s top five supercomputers more than 20 years of dedicated massively parallel processing.

RSS and Podcasts

RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, allows the information contained on OSCWatch.org to be posted to more than just our own website. Postings made to the main front page blog are also, simply put, wrapped in special code which allows other services, such as search engines like Technorati.com - who specialise in indexing blogs - to see what is happening on our site as soon as new articles are posted and make that content available to other services and users who subscribe to our RSS feed.

Articles can also contain media other than text, such as MP3 files, PDF documents and JPEG images. Podcasts are MP3 recordings which are included in this RSS wrapper, so that services such as Odeo.com, Podnova and the ubiquitous Apple iTunes can automatically distribute this content to subscribers as soon as they become available.

When you subscribe to any of OSCWatch.org’s RSS feeds, either by simply bookmarking them or cutting and pasting them into an RSS reader, media files attached to new articles posted to the site immediately download onto your RSS reader software of choice, such as Apple’s iTunes.

You can use the RRS feed in an additional number of different ways for your own website. You can paste the feed URL (http://feeds.feedburner.com/oscwatchdotorgpodcastandrssfeed) into your web site, so that your site’s readers can instantly see when a new article has been added to our page.

You can automatically synchronise newly downloaded Podcasts to your iPod, so you can play them on your commute to work or you can simply play them as if they were any other media file inside your iTunes library on your Mac or PC (does not require an iPod).

In addition to MP3 Podcast files, the OSCWatch.org RSS feed contains additional material, such as image files, PDF documents and video files - all of which, again, will automatically download to your computer when you launch iTunes, or any other RSS reader software you decide to use, as soon as they are published.

For an exhaustive list of free to download RSS reader software, as well as links to other Windows, Linux and Macintosh applications, see these links to versiontracker.com, download.com and rss-specifications.com

Join us on Skype

Skype is free software for Mac, PC and Linux which routes long-distance telephone calls from one computer to another via the internet. This technology is called VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol). Because Skype uses the internet, long-distance, long duration calls - which are normally expensive - are completely free. All you need is some software, a microphone and a story to share.

If you want to join us on the next conference call to be included in future OSCWatch.org Podcasts, please send us your details using the talk-back forum, here in the Podcasts section.

You DO NOT not need to include in your message any personal details, such as your e-mail address or your Skype name. We will contact you using both the private messaging function of the talk-back forum and via e-mail with the information you need to join in on the next recording.

To use Skype you will need the following:

  • A reasonably clear, good quality, microphone connected to your computer’s soundcard and speakers
  • A good speed internet connection (cable or better)
  • The free to download and use Skype chat software, for Mac, Linux and Windows, found here

Other Technical help

Q. I can’t view the site properly. All the text is messed up and some of the links don’t work.
A. Microsoft Internet Explorer doesn’t work properly. It isn’t designed to work properly. It is designed to make you feel stupid for not knowing how to make shoddy software work properly so you’ll rush out every 6 months and buy a new computer - which still doesn’t work properly. Download Firefox, replace it as your default web browser and find some kind of peace.
Q. I still can’t view the site properly and I’ve installed the latest version of Firefox and I have installed the latest updates to Windows.
A. Download Linux. It’s completely free and it’s designed to work properly by people who like you.
Q. It’s still not working properly, you’ve done something wrong in your code.
A. Buy a Mac. See? That’s better isn’t it?
Q. No, I really can’t view the pages properly!! DO SOMETHING!!
A. Oh all right then. If you desperately need to contact the site administrator with bugs or another no-doubt fascinating technical rant about how Windows is better than “those things that only have one mouse button” et cetera, please be specific about your opertaing system version, the browser you are using and include any error messages.

Please DO NOT send any information intended for the attention of OSCWatch.org to the above e-mail address. If you need to contact OSCWatch.org, see above.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed or check out our talk-back forum. Thanks for your support!