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LANL, Sandia Report Losing Classified Data
dread minerva writes "This week, Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories publicly reported that sensitive material stored on removable data storage devices was missing." In Sandia's case, "According to the Las Vegas Sun, this 'prompted the lab to halt all classified work Thursday while officials conduct a wall-to-wall inventory of sensitive data.' Sandia also reported that a 'computer floppy disk was missing.' However, according to the Albuquerque Journal, 'lab officials said they don't believe it contains any weapons information or any other information that could harm national security,' only admitting that the material on the disk was classified. Due to these latest events, LANL has shut down all work on classified projects as of Friday." (Read more below.) Update: 07/17 21:21 GMT by T : A correction -- research was shut down only at LANL (not, as I mistakenly claimed, at Sandia) -- and an update: Sandia's missing disk was recovered.
"These snafus have led the government to open up the labs to defense-contracting bids for the first time in their 60+ year history (until now the labs have been run by UC-Berkeley). As NPR reported on Friday, the researchers at the labs were upset by this move, as they are afraid of the labs losing their academic nature. Perhaps the best question to ask in this situation is why these labs are still using removable data storage devices to store sensitive information."
(Other institutions, including The University of Texas system, are also angling for a share of the lab's management.)
It's all those iPods that the techies bring in.
Get your own free personal location tracker
the 7-11 of government agencies.
Terrorist: I'll take two hard drives with weapons research on them.
Sandia: That'll be $2000. Thank you and please come again.
You write "classified" on the floppy disk - that should be enough warning to people to not steal it, right ? Jeez..
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
I was hoping that somewhere research was being conducted without being attatched to an organization with sports teams.
-I am an elective eunuch.
The missing data was stored on Zip drive floppies.
In other words, the media itself will fail in about 6 months, and there wont be any Zip drives still working by then to read it.
A:> unrar moab_blueprint_1.2.3.rar
Unpacking...
Please insert medium containing moab_blueprint_1.2.3.001 in drive A:
[A]bort, [R]etry, [F]ail, [G]o home and drink soup?
- Seth
There's this old joke that communism comes only after the last communist has died. Makes me wonder, what will happen if the last terrorist is eliminated :H
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
This would never happen in Canada. Not because of our state of the art security systems, but simply because we don't invest money in developing weapons, and we have no information that anyone wants. hehe... :P
Who cares about some stupid 'classified' data at a nuclear lab? That pales in comparison to this - U2's new album has been stolen! I'm shocked! Shocked, I tell you! Is there no God?!
We once had a HDD end up missing at our company headquarters (Army). All barracks were placed under lock down, everyone near the HQ building in the previous few days was investigated, and a team of searchers were sent to search through our rooms, cars, bags etc. After what was an all day event searching through our stuff, it was later discovered that someone sent the parts to a the repair shop and one hand didn't talk to the other.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
You see, the researchers used to be able to roam all over the 'Net. Was a time you could drive a meg of bytes all the way from MAE West to Atlanta. But then, what happened was, these firewalls started popping up and the days of free range data transfer were over.
Naturally, a lot of cowboys were sore about what happened to their livelihood, and they're in an ornery mood. You tell 'em they have to follow these here procedures and they all, "haw haw, listen to the uptight city slicker try to tell us rules!"
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Aren't these the same lab officials who thought they had adequate security to protect classified data?
I was in charge (as an E-4, woo. :| ) of a detail of other E-1s through E-4s monitoring people entering and leaving the building. One of our responibilities was to check all bags leaving the building.
One day, some contractors came through the desk - on their way out - while I was there. My man asked them what was in the box and they said, "Nothing. Just some test equipment."
My man almost let them through when I told them we'd need a look inside. They became a little annoyed and started pleading their case in the hopes that we lowly E-4s and below would just back down; but, I was incistant.
When the box was opened it contained two classified manuals. The base commander, several 'real' security guards and the civilian's boss chewed them out on the quarter deck in front of everyone.
Turned out, they had clearance and even had authorization to carry classified information (but they forgot their cards.) Thinking they'd just brow-beat us they attemted something stupid.
I got an 'atta-boy' for that one. {sigh - oh well.}