Slashdot Mirror
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.)
This is stale. They've already found the data again...
See here.
In any case it's not newsworthy.
Technically anything that touches their Classified LAN is then considered classified to the highest level of the data on the system. Some tech could have brought in a new desktop background on floppy from the unclass side.
"Oh my GOD where is my Britney Spears pictures!!!."
"...Perhaps the best question to ask in this situation is why these labs are still using removable data storage devices to store sensitive information."
I worked on projects that collected classified data and spec'd systems with removable storage. The reason we used removable storage was because it was easier to get DISCO (Defense Industrial Security Clearance Organization, yes, that really is the acronym courtesy of the Department of Defense Overly Contrived Acronym Certification Agency (DODOCACA)) to certify a system for classified use if we could show that all of the storage could be removed from the system and securely stored. Of course this relies upon having people who aren't going to lose the secure storage, which is another thing entirely. Given advances in storage since the 1990s when I was administering such systems I'd be surprised if any classified system wasn't built around removable storage systems. You can get a 320Gb firewire disk for $350. Of course you could also do your work on laptops and then lock them in your classified safe at the end of the day too.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
What are you talking about, dread minerva? LANL isn't run by UC-Berkeley in particular, it's run by the University of California System. See the University of California office of the President -- "10 campuses, 5 medical centers and 3 national labs." Secondly, Sandia isn't run by the UC at all, it's run by Lockheed-Martin, and, as another poster pointed out, was previously run by AT&T. Jeeze, when one of your points is that there's a management problem, you'd think you'd actually check who the management is.