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Los Alamos Security Infiltrated By Reporter
morcheeba writes "Wired reported Noah Shachtman gives a first-hand account of his entry into a high-security area at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Yes, there are pictures. It seems that the birthplace of the atom bomb is being guarded by string, backed up by guards with empty holsters. There's a little more info on Noah's Defense Tech website."
It seems that the birthplace of the atom bomb is being guarded by string, backed up by guards with empty holsters.
well, most of the anti-nuke protestors hate nukes and guns too, so it seems that the guards need to be at least equal, no?
Sneaking onto the grounds on LANL is like saying its a feat to sneak across the US-Mexico border.
How is it that reporters never get nailed for criminal trespass?
evil adrian
I was wondering who'd actually bid on
this thing on eBay.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
It's run by the GOVERNMENT!
Did you really expect competence?
This is the real signature
(Beats those shadows on the cave wall, don't it?)
I wonder if he saw Gordon Freeman by any chance while he was there?
There is absolutely nothing to prevent anyone from just walking in and, *sniffle*, exploring and *wheeze*, doing whatever they *cough, hack, choke*, gawddamn, I feel like crap today. Better go have a lie down before I write the rest of this article. *glurgle*
Sadam Hussein has quit Iraq and is now providing his services to the US arms establishment as a consultant specializing in making defense laboratories bloody difficult to find.
All we need is a bunch of UN arms inspectors touring the US looking for nukes in the presidential palaces and such security issues will soon be fixed!
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
Like Wired's servers, at the moment...
/. Los Alamos!
Hey, that's a GREAT idea! Let's all
~~~
"The slave thinks he is released from bondage, only to find a stronger set of chains" - NIN
Guys, don't worry about the lax security at our nation's national labs. The Patriot II Act will protect us. Nothing to see here. Go back to your business.
GMD
watch this
Apparently, security at Los Alamos is run by the same folks who allowed the knife-weilding lunatic break into Prime Minister Chretien's home and threaten his wife for half an hour.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
for while America's fighting men are top notch, having the world's best and largest nuclear arsenal behind them is a great insurance policy.
If the Godless Chinese, or Godless Russians, or heretica Al'Qeada can penetrate Los Alamos and steal vital military secrets, the Pax Americana might be compromised, and the world would become a far harsher place.
A. Rightmann
Tax dollars at work: "While Los Alamos is praised as a jewel of homeland security, it may actually be one of the country's biggest vulnerabilities,"
--------
Free your mind.
Seriously, though, doesn't it seem like there's just one security failure after another at these labs recently? I remember after the Wen Ho Lee "incident" they tightened things up to the point where the scientists were complaining, but apparently that was just a temporary thing.
It seems to me that installations which are especially key deserve much closer attention than they seem to get. Why isn't there a national security force staffed by professionals? They could guard non-military installations which have specific value, like nuclear plants, dams and national labs.
This is just another example of how nothing's changed since 9-11 except our willingness to give away our rights to those who consider themselves our masters. It's getting depressing to watch as we (the US) waste our time and attention on imaginary or, at best, overinflated threats while doing nothing to focus on our real problems.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
It's the security you don't see. Unless he had a geiger counter and an anthrax vaccination I dont think anyone would want to risk wandering around Los Alamos. Just the threat of spending the rest of my life with a third arm is enough to keep me away. I mean think about it, he states they hauled away 9 tons of radioactive soil from where he was wandering around, think they got all of it? Plus theres the whole matter of what made the soil radioactive in the first place lying around somewhere. Hope he didn't bring home any souviners.
Check out my life
...was when he said that the area he had gotten into was a big top-secret area "according to lab sources".
It turns out that my basement is actually a top-secret area for Los Alamos National Labs too. My sources from the lab told me so.
You'd better, boy. And send me the warthog after you've finishing bangin' it. Cheers.
Oh, and I suppose breaking into LANL will be an excuse for the Dept. of Homeland Security to have unlimited access to our private emails and hard drives.
For example?
Anybody can come over and inspect the US weapons of mass destruction. We'll leave the light on for you, just let yourself in. If you want to phone in a report, there's a few pay phones over there.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
This is my first throod post and it is first post. Oh the joy...I am so proud of my little post. One day I will have a cluster of theese....
--
(Sponsored by atheism: the real world even in all its gore is better than make-believe)
(Sponsored by cheeseSource for President 2012)
What building did he actually walk up to??
If it was really were important it would have been guarded.
I'm unimpressed, maybe next week he'll write an article about how he went past a sign that said "employees only" at the Department of Motor Vehicles.
The real question is do the encrypt the string?
Hell the Chinese and Russians already know this stuff, and Bin Laden was trained by the US.
Its the FRENCH that this stuff is being protected from.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
I visited there in 1999 to interview one of the astrophysicists. He took me to his lab where they had prototypes of the first gamma-ray burst detectors on display in the hall. When I remarked on how easy it was to drive into the base and asked how they keep people out of the interesting parts, he pointed down the hall. There was a floor-to-ceiling turnstile gate that you had to go through to reach a sensitive area. If your badge was not valid, the gate locked until the guards with dogs came to retrieve you. Security is a series of screens. He penetrated the first and flimsiest screen (and probably not really unnoticed). I'd be more impressed and worried if he got into (and out of) the building I saw that was surrounded by 10-foot-high fences capped with razor wire and watched by TV cameras every 50 feet or so.
Forgive me, but having grown up in Los Alamos, I could have told ya that. Sheesh. Kids in Los Alamos have been a pest for LANLites for years. The security isn't the best for many areas.
Additionally, a few years ago, a peace activitist walked into the lobby of the plutonium processing plant (iirc) to pray for peace. This was in a supposed Cross-This-Line-and-We-Shoot-to-Kill area. Funny that. He certainly didn't get riddled. Good thing he didn't carry, say, a whole lot of plastic explosives with the intent of being a suicide bomber, huh?
Finally, even during the Cold War, one of the guys that worked in a sensitive area wore a hat with a KGB symbol on it. He wore it walking in and out as a joke with his coworkers. They, the guards, never even inquired about it. While it was a joke, and the guards might have gotten in on it, a large part of what made it funny was that the guards never even batted an eye.
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
"We didn't fence all 43 square miles," said lab spokeswoman Nancy Ambrosiano. "But if you're near an area that matters, you can't get in."
If you read the article, it turns out this boob managed to infiltrate a "Top-Secret" storage shed for illicit camping gear. There are probably thousands of facilities around the country that house classified facilities that you could still walk into the lobby of and claim to have infiltrated. You can drive onto many military bases around the country, untill you get to the defenses that protect anything important. Shachtman is trully a l33t j00rnul15t.
Sure does sound like he saw some pretty interesting stuff, doesn't it? Sounds like he basically saw what anyone driving by might have seen.. some buildings and some guards. What was the point? The he climbed a fence and got closer to the guards? Wired sucks. They overhype everything.
Lets be realistic here, guns really don't act as much of a deterrent and are much more likely to be used against the guards than in their defense. As the incident in Alabama this morning showed, the fallacy of 'an armed society' really doesn't hold up.
I could see giving the guard pepper spray or outfitting them with batons. The police do quite well with those and they most likely deal with far more incidents of violence every day than a Los Alamos guard would. Guns are something that we need to be focusing on getting out of our society rather than bringing more and more in. To pretend that they would provide any more deterrance than pepper spray is silliness.
Lets not worry over we have armed guards watching over our precious secrets. Lets work toward keeping arms from ever presenting a problem in the first place. If you can prevent the bad guys from getting them, the good guys don't need them, and the first step toward that goal is to reduce their number by any means possible.
Take a look at the photos, specifically the ones of the guard. Notice it's raining.
In every other photo, there isn't a cloud in the sky and the ground is dry.
These photos were obviously taken at different times, possibly in completely different places. (i.e. not LANL)
Los Alamos director Theo states there are 7000 reporters wandering around the lab grounds.
I thought that you're supposed to get a Dell computer.
More than enough BS
Los Alamos has far more security people than 50. You can see 50 guards just in the weight room during peak times. And that doesn't consider all the people with office jobs.
green peace was doing this stuff in france recently. one on the stunts included inflating a gigantic Homer Simpson figure on the premises of the nuclear power plant. is it funny or scary?
The guards are most likely unionized, which is why a guy with a torn achilles is still on duty.
Cunning linguists
where Bart buys Los Alamos for $1 at a building auction
working in a factory with no salary is better than working at the cracker factory.
I was up there a couple weeks ago with some friends. We worked on digging under the fence for a while until we a asked a scientist on the other side of the fence if it was public land we were breaking into. Oops.
So sure, the security's pretty lax.
It is my personal experience that the UC has no interest in security, physical, or technological, only emotional. Low level administration is of the opinion that "hey, who would really want to mess with us" and upper levels seem to be more concerned with the psychological impacts on students caused by making them safe than the saftey itself. Many see "homeland security" as some naziesque attempt to enslave their minds, and subconciously associate "security" with "bad." It's dangerous, it's irresponsible, and it's culturally ingrained.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
That tech area isn't "high-security". He couldn't even get close to a high-security TA. I guess the Feds will be coming for you now, DA.
Secondly, he completely misrepresents what the Lab facilities are like. LANL is not one big, monolithic facility sitting on a single plot of land. It's got a main area, right in town (the "front gate" he refers to), and then lots of little facilities scattered all over the area. They are individually secured.
Getting in the "front gate" is no big deal because, you know, visitors are allowed in. (Unlike Sandia in Albuquerque, which is much harder to get into. But it's a single contiguous site situated within an Air Force base.)
The one facility that easily the most sensitive is the plutonium refinement facility--yes, LANL still has a reactor and refines and stores some plutonium. That area is surrounded by several staggered perimeter fences, with mines between them, dogs, guards, and "helicopter landing denial cables" strung all over the area, for good measure.
Then, if you've ever been in any of the facilities, you'll find that there are armed guards stationed at entraces to sensitive areas within buildings. When I was in high school, and went on a tour of LANL as part of its "High School Senior Science Day", a friend of mine innocently walked down a corridor to a vending machine and was immediately physically hoisted in the air and carried back to the rest of the group by two armed guards.
Furthermore, constantly patrolling the area of the Lab, including parts of town and neighboring areas that border the labs, are MPs in Jeeps with M-16s prominently displayed.
LANL is a sprawling facility built upon finger-like mesas and in deep canyons spread over a huge area. LANL-owned land is fenced off, but for these remote facilities--like those along NM 4--are individually secured. And not all facilities are equal. Some are not that sensitive. There are a lot of relatively insecure facilities at LANL, because they do a lot more research than just weapons research. I had numerous friends who did coop work there while they were in college, and only one of them actually needed a security clearance to do her work.
LANL is, more than Livermore, and certainly more than Sandia and Oak Ridge, a very "civilian-esque" lab. They do weapons design work there, and those areas, along with the plutonium facility, you can be sure are heavily secured.
Finally, this author was an idiot. He was lucky that he tried to approach a facility that apparently isn't that sensitive. He's lucky he didn't get shot. They will shoot you. And you can bet that there will be criminal charges filed against him for this. Imbecile.
Is anybody else reminded of the comedy of Fallout 2? As long as you *look* like you belong there, getting in isn't a problem. Maybe the artificial intelligence of single player RPGs is far more accurate than people give them credit for.
Laws are for people with no friends.
Any who has read Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feinman can tell you that security at Los Alamos has been "incomplete" since Day One. Unrepaired holes in the fence, safes left with factory default combinations, banks of file cabinets with the same combo (and left open while unattended)....
2. All Right!!! Now we get even more paranoid delusional security where none has been needed before. Los Alamos? The grand daddy of research facilities infiltrated by a measly reporter? Wow! What a great way to sell fear and Big Brother's gun-toting orcs to every two-bit research outpost in the entire nation! Cool! Next thing we'll see is scientists required to wear hand guns in the cockpit-er, lab.
3. What is an 'Orange Alert' anyway? What color comes next? At what tint and shade should I drop my replicated food dish and dash to my battle station? (The nation not programmed? Please.)
-Fantastic Lad
And 2+2 = 9.
To each his own, I say. So, enjoy yourself. I'm sure the inmates will enjoy you!
TTFN
OK, TA-33 is a radio telescope, part of the Very Large Baseline Array (VLBA). It is, by all accounts, one of the least-sensitive parts of the lab.
So when this guy comes out and says things like TA-33 being focused in part on "black-ops," it's nothing but gonzo journalism.
Least the biological facility in the homeland defense is nigh impossible to get to without a helicopter or boat... it's on an island.
Oh come on... what a disappointing article.
So a guy with a camera hops a fense in the middle of a radioactive desert, and snaps a few pics of some ominous-looking signs near said fence. Big friggin' deal. Just like those photos of Area 51. Who cares? Did he try to go any deeper? Has he asked or thought about why that section was so accessible?
I used to work in a large engine manufacturing plant, that was built during WWII. The sprawl was almost incomprhensible, and even more so when you realized there were caverns underneath the entire complex. Not much went on down there in the late 90's, and most of it was unlit.. nobody really had any business going thru there. Nonetheless, I wandered around one day, and found a room full of dusty forgotten file cabinets, filled with, among other things, the full and complete HR records of people who had worked for the comapny and since died, long before I was even born. Birthdates, positions held, SSNs, all that. Another cabinet had some old drawings, and who knows what else I could have found. Some would see this was a huge deal (I guess leaving all sorts of personnel records around IS pretty stupid), but come on!
One floor above, and barely 100 yards away was a maximum-security area for prototype testing and research. I only got to go back there with escorts ranking up with the plant manager.
Yeah, I probably would have gotten in deep doodoo if I'd been caught snooping in the caverns, but the real areas of interest were protected. I'm sure that goes on in Los Alamos and evereywhere else. At least I HOPE so!
~~~
"The slave thinks he is released from bondage, only to find a stronger set of chains" - NIN
I always figured that the organizations being tresspassed on didn't think it was worth the bad publicity to try to prosecute someone. In this case though, that seems like a somewhat dubious assumption to make. I don't think Ashcroft, Ridge and company give a damn what the public thinks. We might just see this guy hang.
my dad subscribes to wired, so he knew about this a month ago.
OK, but please answer this: Is Los Alamos dying?
So this guy got onto the grounds of the lab, and was able to access a decrepid old shack. I'll bet money he couldn't have gotten anywhere where there was top-secret research or information.
So he made it onto the grounds and into an abandoned buiilding. They have problems with coyotes doing the same thing. Most of the grounds are not guarded or even fenced in. Its parameter is some 40 miles. There are even trailer houses in the unsecure areas, for civilian paperwork and such, sometimes known are the Leper Colony. The secure parts are, however, quite secure. Surveillance, armed guards and razor wire galore. This area is still not very interesting. The good stuff is wrapped in a couple more layers. Even someone with Q clearance cannot take a recording device or cell phone in there.
There is.
This is just another example of how nothing's changed since 9-11 except our willingness to give away our rights to those who consider themselves our masters.
What right exactly was given up by anybody in this particular case?
It's getting depressing to watch as we (the US) waste our time and attention on imaginary or, at best, overinflated threats [cia.gov] while doing nothing to focus on our real problems.
This is where you lose me. If you dont think that terrorists are a "Real Problem" I'd like to know what is, or I can give you a tour of Ground Zero.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
having a white/black skin helped him.
Had he been olive skinned ? Now that's a different story.
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
They protect nuclear secrets. (It gets worse, read Feynmann's "Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynmann" for some really good stories aobut nuclear secret protection problems.)
But... back to what I was saying.
If this is how the US protects nuclear secrets, what the hell are they protecting at Area 51? I guess top secret aeroplane designs deserve higher protection then nuclear weapon facilities.
Just something to think about. ^_^
~ kjrose
What?.. no helicopter gunships and armed personnel carriers were dispatched?.. no snipers?.. not even one attack dog?.. even an eensy weensy attack chihuahua?
You know what'll happen now... the DOE and Homeland Security, having been caught with their pants down - no, make that with their pants down, peeing ON THE SIDE OF THE TOILET, will be so embarrassed they'll immediately go for shooting the messenger for the message, and put poor Noah in jail.
I hope he thought of that before he published in Wired.. then again, maybe that's part of the plan for Becoming A Real Journalist - get arrested for your cause! I hope the ACLU and/or Wired (if they're loyal to their reporters) can get him off of the felony trespassing rap the gov will slap him with..
Walking across someone's lawn is not criminal. Reporters trespass on government property in order to cause embarrassment; and their documentation and disclosure of their actions proves this.
We would be in a world of shit if journalists were prevented from embarrassing our government.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
armed with only the vaguest sense of the facility's layout and slowed by a torn Achilles tendon
:)
Well he shouldn't have tried to cut the barb wire with the back of his leg! Friggin idiot...
...President Bush made an announcement that the staff at Wired were assisting terrorists in Iraq
One thing that should have been obvious to the guy writing the story.. is that the security around high-profile areas is intentionally lax looking. Basically on sensitive areas they have perimeter monitoring equipment, the entrance and exits to the locations have setups the weigh you, and won't let you in if there's a couple pound difference... and the supposed lack of guards isn't true. The second the perimeter is breached armed men will indeed come out and probably shoot you on the spot.
Hey man, do you think maybe he was saying that terrorists are the real problem? Since there was a link to Iraq and all that in the fake threats bit.
Unless you're so gullible that you believe that bombing the hell out of Iraq is going to make the US safer from terrorists, in which case you should save being outraged for when you consider how easily you're lied to.
Read the post all the way through before hitting that reply button.
I remember an anecdote (in Richard Feynman's Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, I think) that Los Alamos's security was pretty lax even during the Manhattan Project. Apparently there were a few places in the gate where local Indians were occasionally let through by the scientists and workers to watch movies and hang out.
If I'm not mistaken, Los Alamos is also where Feynman got his reputation for lockpicking, since he taught himself how to break into the safes where classified documents were stored and prove to the higher-ups that security wasn't as tight as they'd wanted to believe.
:wq
The government is making this huge deal out of how security conscious they are right now. That being the case, they should be a bit more careful about random people walking around their supposedly secure facility.
No he didn't get inside any occupied building, but I'm sure there is a decent amount of stuff lying around down there that the everyday joe shouldn't have access to. Not to mention the damage a decent sized bomb could do, even nearby. Both ANFO (Here) and Nitroglycerine are synthesizable from relatively common ingredients. A quick moving truck with a hefty payload could do massive damage. If _I_ can think of this crap THEY should damn well be thinking about it.
Oh yea, they'll never prosecute this guy. Freedom of the Press, remember? It applies to more than just the right to print papers. If they tried to prosecute him, they'd just draw more bad press.
(Heres the link in case my HTML is screwy: http://www.tisi.go.th/notif_th/fulltext/t00_370.pd f)
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I think it's either fuschia alert or burnt sienna alert.
That guy didn't even go near the important stuff I'm here in Santa Fe, about 20 minutes from LANL and you can recognize the important structures by the guard towers, barbed wire, and armed guards... plus there are cameras in all directions and even high level personnel have a tough time getting into them... this guy is trying to make a name for himself by doing absolutely nothing 'investigative'
I smell a red herring.
I'm sure the homeland security crown jewell is somewhere secure, with competent gaurds. While this has historic value, it's most likely a decoy to attract the less intelligent "terrorists".
It is, didn't you know that terrorists are being helped by aliens? It was the Al Quaeda sympathising aliens that shot down challenger with their anti-freedom-ray! The TA-33 is part of a long-term US government strategy to fight back against this new menace...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
He wasn't murdered, he was captured and sold as a sex slave to wealthy Russian businessmen. Eventually he managed to escape their evil clutches and now tends a farm in the Southwest of France, despite his missing penis.
Fact #1: 80% of all militay base property is landscaping and wildlife areas. The other 10% is protected to the level of needed security.
Fact #2: Without having insider knowledge of where on a military installation sensitive material is located you don't have a chance of hell of finding it wandering around - Much less penetrating any real security unimpeded.
Fact #3: Security doen't mean 100% access control. It merely means protecting assets to the degree needed to make it tough for the bad guys.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
I am an uncleared employee of LANL and I can assure you that security is top notch. I have never been allowed near any place that I am not cleared to be in. There are old buildings all over the lab (many of them unused) and NONE
of them used for anything interesting.
Regardless of the reporter's picture of the guard without the gun, the gaurds DO ave guns...lots of them. I've looked in my rearview mirror many times to find a Hummer with a roof mounted M-60 behind me. Any other labbies have something to add?
Hopefully they didn't test the Gamma Bomb, while he was there. Giant green reporters are the last thing we need.
Dave
Wow, my cubicle is better guarded then this place. I'd like to see him get through my wall of empty coke cans!
I've been there. The building I was in needed an id card and a plam scan to get past the armed guard and the two barbwire fences, and the heavy full height turnstile. Then once inside, I need to go to a second guard to check out a temperary badge to get into a room that had secret stuff. That room (a machine room) had an armed guard 24/7.
Not sure which Los Alamos he broke into...
It seems that the birthplace of the atom bomb is being guarded by string ...
... but it was *really good* string. Finest fiber ... the best money can buy. $45 a roll on the GSA schedule (MILSPEC costs bucks, ya know) ...
Yes
The little guy just ain't getting it, is he?
It was quite a few years ago, though.
My uncle worked there. We cruised through the security gate in his CJ with Cherry Bombs roaring and I didn't see a sole at the gate. Inside I was climbing around on the experiments peeping in the portholes with no ID tag or anything. There was one experiment that was studying plasma torroids for use (and I'm not making this up) as space propulsion or for car bumper coating. I was genuinely curious so I was asking questions about their setup and stuff. They just seemed a little annoyed and busy but not alarmed or anything.
My uncle was going through his toolbox, saying, "Here - want a wrench? How 'bout this cordless soldering iron?", and I'm like, "No thanks... don't want my only trip to Los Alamos to finish with theft of government property." Pretty cool experience, all-in-all. Glad I went before things changed.
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
I'm sure (or hope, at least) that the public just doesn't know about the *real* classified labs. I'm sure stuff is doing at LANL, but do you really think they'd secure the top secret projects with strings and empty holsters? The fact that this reporter got in so easily suggests that it's not a big deal anyway.
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
Another fluff article from Conde Nast with no substance.
The reason those areas the reporter "gained access" to have little security, is because there isn't anything there. Did the reporter find a vial of Anthrax, or an undetonated nuclear bomb? No. So who cares that he was able to explore some old, abandoned shacks and trailers?
Purely a bunk article meant to spread more FUD.
One time on tv about half an hour before a broadcast advertising for the news. They said 'find out about a secret nuclear reactor, right in our own city!'
Then another commercial in the next break comes on. 'Watch as we show you a nuclear reactor, closer to your home than you probably think!' And it showed a picture of the nuclear engineering building at the local university. I burst into laughter. That reactor was hardly 'secret', it is a well advertised reactor, a very puny one. I toured it about 4 years ago....
Then the final commercial.... 'we'll show you our hidden camera investigation where our undercover reporter infiltrates security and gets into the reactor room!' And it showed a picture of something I could understand a layman mistaking for the reactor, but it certainly was not the reactor.
During the broadcast they made a big point of how they were able to see labs and classrooms, and then unveiled their 'killer' footage. The camera man, obviously excited, walks all around for a long time taking every possible shot he can of what *he* thought was a reactor, but it was just a cooling device not related to the reactor at all. About five minutes after the broadcast, they announce a correction, that they had learned that it wasn't a reactor, and that the place housing the reactor wasn't accessible, but still the thought this stuff was dangerous in the hands of terrorists because it said 'high voltage...'
The news always botches this stuff up. How many times have you seen news reports on a technology you are intimately familiar with and laughed your ass off at the inaccuracies?
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Come on it's not like the Media is going on the air and detailing our war plans for Iraq. Giving estimates on when and where we will attack and with what weapons. And detailing which weapons we will be using.
I mean they are not going on the air telling us all that we will be able to watch from the Army's humvee the action unfolding knowing exactly what is going on.
huh...what? You mean that wasn't a dream?
It doesn't take a brain surgeon to know if you need to infiltrate a high-security area, you just ditch the public tour group when no one is looking. Easy and works every time.
I did find this one part of the article a little scary:
Last summer, on a nighttime stakeout, Doran said he and a team of FBI agents were accidentally locked into the TA-33 complex. Without identifying themselves, they asked a guard to open the gate and let them out. The guard complied without question -- he didn't even ask for an ID. Unfamiliar faces emerging from a top-secret facility late at night was, apparently, not cause for concern.
I was waiting in line to enter the main gate at Camp Pendleton, CA (USMC) which has MP's guarding all the gates. There was a bus in front of me that was being checked for illegal immigrants. As I sit, bored and pissed because the bus check takes extra time, I see a Hispanic guy jump off the bus and start running away from the gate. He didn't get very far. The MP jumped off the bus, chased him down, and tackled him. The MP rolled the guy onto his stomach and placed his knee in the guy's back. The guy was desperately trying to get up, so the MP grabbed the back of the guy's hair to smack his face into the ground. This sunned the guy for less then a second, but by that time the MP already had cuff's on him. The MP then led him to the guardhouse. From the time I saw the guy to the time he was apprehended was about 4-5 seconds.
Is that good enough?
Life moves pretty fast; if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. -FB
I seem to recall something about tours of the site recently. I bet the area he got into is only classified top secret because somebody would have to get off their duff to unclassify it. And since it was probably classfied from the highest levels, some clerk couldn't do it.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Hmm.. radioactive soil was removed from that site.
I wonder if he was exposed to radiation. He probably was.
The site probably isn't so top secret anymore.
If it was there would be security. My first job out
of college was with M.I.T. Lincoln Lab, even the
clearance level was secret. There were man traps on the site, that means you enter your keycode, open a door like an ATM, and a guard looks at you via a camera and compares your face to one that pops up on the computer screen, if you pass they buzz you in. And they are armed to the teeth!
Also I worked at a site in Mauii on top of a dormant volcano (Haleakala) Signs were posted everywhere.. No Trespassing, deadly force is Authorized beyond this point. As a joke one of the gaurds had a giant reamer behind the desk, but they also had high powered hand guns.
I bet Los Almos isn't as secure because what does on there doeesn't warant it. But I bet if you go to
White Sands New Mexico, you will run into trouble. This reporter may also be arrested.
Who knows, only time will tell. And the fact that he
took pictures and posted them on the net may get him in trouble with the Patriot Act.
If you're going to bring up the issue of trampling the Bill of Rights, you might at least mention how said trampling of rights is supposed to take place. Just because a right isn't listed (Right to Privacy, Right to Free Movement, etc) doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Even if someone did manage to get the First or Second repealed, that doesn't mean those rights suddenly vanish.
Too often, people posting here forget the Ninth.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
but a hell of a lot of crates....
good thing he brought a handy crowbar.....
why we call stoning to death in some arabic countries non humane ? it is done according to law
(obscure references provided upon request.)
What about the rain in the pictures containing the "guard"? Los Alamos looks like a sunny place, except when you are photographing a guard?
if a journalist broke into a government computer systen or network to show how easy it was and the reported it he'd be labeled a "terrorist" and prosecuted for sure.
Those were some pretty lame pics of Los Alamos. I mean come on, I could take a piece of string and a no trespassing sign and head to the desert and then tell the world that I infiltrated the base. A picture of a shed with a fence around it? Come on, I could find one of this with 5 blocks of my apartment. All I would have to do is put the number 33 on it and the rest of the world would probably never know. I didnt see anything credible that said "los alamos" on it that couldnt easily have been forged. For all we may know, this guy is faking it.
from www.i-medreview.com
Diphtheria
Disease: Diphtheria is a bacterial illness acquired through inhalation of infected particles. It causes a severe sore throat and possibly heart and nerve damage. The bacteria live in the airways of healthy or recovering humans.
Vaccine: DTP
Pertussis
Disease: A bacterial illness acquired through inhalation of the infected particles. It causes severe, life-threatening coughing spells (whooping cough), and possibly seizures and brain damage. The bacteria usually live in the airways of adults with no or minimal cough.
Vaccine: DTP
Tetanus
Disease: Tetanus is a bacterial infection acquired through dirty wound infection. Tetanus causes severe and painful muscle contractions. The bacteria are abundant in the soil.
Vaccine: DTP
Haemophilis influenza type b (Hib)
Disease: Haemophilis influenza type b is a bacterial infection acquired through inhalation of infected particles or through contact with infected objects. It causes life-threatening conditions such as meningitis (infection of the lining of the brain), throat swelling, and joint infection.
Vaccine: Hib
Pneumococcal pneumonia
Disease: Pneumococcal pneumonia is a bacterial illness causing pneumonia.
Vaccine: Pneumococcal vaccine; recommended for people with heart, lung, or other chronic illnesses.
So I guess vaccination isn't just limited to virii?
How is walking in to a high security area any different than hacking computer systems? Why wasn't this guy put in jail for a few years waiting for a trial date?
- "That's just the kind of fuzzy-headed liberal thinking that leads to being eaten."
This same author also wrote an article about the shabby conditions at one of the unclassified Los Alamos sites. It's interesting that the physicist that he was interviewing did not complain about the working conditions. So why did the author make a big deal about it?
After reading both articles, my impression is that the author was expecting the entire Los Alamos complex to be some type of high tech super-secure facility, and when his expectations were not met he decided to write a couple articles blasting the place.
Quality journalism? I think not.
It doesn't seem unlikely that there is relatively easy access to secret facilities, nor that the government fails to use appropriate security measures. Consider past events, such as a russian diplomat's tapping of a state department conference room in 1999 that went undiscovered for some time.
It should save a great amount of time surfing the net. One hand one the mouse, one hand on the keyboard, the last hand on...
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
Layers. Sure, at most US military bases, you can probably sneak over the fence and walk around. Maybe even sneak into a warehouse or other empty building.
One person walking around and getting into an office building is almost certainly no problem (depending on the alert level).
But to get to the 'good stuff' you have to go through an incredible number of steps. And there is *no way* to access anything really sensitive without quite a few people knowing and challenging you.
nt
From the first few lines of the article:
:-)
There are no armed guards to knock out. No sensors to deactivate. No surveillance cameras to cripple.
Did anyone else read that and want to continue, "Only a magnetic shield prevents beaming," the commandant's line from "Star Trek VI"?
As for your last comment about "make it tough for the bad guys" it goes back to the sad reality that the average Joe Citizen knows a hell of a lot less about his/her own government's secrets than does even the lower end of foreign intelligence agencies (including ones not on ahem... friendly terms). This doesn't even get into the crap that gets leaked simply due the overwhelming mass of bureaucracy and bureaucratic mentality. That confusion will always result in problems so it is sad but yet humorous when some reporter asks a question of a cabinet member or other high level personnel and when said spokesman does not release info on grounds of classification the reporter just reminds them that CNN just ran a story with such details last week, gives websites with the information and/or reminds them that such information was officially released months before. Left hand and right hand? Nah, we are talking millions of hands all duking it out for personal glory. Yay, socialism! Why use Patriotism and its idealistic (which is considered a bad word today) restrictions when we can all just jump on the nationalism bandwagon and go with the flow?
This is much ado about nothing.
Don't get me wrong. There is plenty to criticize about security at Los Alamos. But the article is akin to bragging that you got into the "johnny on the spot" outhouse in an used section under construction on the outskirts of a military base.
I will admit that they ought to be more secure about letting people *out* of facilities though. I used to work late and the guards left at 6 and there was only a unidirectional turnstile "guarding" the place. While there were other measures to retain building security, I could have walked out with lots of stuff had I wanted to. If I wanted to get in at night I'd just call the Pro Force and they'd let me into the building, no questions asked, so long as I had a security badge.
However lets also be honest. Most of the stuff labelled "top secret" really isn't terribly significant. The stuff that is important has a *lot* more security on it. For instance our really important servers and stuff were in sealed rooms and then inside rather large safes in those rooms. And only a few people had the passwords. We had all sorts of restrictions for cable length to avoid hacking via E&M signals. We had pretty amazing encryption devices. And the really important areas had amazing security. The weakest link, as always, tends to be the employees and not these sorts of things.
There are problems, but what this story discusses aren't they.
I infiltrated the IIT Research Institute once. I got off the elevator on the wrong floor and the armed guards stopped me from leaving the elevator and asked me to return to the lobby..... All that security for twinkies?
Trying 204.121.3.13...
Connected to www.lanl.gov.
Escape character is '^]'.
Jesus H. Christ, don't these guys protect ANYTHING?!
If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
Well, actually, the police now know a little bit more about the suspect. It should make their job easier.
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
This reminds me of something similiar. One particular federal security had beautiful high fences and armed guards.. So, driving around to the back, down some dirt trails, and walking a few hundred feet into the woods, we found the back fence, which was at the top of a cliff, that overlooked the facility.
:)
:) I'd bet they had patrolled the back fence lines for years, and decided it wasn't worth it.
:)
We followed the fence down a little way, and found that it simply ended. Well, it was close to the side of the cliff. But not so close that you couldn't just hang on to the last pole, and swing around.
Around we swung, and down the face of the cliff we climbed. Took about an hour. By the it was like 4am. We wandered around the grounds of the facility, and checked out it's dishes from ground level (it was a US Gov't satellite ground uplink center).
Then we got bored and left.
I understand how hard places like that are to protect though.. Every day you come to work, and watch an empty cliff with no one on it.. You very rarely see anyone coming on, and most that do follow normal routes (driving up to the front gate).
So, you've worked there for 10+ years, and then some genius crosses the back fence and brags about it.
Kind of like Microsoft security. If no one's broken in that way, why secure it?
(I had to get a Microsoft joke in somehow).
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Having worked at a DOE lab, and without disclosing details, let me say this article does not reflect the level of security in place in my experience.
In fact, I find computer people poking at DOE security pretty amusing. To use a couple of publicly known details: Take ID badges for example. Security guards at ID checking posts actually *touch* the ID badge to check that the badge is real and that the person matches the picture. I never saw this breached for an L-Level area (lowest level of security).
And, before Sept. 11, I have never had a private security person check that I am the person on my ID. After Sept. 11, I have only seen this done at airports.
Similarly, I have never seen a person without a proper badge in a L-level area. I have never seen a visitor without an escort close by (yes, including walking the visitor to the rest room and waiting outside).
All in all, I think Wired has fallen victim to the folks who are trying to smear UC -- a group that has been crying that the sky is falling and are trying in part to make up for the fact that they claimed that Wen Ho Lee was making the sky fall -- and turned out to be wrong.
for more stories of unprotected nuclear facilities...
Supposedly this stuff has been upgraded in recent years, but who knows?
As Dick Marcinko points out in his (supposedly fiction) books, security is not easy, and military base security is especially a joke.
One funny part in one of his stories was the security at some embassy building in Europe where you had to go through a turnstile past Marine guards to get in. So he went around the side of the building where the the open "smoker's door" was and walked right in past all the security... That was after he estimated the Marines post as being a chokepoint - for them, not him, once he punched holes through the "bulletproof" glass with shotgun sabot slugs and pumped in some tear gas rounds...
The only security is proactive, mobile, armed guys who are always on high alert and expecting anything - which means you need a lot of (expensive) guys because you can't keep anyone on constant high alert for more than a few hours...
Any security can be breached if you have the training, motivation, and if necessary, firepower...
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Just wait till his 'nads start to glow in the dark :)
Oh yeah, and I've had no clearance, been L-cleared, and Q-cleared.
(And you might also mod up the post of mine which contains a link to a detailed map and description of Tech Area 33. Some hard information is useful in this discussion.)
Oh, hell, here's the link again:
DESCRIPTION OF TECHNICAL AREAS AND FACILITIES AT LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY--1997
It seems strange that a magazine would write an article publicy stating the poor level of security at a facility like this. Go ahead terrorists, we'll show you exactly where to go to get your goods and how to get in. Doesn't anyone think about national security before they do things like this? Oh yeah, in our geek world thing like that don't matter since information is free and it should be available to the masses.
To be fair to the US press, though, it should be mentioned that the US's peculiar geographical and cultural isolation, along with the simple fact that it's the dominant economy and, er, culture in the world, conspire to create milleau where information from outside the nation is not as relevant to people's lives as it is for other people elsewhere.
Now, I think it's a lot more relevant than most Americans do; but my point is that, even so, it's not as relevant to us as it is to most other people.
I am very internationalist in outlook, and I'm also skeptical by nature and was taught as a child not to trust any particular information source exclusively. I don't think the US media is as bad as many other people think it is, but it's definitely got its biases and its blind-spots, and I prefer to supplement what I know from non-US sources.
Americans are not xenophobic. I strongly believe that Americans are actually less xenophobic than many other nationalities are. We're actually a lot more friendly and open-minded than many people around the world think we are. I know this because I've known a considerable number of foreigners that have come to the US and have been surprised to find that their stereotypes were mostly false (but still partly true).
However, even if Americans aren't really that xenophpbic, they are quite willfully ignorant and indifferent. I'm frequently one of the few Americans that ever bother to ask my foreign friends about their home countries and their lives there and whatnot. Most people just seem to not care. Furthermore, I recall vividly one startling conversation I had with a very conservative friend. We were talking about foreign affairs and my general high level of knowledge about the world outside the US, and that I think that it's important that US leaders understand that we live in a globalized world and understand what that really means. And his reponse? "That's why I would never vote for you for President." My outward-looking visage was seen by him to be a bad thing.
That's especially interesting coming from a conservative--given that the Republicans are supposedly the foreign policy people and the Democracts are supposedly the domestic policy people. But, with this current administration, we can see just how "adept" at foreign policy conservatives can really be. Regardless of whether or not an Iraq war is justified, Bush's diplomacy has been a complete disaster.
Can't help but notice the similarity between the reporter's adventure and whitehat hacking - infiltrating important places with poor security to demonstrate the ease-of-entry.
Of course, had this been an equivalent computer hack, the fellow would have been in serious trouble.
What makes you think that US facilities are not secure and that those elswhere are? "Terrorists" operate in Iraq and other hell holes. The only difference between here and there is that there no one is free to report the damage. Iraq's military defense is not so swell either. A single Israeli F-16 knocked out most of Sadam's nuclear capability ten years ago. Kuwait was a good example of Iraq's military strategy, discipline and effectiveness. All of Sadam's money has been spent and all of his people's rights have been denied for nothing. Subways that no one uses, nuclear facilities that generate no power, communications without privacy and jail time for ideas are all wastes.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
aren't you jewish or islamic or...whatever?
:p
I thought you don't like piggies?
Oh....you're not eating it that way...I'll leave you alone now.
Not sure how much is fantasy, and how much reality... but it's clear to me that he did do it.
(He didn't get caught, either... died many years later, in his sleep).
the most mysterious thing you'll see today
This article (better, but longer) is his account of the journey into Papoose Lake... again, not sure how much of it is fantasy/embellishment... but it's a fascinating read.
the most mysterious thing you'll see today
As I see from already posted comments, many Los Alamosans have already put something in on this, but I'd like to offer a more complete explanation.
Los Alamos National Laboratory is quite large--43sq. miles, plus numerous office buildings within the town site. Not everything needs to be secured. A lot of it has never been touched. And the "inside sources" who claim that this technical area is a truly top secret hot spot are full of shit. Everything at the Lab is marked secret. Truly secret things are properly protected.
My father is a nuclear physicist with mostly unclassified projects. There are many security features on the building. You have to have a properly cleared ID card to get in. There are security guards with M-16s. A shoddy picture of an empty gun holster on one guard proves nothing.
The big top secrete facilities such as TA-55 (Plutonium Storage) have some very impressive security. The plutonium building is designed to withstand the impact of a 747 at one end and cars and people at the other with triple-redudandant fences, guard towers, dogs and (so I hear) anti-personnel devices.
Most top-secure locations required a Q clearance (top-level). The number of Q clearances was greatly reduced years ago for security and cost. (It's over $6000 to do that level of background check.) If this guy tried to get into the plutonium facility, the chemistry-metallurgy research building or the criticallity facility he would be in some trouble.
As for his point about old signs: those are left in areas that just aren't used anymore. Well guess what, climb over that fence if you want to, but don't complain if you hit unexploded, unremoved ordnance.
I see from this fellow's other articles that he's generally an idiotic sensationalistic journalist.
Wired should stick to technology issues.
To tie up snooping reporters.
I worked at Sandia National Laboratories last summer. Maybe because it's on an air-force base, it's more secure. To get on the base, you had to go past guard checkpoints. They were armed with automatic rifles. To get into each building required an access card. The "secure area" had its own large fences and required special access cards to get into. Their internal network is not connected to the internet.
They are very serious about security and clearances and so forth at Sandia. I wouldn't want to have to try to sneak in there without permission. Seems odd that Los Alamos wouldn't be the same way.
There was a statement made by Pete Nanos this afternoon which has apparently addressed this article, and in which he states that the reporter crossed a cattle fence, not a laboratory fence. Prob be more in the news tomorrow.
Many people here have commented that my story wasn't a big deal, because the area into which I went wasn't sufficiently top-secret. If I had walked out with, say, a wheelbarrow full of uranium, then they would have been impressed.
Well, in 1997, during a security training simulation, soldiers were able to do just that. In 2000, during a similar exercise, feaux bad guys "gain(ed) access to the reactor fuel... potentially causing a sizable nuclear detonation that would have taken out part of New Mexico and caused havoc downwind."
I'm a scared, out-of-shape lummox without any military training whatsoever, and with no motivation to do anything harmful. Yet I got into an area that I was assured could not be accessed by any outsider - an area that no one will even say officially what it's purpose is.
If I could do what I did - and these simulated attackers coudl make such spectacular inroads - what could a more determined adversary accomplish? That's the question my story asks.
Several Slashdotters said that TA-33 couldn't have been that important, if Bussolini and Alexander stored their allegedly fraudulently-purchased goods there, and if I was able to get in.
To that, one Slashdot reader replied, "I'm not comfortable assuming that the buildings he managed to get into were useless just based on the fact that he was able to access them. It seems like that sort of head-in-the-sand circular logic does not good security practices make."
I agree.
--
For more, go to Defense Tech.
they probably sold them off to the locals. I applied for a job at LANL a few years ago. HMMM, live in the middle of nowhere, work on making better nukes, be under the unsleeping watchful eyes of the DOE and God knows what other agencies every moment of the day and night, and a $40k salary? Sounds great!
Anyone who's ever dealt directly or indirectly with nuclear materials in the military knows what kind of security they require.
Guards authorized to use lethal force? Yep... they might not even try to arrest you.
The military uses pretty tight security to transport nukes... including multiple vehicles, on-call NEST teams (you don't want to meet those folks), and so forth. You think the hardened facilities where these things are stored long-term are just wide open for any reporter to walk into? If you really attempted to penetrate one of those areas, you'd find yourself proned out by an agressive 19yo, and his M16 muzzle would be drilled directly into the back of your head. After that pleasing introduction, the fun would REALLY start; as Ricky would say... you'd have some serious 'splainin to do. Nuclear security troops (often marines) have no sense of humor. It's hard to conjure up anything they would love more than laying a righteous smackdown on some snooping reporter... Imagine the fun they'd have had with this guy...
It's already been said, but I concur... I don't think this guy got close to anything important.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
I make code "unleashes"
All part of the campaign to fight any independent research facilities.
If it is not under direct control of the CIA or the military, it shall be marginalized.
backed up by guards with empty holsters
If they had holsters the only logical conclusion is that they already drew the weapon. Is the reporter still alive or is this article a literary post mortem?
These articles are not just poor journalism, or not just indicative of poor judgement.
They are plain evidence of an effort to eliminate publicly owned and publicly accountable research facilities in the US.
This particular incident may not have been so worrying, but it does seems that Washington's attitude towards security is rather similar to the attitude in Redmond.
For Microsoft, "security" means "DRM". For the US government "security" means "oil". In both cases genuine security holes go unchecked, and in the latter case, resources go towards arresting thousands without charges, barring people like Irish civil rights activist Bernadette Devlin McAliskey and Eugene Angelopoulos, a Professor at the National Technical University of Athens from entering the country, and desperately trying to find a convincing link between Saddam Hussein and September 11.
Ironically, the more "security" you sign up for, the less safe you are.
Nonono, it was Aline with the sculpture...
You can't take the sky from me...
I'd like to see this done to each of the pompous corporate cocksuckers on FauxNews.
And Rupert Murdoch strung up by his gonads in Times Square.
That would be justice done.
Wow, a couple of blurry pictures, unnamed sources, and propaganda from citizens' watch groups. I'm pretty convinced now!
the government wants us to think there is a whole lot going on there. Chances are that they've move the site. Once a "secure" location is known, it's not quite so secure anymore now is it? Also, did the reporter actually get into the site? No. Could he have? You're guess is as good as mine. Something tells me this is really not a big deal.
So what? He snuck into a long declassified area. Big deal. The places where the REAL stuff takes place today is RIGHT UNDER YOUR NOSE! Hell most of them look like average CostCos or Burger Kings! And damn you know what! They are! Stenograph at it's best
You expect someone who failed their science/engineering classes to know what a nuclear reactor looks like?
I find this to be another sign that all these anouncements of "heightened levels of alert" and the security codes (blue, red, orange), or whatever they are called, are mainly there to try and scare the populace. While the country believes that we are in danger, the people have shown they will blindly follow the president. This correlates with the lack of security at Los Alamos. Even though we always hear about how dangerous it is, and how we ought to go out and buy duck tape and plastic sheeting, the most important scientific areas are barely protected. How easy would it be to enter Los Alamos, like this reporter did, and start planting bombs? Would the person be caught? I doubt it. I wonder how difficult it would be to infiltrate a military complex. Probably more so, but then again, who cares about science nowadays? My two cents. -Dae
"Alle reden vom wetter. Wir nicht." - SDS Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund.
j00 4r3 3n73r1ng l337 w0r1d.
"At these points, 9-foot-high chain-link fences, topped with curled razor wire, keep hikers away from Los Alamos lands. But as Route 4 proceeds along LANL property, these imposing barriers drop to trios or quartets of aging barbed wire, the kind of fences used to keep cows from straying off a farm."
Who's to say LANL isn't developing nuclear equiped cows? Besides the fact the normal "Bombs" they drop in the dairy's can be smelled for miles, no one would suspect them to be able to blast people away for miles. Just think about...
======
Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish. - Euripides
I spent a couple of months working in an unclassified area of LANL, and the quote on the first page of the article is true: if it is somewhere imporant, you CANNOT get in.
Why would you expect that a lab that does a lot of unclassified research (pretty much indistinguishable from what a university physics department would perform) to have the security of a military base?
On the other hand, for the parts of Los Alamos that are important, the security of a military base pales into insignificance. I wonder if the reporter had a look at the plasma physics lab? It looks more like a prison camp, and that is only the above-ground bit!
A beat-up crock like this story doesn't help anyone. Now the poor guys doing unclassified research will probably get yet another later of pointless and wasteful 'security' measures.
OK.. My home-town is Los Alamos, I grew up there, and have spent 18 years of my life there, and I will be working for LANL this summer.
...It looks like barb wire on farms because it's there to keep wild animals off the highway.
... well at least it makes me feel better :D
Everything this reporter said was under false pretenses and complete hogwash. There are more than 60 'TA's (Technical Areas) most of which are not considered 'secure' because they don't house anything of interest. You might find a secratary's office or a building housing lowly college students slaving away for their Ph.D. endowed superiors in these types of buildings. Anything taking place in these types of installations are nothing even remotely 'classified'. TA-33 which he was so anxious to show off his access to is not even used any more.
Furthermore the 'No Tresspassing' sign he was so glib to point out is far from unique, there are about 30k of them spread around the town. These are on the border of all lab property, not lab installations. There are several huge plots of land which the lab owns, and have absolutely nothing within their borders. These plots of land are 'fenced' by these signs. They merely denote the fact that the lands within them are not part of the national forest, and thus not available for recreational use.
TA-33 is nothing special, there are many of these trailers housing support staff, and various other non-important stuff. There are several technical areas 3 feet from the road, with no fence or guard house, in the middle of no-where. Why aren't they protected? There's absolutely nothing worth protecting within them that needs more than a simple lock on the door.
Oh yea: But as Route 4 proceeds along LANL property, these imposing barriers drop to trios or quartets of aging barbed wire, the kind of fences used to keep cows from straying off a farm
Phht.. maybe if he thought about this for a little while he'd enlighten himself with the truth of the matter.
I'm deeply offended that someone would write such a short-sighted, and blatantly misleading article. I guarantee the guard that had no gun in his holster is not typical (wouldn't be suprised if it was out of its holster in order to be pointed at this 'reporter'). I tell you from first hand experience. I've been escorted off lab property by guards with M-16's a couple of times in my youth. They don't mess around.
As mentioned before 'LANL' covers a huge area, and many installations of varrying types. Unfortunately this guy didn't chose to photograph anything interesting. I wish I could hop out and take some snapshots of the installations which house important stuff (e.g. The area that houses plutonium (TA-55): two layers of top to bottom razor wire fencing, cameras on every angle, guard towers, armed guards, five swat teams on call 24 hours a day, etc..) but I am not living in Los Alamos at present. Not to mention they don't allow you to photograph anything so I'd have to be sneaky about it.
Anyway, that's the end of my rant. Hopefully this sheds some truth on the issue?
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"
I am a LANL worker with a Q clearance who works in a secure area. I can attest firsthand that nuclear secrets and nuclear materials are guarded heavily. As mentioned in the article, there are multiple layers of security which protect anything worth protecting. Anyone who cares about the details can search the web for our former lab director's testimony before a congressional committee regarding the physical security (guards, guns, gates, biometric scanners) in place around the places where nuclear weapons designers work. And security has been tightened since the testimony was given. LANL consistently rates among the highest of institutions in the U.S. when our security is audited, a situation which has only improved since the recent scandals.
Anyone with half a clue (and by this I mean very few who read Slashdot) would realize that if Congress gives you a finite amount of resources to spend on securing factilities that you would devote the most attention, money, and personnel on guarding facilities and materials which would affect global nuclear security most profoundly. You would probably do as little as possible in areas where the only real danger is some idiot who jumps a fence out in the middle of nowhere, turns an ankle, and proceeds to sue the Laboratory.
Of course it's fashionable to bash LANL's security nowadays. Leno does it, as does Letterman, and all the mindless Slashdot drones seem to Jones over the idea of showing off that they've read Feynman's semi-fictional autobiographical account of LANL security, as if nothing has changed since 1944. Please.
I wonder how secure this guy's house is?
I grew up on KAFB, and eventually worked at Sandia, but one of the more vivid examples of "layered" security was when, as a pimply-faced teenager living off-base and not affilitated with either KAFB or Sandia, delivered pizza on-base.
The routine went like this - drive down the street to the entrance of KAFB, where the gate personnel would stop me. Show them my pizza, tell them I had a pizza delivery, and they'd wave me on-base. Pretty funny, huh?
So my delivery is way out past the main tech areas, and I'm on dirt roads, and finally I get to the area - don't remember the TA, Sandians, sorry - and it's a lethal force area. So I'm outside three rings of concertina-topped chainlink, signs with "lethal force authorized" all around, and a guy with an M-16 approaches. He's not exactly pointing it at me, but it's also not slung over his shoulder. Gives me the dough, I give him the pizza, and that's it.
It was fun.
If he was doing this as a curious private citizen, criminal intent or not, he'd be prosecuted. Some how, because he was doing it in the employ of a corporation, fewer laws apply to him. But that's symptomatic of a whole other problem not on topic here.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Who assured you that the cow fence you jumped over allowed you access to any secrets at all? Any security plan approved by DOE for protecting "Top Secret" assets must be protected by a certain level of physical security. (For instance, an outer perimeter of 12-foot-tall fences with razor wire and armed guards, with several layers of security within). Surely your research must have uncovered this. Even though nobody will give you official word on what the place is used for, the fact that an out-of-shape zero with a gimpy leg could get there should be a strong indication that you didn't get anywhere of consequence. This seems a much more likely scenario than that there is some kind of pathological disregard for even the most basic security precautions among those who would know better than most the consequences of bad security. That these same people would rather risk going to prison for criminal disregard of security rules than go through the trouble of safeguarding the secret stuff.
Admit it--your little escapade brought you access to precisely nothing in terms of secret materials. You merely trespassed on some LANL property. I'm willing to bet that your "inside sources" who told you otherwise are just some kind of fantasy you cooked up to give your little story a bit of undeserved credibility. I'm sure your editors went gaga over that sort of thing. Very chic. "Inside sources," indeed.
No, quite frankly I can only conclude that you're a wannabe hack who performed the most trivial of exploits, gained access to precisely nothing of consequence, and, through your little piece of "investigative" journalism (I can't bring myself to remove the quotes) you distort the truth about LANL security, which consistently audits among the best of secure U.S. facilities.
As for the oft-mentioned "wheelbarrow of uranium," a bit of research on your part (an exercise that I think Wired "reporters" could benefit from) would reveal the nature of the training exercises you identify: Essentially, the point of these exercises is to identify potential weaknesses in security. They are intentionally performed in "absolute worst case and then some" conditions, the kinds of scenarios one would think could never realistically happen, but yet should be prepared for anyway. Sometimes, in these kinds of scenarios, the bad guys win. That's the nature of stress tests--the point is not to pat oneself on the back and say "we are so great--look, we won again," but rather "what did we learn about our vulnerabilities from this exercise?" From the exercises you mention, changes were made in security which have led to improved protection of special nuclear materials. You should be proud of the fact that LANL so vigorously and aggressively tests its security. Not every secure facility does so.
Now, of course, you get your 5 minutes of fame. Maybe jumping a cow fence and concocting "inside sources" will win you that Pullitzer afterall. Just don't expect me to clap for you at the ceremony.