Those aren't your only options. Your other options are to stay in and leak information. Stay in and try to damage the project etc...
I don't know what I'd do if I were in the position to damage, delay, or stop something as blatantly unconstitutional as a Muslim registration database, but I hope that I'd be able to muster to the courage to do so.
The civil service oath requires you to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic"
I understand that constitutionality is determined by the Supreme Court, but if the government attempts to create a Muslim registration, they've crossed the line and it's time to act.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Entry-Exit_R...
Trump, of course, has suggested a much more aggressive and less subtle program that includes an explicit religious test.
The info about it is all available publicly.
Whichever way it is, the real time to stop NSEERS was when it started in 2002. Since that didn't happen, it didn't stop until 2011. So yes, it is a good time to complain about religious profiling when a new administration is planning to institute it.
"The government" (our government in my case) has crossed the line so many times on so many different issues. The citizens never did anything. If the federal government built camps and starting rounding up Muslims or any group, we would do nothing tangible. There would be all sorts of racket made about it, but nothing would come of it. Any suggestion otherwise is just an attempt to bait some sort of discussion that Donald Trump is either the second coming of Adolf Hitler or the herald of the apocalypse. I don't like the man in any way. But where we all these people when Barack Obama decided he had the authority to execute US citizens?
Snowden pulled the veil on many issues similar to what you're referring to. I'm fairly certain he was a citizen at the time. I'd reference Chelsea Manning, because she acted as a citizen when betraying her oath to the military. I could see arguments against that, though.
The government came down hard on both these individuals. It's a damn shame. And please don't take this to be a pro-oppressive-government stance. I'm simply saying that citizens did do something. And every day there are citizens working in thousands of government jobs across the country trying to make the right decision. There's no reason to slight them.
At any given time, there are more laws to enforce and enact than people and other resources to enforce and enact them. Deciding what exactly to enforce or enact is - in other words, their priorities - is often left up to individual agencies. For example, the Obama administration prioritized immigration enforcement by targeting those found at the border, or those who committed crimes [1]. In another instance, marijuana use is illegal under federal law, but some local laws allow it, and the Obama administration explicitly deprioritized enforcement in such cases [2].
Finally, I think there are valid cases where individuals within government should exercise their own judgement and resist direct orders if they feel they are unjust. One such case is when Governor Schwarzenegger ordered the pay reduction (down to federal minimum wage) of 200,000 state employees until the state legislature agreed on a budget [3]. The person who was supposed to enact this order, state controller John Chiang, resisted.
"Under Schwarzenegger’s plan, the workers would receive their full salaries once a budget was approved. But California had enough cash in its accounts, and, in Chiang’s view, the Governor’s move could violate the Fair Labor Standards Act. Moreover, he thought, it was cruel. It was the height of the financial crisis, and mortgage defaults were up more than a hundred per cent over the previous year." [3]
[1] http://www.npr.org/2016/08/31/491965912/5-things-to-know-abo...
[2] http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/president-obama-marijuan...
[3] http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/11/21/resisting-trump...
You kind of do. If you're ordered to do something that seems in conflict with the law and/or Constitution, you have a responsibility to not leave, to oppose that unlawful or unconstitutional action. That may require you remaining in place. If you leave, all that's left behind are the sort of non-thinking automatons I was surrounded by at one job for the AF who "were just following orders". They will follow the unlawful and unconstitutional orders and our experiment fails.
Your obligation as a public servant in this country is not to the President or to the Congress, but to the People by way of the Constitution and those things which are permitted by it. Orders aren't obligations if they're orders to do things we shouldn't be doing.
For the military, of course, there is no choice: one obeys.
1. Jury nullification.
2. Police discretionary powers.
What's the difference between bureaucratic incompetence and sabotage?
Sure you do. Our "duly elected representatives" are bullshit and have no special standing at all. The State imposes itself on us whether we like it or not, and we are all, as individuals, certainly entitled to oppose its abuses in any way we can.
The USDS is a taxpayer-funded public entity. The "greatest good..." is determined by the law, written by our duly elected representatives. You don't get to serve the public and selectively reject the law. If the Congress passes a law you disagree with, you must follow it or resign--those are the only options, per your civil service oath.